Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Volume 3 |
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Popular passages
Page 314 - February 5, 1867, entitled an act to amend an act to establish the judicial courts of the United States, approved September 24, 1789, as authorized an appeal from the judgment of the circuit court to the Supreme Court of the United States, or the exercise of any such jurisdiction by said Supreme Court on appeals which have been or may hereafter be taken, be, and the same is hereby, repealed.
Page 62 - I will do nothing to check impeachment, if there is any wish to press it. I am tired of hearing allusions to impeachment. God Almighty knows I will not turn aside from my public duties to attend to these contemptible assaults which are got up to embarrass the administration. Let the House go forward and busy themselves in that matter if they wish.
Page 180 - There were other points which in this hasty memorandum written immediately after its occurrence, I have not penned, but the essential points I have sketched, and have as far as I could used the very words. On the whole, I did not think so highly of General Grant after as before this conversation. He is a political ignoramus. General Grant has become severely afflicted with the Presidential disease, and it warps his judgment, which is not very intelligent or enlightened at best. He is less sound on...
Page 311 - John Adams, — a point on which the counsel were relying and which we all had studiously kept secret. Stanbery, having presented his resignation and the matter being adjusted, was about leaving, when he stopped, addressed the President and resumed his seat. ' You are now, Mr. President,' said he, ' in the hands of your lawyers who will speak and act for you, and I must begin by requesting that no further disclosures be made to newspaper correspondents. There was in the papers yesterday, or this...
Page 314 - Court certain powers, and [which] is designed to prevent a decision in the McCardle case. Should the Court in that case, as it is supposed they will, pronounce the reconstruction laws unconstitutional, the military governments will fall and the whole radical fabric will tumble with it. Only one course can prolong the miserable contrivance, and that is a President like Wade, who will maintain the military governments regardless of courts, or law or right. Hence I have very little expectation that...
Page 297 - Speaker Colfax, that some nitro-glycerine had disappeared from New York, and that shrewd, sagacious and patriotic functionary knew not where it had gone, unless to Washington. The chivalrous and timid Speaker at once laid this tremendous missive before the House, and the consternation of the gallant band of radicals became excessive. A large additional police force had been placed around the Capitol, but as it was still considered unsafe an immediate adjournment was called for. Stanton, unfortunate...
Page 344 - ... what the average Senator or Congressman says. The reason they don't care is that they know what you hear in Congress is 99% tripe, ignorance and demagoguery and not to be relied upon. . . ." Earlier a member of the Cabinet had recorded in his diary: While I am reluctant to believe in the total depravity of the Senate, I place but little dependence on the honesty and truthfulness of a large portion of the Senators. A majority of them are small lights, mentally weak, and wholly unfit to be Senators....
Page 158 - He protested with ostentatious vehemence that any man who would retain his seat in the Cabinet as an adviser when his advice was not wanted was unfit for the place. He would not, he said, remain a moment. I remember his protestations, for I recollected at the time he had been treacherous and faithless to Buchanan. I knew, moreover, he had since as well as then betrayed Cabinet secrets.
Page 289 - Some one," said I, "has. Who is it, and what does it indicate? While you, Mr. President, are resorting to no extreme measures, the conspirators have their spies, — have command of the troops. Either Stanton or Grant or both issued orders which were proclaimed aloud and peremptorily at this large social gathering.
Page 321 - These usurpers and conspirators — for such they are, truly and emphatically, having arrogated power without authority, excluded states and people from their constitutional rights of representation — are now deliberately attempting the destruction of another department of the government by the unlawful exercise of these usurped powers. Were all the states represented, as they should be, and would be if not wickedly and wrongfully excluded by an arbitrary usurping faction, there could be no conviction,...