I went down to Willard’s to-day and got from Palmer, who is
here, a free ticket to New York and back for Walt. Whitman, the poet, who is
going to New York to electioneer and vote for the union ticket.
Saw Garfield and Hunter. Hunter is just starting for the
West on a tour of inspection. I would give my chances for to go with him, but Nicolay
still stays in the sunset, and I am here with a ball and chain on my leg. . . .
I told the Tycoon that Chase would try to make capital out
of this Rosecrans business. He laughed and said, “I suppose he will, like the
blue-bottle fly, lay his eggs in every rotten spot he can find.” He seems much
amused at Chase’s mad hunt after the Presidency. He says it may win. He hopes
the country will never do worse.
I said he should not, by making all Chase’s appointments,
make himself particeps criminis.
He laughed on, & said he was sorry the thing had begun,
for though the matter did not annoy him, his friends insisted that it ought to.
SOURCES: Clara B. Hay, Letters of John Hay and
Extracts from Diary, Volume 1, p. 112-3; For the whole diary entry see
Tyler Dennett, Editor, Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries and
letters of John Hay, p. 109-11
