A Diary of the Reconstruction Period

III. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CONFLICT

Friday, February 2, 1866.
I THINK the President, though calm and reticent, exhibits indications of not being fully satisfied in some respects with the conduct and course of some in whom he confided, yet he carefully abstains from remarks respecting persons. There can be no doubt that Stanton has given some of the leading radicals to understand that his views correspond with theirs, but I do not know that the President is fully aware of that fact. Seward, while he says nothing very decisively, leaves no doubt that he coincides in the general policy of the President. Harlan made a singular speech to the Iowa radicals a week ago, but has written an explanatory letter which is no explanation. I have no doubt that Dennison is sincerely with the President and means to sustain his measures, yet he makes visible, without intending it, his apprehension that by this policy the Democrats may get a controlling influence. In this he is not singular, for many of the leading radicals, especially those of Whig antecedents, have similar apprehensions and are afraid to trust the people. Having power, they do not scruple as to the means to retain it.
The truth is, the radical leaders in Congress openly and secretly have labored to defeat the President, and their hostility has engendered a distrust in their own minds, and caused fairer men like Dennison to have fears that the President might identify himself with the Democrats. This subject gives me no uneasiness whatever. I shall not be surprised if the extreme men become alienated, but their abandonment of the President will, under the working of our system of intelligent free thought and action, make room for the more reasonable and calculating of the opposition, if not with intelligent candor and determination. He will naturally feel kindly disposed towards those who sustain him and his measures, and will not be likely to give his confidence to those who oppose both.

Saturday, February 10, 1866.
Sumner made me his usual weekly visit this P. M. He is as earnest and confident as ever, probably not without reason. Says they are solidifying in Congress and will set aside the President’s policy. I enquired if he really thought Massachusetts could govern Georgia better than Georgia could govern herself, — for that was the kernel of the question. Can the people govern themselves? He could not otherwise than say Massachusetts could do better for them than they had done for themselves. When I said that every state and people must form their own laws and government, that the whole social, industrial, political, and civil structure was to be reconstructed in the slave states, that the elements there must work out their own condition, and that Massachusetts could not do this for them, he did not controvert [me] further than to say we can instruct them and ought to do it,that he had letters showing a dreadful state of things South, that the colored people were suffering beyond anything they had ever endured in the days of slavery. I told him I had little doubt of it; I had expected this as the first result of emancipation. Both whites and blacks in the slave states were to pass through a terrible ordeal, and it was most grievous and melancholy to me, to witness the spirit manifested towards the whites of the South who were thus afflicted. Left to themselves, they have great suffering and hardship, without having their troubles increased by any oppressive acts from abroad.

[About the close of the war had been organized, with President Lincoln’s approval, the so-called Freedmen’s Bureau which had “the supervision of all abandoned lands and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen.” The great powers given to this Bureau were still further extended in a new bill which was passed by Congress, but which seemed to the President a two-edged sword that might be used as readily to coerce the white citizens of Southern states as to protect the civil rights of the Negro.]

Tuesday, February 13, 1866.
McCulloch asked me yesterday, in the President’s room in the Capitol, if I had examined the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill. I told him I had not, but that I had never been partial to the measure and had doubted its expediency even during the war. Still as Congress, the administration, and the country had adopted it, and as I had no connection with it, I had little inclination to interest myself in the matter. To-day the President enquired of me my opinions, or rather said he thought there were some extraordinary features in the bill, and asked what I thought of them, and of the bill. My reply was similar to that I gave McCulloch yesterday. He expressed a wish that I would give the bill consideration, for he apprehended he should have difficulty in signing it. The bill has not yet reached him.
The unmistakable design of Thad Stevens and his associates was, the President said, to take the government into their own hands, and to get rid of him by declaring Tennessee² out of the Union. A sort of French Directory was to be established by these spirits in Congress, — the Constitution was to be remodeled by them, etc.

Wednesday, February 14, 1866.
Have examined the bill for the Freedmen’s Bureau, which is a terrific engine and reads more like a decree emanating from despotic power than a legislative enactment by republican representatives. I do not see how the President, can sign it, certainly I shall not advise it. Yet something is necessary for the wretched people who have been emancipated, and who have neither intelligence nor means to provide for themselves. [If] let alone, society will adapt itself in time and briefly to circumstances, and make circumstances conform to existing necessities, but in the mean time there will be suffering, misery, wretchedness; nor will it be entirely confined to the blacks.
I am apprehensive that the efforts of our Northern philanthropists to govern the Southern States will be productive of evil, that they will generate hatred rather than love between the races. This Freedmen’s Bureau scheme is a governmental enormity. There is a despotic tendency in the legislation of this Congress, an evident disposition to promote these notions of freedom by despotic and tyrannical means.

Friday , February 16, 1866.
After Cabinet meeting I had an interview and pretty free interchange of opinion with the President on the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill and other subjects. I expressed myself without reserve, as did the President, who acquiesced fully in my views. This being the case, I conclude he will place upon it his veto. Indeed he intimated as much. Desired, he said, to have my ideas because they might add to his own, etc.
There is an apparent rupturing among the radicals, or a portion of them. They wish to make terms. Will admit the representation from Tennessee, if the President will yield. But the President cannot yield and sacrifice his honest convictions by way of compromise.

Monday , February 19, 1866.
Attended special Cabinet meeting this morning, at ten, and remained in session until about one P. M. The President submitted a message which he had prepared returning the Freedman’s Bureau Bill to the Senate with his veto.
The message and positions were fully discussed.
Seward, McCulloch, and Dennison agreed with the President, as did I, and each so expressed himself. Stanton, Harlan, and Speed, while they did not absolutely dissent, evidently regretted that the President had not signed the bill. Stanton was disappointed. Speed was disturbed. Harlan was apprehensive. The President was emphatic and unequivocal in his remarks, earnest to eloquence in some portion of a speech of about twenty minutes, in which he reviewed the intrigues of certain radical leaders in Congress, without calling them by name — their council of fifteen which in secret prescribed legislative action, and assumed to dictate the policy of the administration. The effect of this veto will probably be an open rupture between the President and a portion of the Republican Members of Congress. How many will go with him, and how many with the radical leaders, will soon be known. Until a vote is taken, the master spirits will have time to intrigue with the members and get them committed. They will be active as well as cunning.
Senator Trumbull, who is the father of this bill, has not been classed among the radicals and did not intend to be drawn in with them when he drew up this law. But he is freaky and opinionated, though able and generally sensible. I shall be sorry to have him enter into associations that will identify him with extremists, and yet it will not surprise me should such be the case. He will be the champion of his bill and, stimulated and courted by those with whom he does not sympathize, will strive to impair the effect of the impregnable arguments and reasoning of the message.

Tuesday, February 20, 1866.
The Cabinet was pleasant and harmonious on the matters before it today, though outside rumors make them divided. Much excitement exists in Congress, and out of it, on the subject of the veto. The dark, revolutionary, reckless intrigues of Stevens manifest themselves. In the House, the bigoted partisans are ready to follow him in his vindictive and passionate schemes for radical supremacy — radicalism having been prevalent during the war, they think it still popular.
On the vote which was taken to-day in the Senate, the veto was sustained and the bill defeated, there not being the requisite two-thirds in its favor. Morgan, Dixon, Doolittle, and four or five others with the Democrats, eighteen in all against thirty. Violent and factious speeches were made in the Senate, and also in the House. Stevens, as I expected he would, presented his schemes to oppress the South, and exclude the states from their constitutional right of representation. Such men would plunge the country into a more wicked rebellion — one more destructive of our system of government, a more dangerous condition than that from which we have emerged, could they prevail. As an exhibition of the enlightened legislation of the House, Stevens, the radical leader, chairman of the Reconstruction Committee, — the committee which shapes and directs the action of Congress, and assumes executive as well as legislative control, — announced that his committee, or directory it may be called, was about to report in favor of admitting the Tennessee members, but the President having put his veto on the Freedmen’s bill, they would not now consent, and he introduced his resolution declaring, virtually, that the Union is divided, that, the states which were in rebellion should not have their constitutional right of representation.

[The failure of Congress to pass the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill over the President’s veto marks the first pitched battle in the war waged by the Republican majority in Congress against the administration, which culminated in the impeachment of the President. The statement in the President’s veto that a “ very grave objection ” to the bill lay in the fact that from the Congress by which the bill was passed eleven states were excluded, implied the illegality of all legislation which had been or should be enacted before the admission of representatives from the Southern states, and may be said to epitomize the virtual question at issue. The same day this vote was taken, the House, under Stevens’s leadership, adopted a resolution that no senator or representative from any of the eleven Southern states should be admitted into Congress until Congress itself should have declared that state entitled to representation.]

Thursday, February 22, 1866.
To-day both branches of Congress have adjourned, and there are funeral solemnities at the Capitol in memoriam of the late Henry Winter Davis, a private citizen, who died in Baltimore two or three months since, but who had been a conspicuous actor among the radicals. He possessed genius, a graceful elocution and erratic ability of a certain kind, but was an uneasy spirit, an unsafe and undesirable man, without useful talents for his country or mankind. Having figured as a leader with Thad Stevens, Wade, and others, in their intrigues, extraordinary honors are now paid him. A programme, copied almost literally from that of the 12th in memory of Mr. Lincoln, is sent out. Orders to commemorate this distinguished “Plug Ugly” and “Dead Rabbit,”³ are issued. President and Cabinet, Judges, Foreign Ministers, and other officials, have seats assigned them in the Hall of the Representatives for the occasion. The whole is a burlesque, which partakes of the ridiculous more than the solemn — intended to belittle the memory of Lincoln and his policy as much as to exalt Davis, who opposed it. I would not go — could not go, without a feeling of degradation. I yesterday suggested to the President my view of the whole proceedings—that they were in derogation of the late President and the Administration. The radicals wished Davis to be considered the equal or superior of Lincoln.

Saturday, February 24, 1866.
The extremists are angry and violent because the President follows his own convictions, and their operation through the press is prolific in manufacturing scandal against him. No harm will come of it, if he is prudent and firm.
The leaders had flattered themselves that they had more than two-thirds of each House, and would, therefore, carry all their measures over any veto. The President says there has been a design to attempt impeachment if he did not yield to them. I am inclined to believe this has been talked of among the leaders, but they could not press a majority of their own number into the movement.

Monday, February 26, 1866,
In the Senate, Sherman has been speaking against the declaratory resolution, which passed the House under the lash of Stevens from the Directory Committee, asserting that eleven states are out of the Union and must not be represented until Congress shall permit them. This resolution is fulminated in spite, because the President put his veto on the Freedmen’s bill. Such legislation is characteristic of Stevens and his co-laborers.

Friday, March 9, 1866.
Senator Grimes,⁴ after an interview this A. M. on naval matters, got on to the subject of our public affairs, generally, and particularly the differences between the President and the party in Congress. He disdains Stevens and Sumner, and spoke of each in severe and denunciatory terms. The former as a pretty unscrupulous old fellow, unfit to lead any party. Sumner as a coldblooded, selfish, dangerous man. When I spoke of him as honest, but yet I believe truthful, Grimes was disinclined to award him this trait, and I perceive has a strong prejudice, perhaps I should better define it by saying hate, of the Massachusetts Senator, who, though a student learned in books, Grimes asserts is not a statesman or wise legislator.
With very respectable talents, Grimes is of a suspicious and somewhat jealous nature, inclining to be misanthropic. He must be classed as of the radical school, but recognizes no radical leader, has no respect for them, abhors Stevens as a debauchee in morals and politics. He is intimate with Fessenden and has similar traits. The two hunt in couples. They were both former admirers of Seward, but now and for some time past they dislike him — think his influence on Johnson pernicious.

Saturday, March 10, 1866.
Thad Stevens has to-day made a blackguard and disreputable speech in the House. Beginning with the false assertion that the speech was prepared two months ago, and continuing with the equally false assurance that an interlude, or by-play, which was introduced was unpremeditated, this old man displayed more strongly than in his speech those bad traits of dissimulation, insincerity, falsehood, scandal-loving and defamation that have characterized his long life. The radical managers and leaders were cognizant of his speech, and had generally encouraged it, but I shall be disappointed if they do not wish the old man had been silent before many months.
Such disgraceful exhibitions can do the author and his associates no good, nor those whom he assails enduring harm. The people may not in the first excitement, and under the discipline of party, be enabled to judge of the conspirators correctly who are striving to divide the Union not by secession but by exclusion. It is clearly a conspiracy, though not avowed.

[The purposed the Civil Rights Bill introduced by Senator Trumbull was to destroy all discrimination between the races, to give the Negro “the right to acquire property, to come and go at pleasure, to enforce rights in the courts, to make contracts, and to inherit and dispose of property.” Johnson objected to the bill because it conferred citizenship on the Negro when eleven states were unrepresented in Congress, and because it attempted through a Federal law to enforce complete equality between the two races throughout the Union, and so constituted an invasion of state rights by Federal authority. Realizing that the consequences might be serious, the President vetoed this bill with reluctance.]

Friday, March 23, 1866.
Special notice from the President that there would be no Cabinet meeting. Called upon him this P. M. and gave him, generally, my views in regard to what is called the Civil Rights Bill, which, if approved by him, must lead to the overthrow of his administration as well as that of this mischievous Congress, which has passed it. The principles of that bill, if carried into effect, must destroy the government. It is consolidation solidified, breaks down all barriers to protect the rights of the states, concentrates power in the general government, which assumes to itself the enactment of municipal regulations between the states and citizens, and between citizens of the same state. No bill of so contradictory and consolidating a character has ever been enacted. The alien and sedition laws were not so objectionable. I did not enquire of the President what would be his course in regard to the bill, but we did not disagree in opinion on its merits, and he cannot give it his sanction, although it is unpleasant to him to have these differences with Congress.
He tells me that Senator Pomeroy disavows having stated that he saw the President drunk at the White House, but says he (Pomeroy) wrote Lincoln, the P[ost] M[aster] at Brooklyn, that he saw Robert, the President’s son, in liquor, and he thought the same of his son-in-law, Senator Patterson.

Monday, March 26, 1866.
The President convened the Cabinet this A. M. at ten and read his message returning the Civil Rights Bill with his veto. Before reading it he desired the members to express their opinions. Seward said he had carefully studied the bill and thought it might be well to pass a law declaring Negroes were citizens, because there had been some questions raised on that point, though there never was a doubt in his own mind. The rest of the bill he considered unconstitutional in many respects, and its having the mischievous machinery of the Fugitive Slave-Law did not help commend it.
McCulloch waived remark, had not closely scrutinized the bill and would defer comment to Stanton, merely remarking that he should be gratified if the President could see his way clear to sign the bill.
Stanton made a long argument, showing that he had devot ed much time to the bill. His principal point was to overcome the obnoxious features of the second section, which he thought should be construed favorably. He did not think judges and marshals, or sheriff’s and local officers, should be fined and imprisoned — did not think it was intended to apply to officers but merely to persons. The bill was not such a one as he would have drawn or recommended, but he advised that under the circumstances it should be approved.
The President having previously been put in possession of my views, I simply remarked that my objections were against the whole design, purpose, and scope of the bill, — that it was mischievous and wrong.
Mr. Dennison thought that, though there might be some objection to parts, he, on the whole, would advise that the bill should receive executive approval.
Mr. Harlan had not closely read the bill, but had met difficulties in the second section, and in one or two others, which had been measurably removed by Stanton’s argument. He thought it very desirable that the President and Congress should act in concert if possible.
Speed was ill and not present.
The Senate to-day deprived Stockton of New Jersey of his seat. It was a high-handed partisan proceeding, in which Sumner, Fessenden, Morrill, and others exhibited a spirit and feeling wholly unworthy of their official position. While I have no special regard for Stockton and his party in New Jersey, I am compelled to believe they have in this instance certainly been improperly treated and for a factional purpose, and I apprehend that I can never think so well of some of the gentlemen who have been conspicuous in this proceeding. Had Stockton acted with Sumner and Fessenden against the veto, he never would have been ousted from his seat. Of this I have no doubt whatever, and I am ashamed to confess it, or say it. I am passing no judgment on his election, for I know not the exact facts, but the indecent, unfair, arbitrary conduct of the few master-spirits is most reprehensible.

Friday, April 6, 1866.
The Senate by a vote of 33 to 15 this evening over-rode the veto on the Civil Rights Bill. Wright of N. J. was in his seat, but Dixon was not. Morgan,⁵ unexpectedly to me, and I think to most persons, voted with the majority. The vote of M[organ] was one of calculation, not of conviction. I shall be disappointed if he does not lose rather than gain by the step he has taken. Such is usually the righteous termination of calculations made by scheming and ambitious men who consent to do wrong. In this instance M[organ] may have had honest reasons. It is true he voted for the passage of the bill, but that was, as he has said to me, without much consideration given to the law, and in repeated interviews and conversations since, he had left the impression on my mind that he should sustain the veto.
General and Mrs. Grant gave their last reception for the season this evening. Being somewhat indisposed I did not propose to attend, but [my son] E[dgar] had not returned, and there was no one to accompany Mrs. Welles and her friend, and I was, consequently, under the necessity of going, though afflicted with a severe headache. The party was in some respects unlike any of the season, and there was present not only a numerous, but miscellaneous company of contradictions. There had been some preunderstanding on the part of the radicals, or a portion of them, to attend and to appropriate Gen. Grant, or at least his name and influence, to themselves. But most unexpectedly to them, as I confess it was to me, the President and his two daughters appeared early, and Montgomery Blair and some of his ladies were also on hand. There came also Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the late confederacy, so-called. When therefore, Thad Stevens, Trumbull, and others, not exactly homogeneous though now acting together, came in, they were evidently astonished and amazed.
Stevens, though a brave old stager, was taken aback and showed himself discomfited. Trumbull betrayed surprise. I was not in a condition to circulate much in the crowd, but heard repeatedly, amid the exultations over the vote of the Senate, expressions of vexation that there was such a strange attendance here. Theodore Tilton, as full of fanatical, fantastical and boyish enthusiasm as of genius and talent, but with no sensible ideas of the principles on which our government is founded or accurate knowledge of our republican federal system, or of the merits involved in pending questions, was boisterous over the result in the Senate. It was sufficient for him that a victory had been achieved for an ideal and fanciful theory, regardless of consequences, and indifferent whether we had a union or an empire, so that he could do a little more for the black man than for the white man. When a little older, if his erratic genius does not spoil him, he will be a little wiser. For a time he fastened himself on me, but I was too indisposed to do more than listen. He gloated over Morgan’s vote — said he could have thrown his hat to the ceiling when he heard it; not that he cared for Morgan.

Tuesday, April 10, 1860.
The Civil Rights Bill passed the House yesterday by a vote of nearly three to one. The party drill was very effective. Only Raymond of the radicals voted to sustain the veto. He has been general manager in the House but could not carry a single member with him if he tried. Either Seward could not help him, or he did not. All of Stanton’s pets were active in opposing the veto.

Saturday, April 14, 1866.
This being the anniversary of the assassination of President Lincoln, the several departments were closed by order of the President.
Had an hour’s talk with the President on several matters, but chiefly in relation to the policy of the administration, which was brought about by my referring to the interview which I had had with Senator Doolittle on Thursday evening, and his urgent request that I would communicate with the President on the subject-matter of our conversation. I remarked that there were certain suggestions, which delicacy forbade me to mention, unsolicited, but that there was an apprehension that the radicals were strengthening themselves by the non-action, or limited actions of the Executive, and by conceding to members of Congress almost all opportunities for [placing] their radical friends.
The President said it was exceedingly annoying and discouraging to witness so good a man as Doolittle desponding, and especially on the subject of removals and appointments, when Doolittle himself was not prepared to take or recommend action even in his own state. It was true that his Cabinet was not in all respects what he wished; but he had taken it as he found it. Harlan, to be sure, came in later, but it was understood he sought and desired the position, although he had since obtained an election to the Senate. He supposed Harlan was not in accord with the policy of the administration, and delicacy and propriety would seem to prompt him to resign. But he had, as yet, shown no disposition to give up his place.

[Attorney-General] Speed, he said, certainly added no strength to the administration, was manifestly in harmony with the radicals, advising with and encouraging them. Delicacy should cause him, feeling as he did, to retire, but he had made no advance in that direction, nor would he, probably, uninvited.

Stanton, he remarked, was claimed by the radicals to be in their interest, and probably such was the fact, yet he had given him no intimation of that character, except in some general criticism on one or two measures in which he finally yielded and acquiesced. His department had been an absorbing one during the war and still was formidable. To have an open rupture with him in the present condition of affairs would be embarrassing certainly, yet Stanton held on. The delicacies and proprieties which should govern the relations supposed to exist between a President and his cabinet associates, his political family as it were, would indicate to men of proper sensibility the course which they should pursue, if they did not agree with the person whom they were expected to advise in the administration of affairs.

If these three men did not approve his general policy, the President said they had not, as [far as] he was aware, disapproved of it. Statements were made in some of the radical papers that the persons named were opposed to the administration of which they were a part. Rumors to that effect had come to him in such a way and from such sources that he was not at liberty to doubt it. “ I do not, however, know the fact. What, then, can I do? Are these men to whom I give my confidence hypocrites, faithless, insincere, treacherous? The time has not arrived for a decisive stand. With mischievous radical leaders, who appear to have little regard for the country, it is not a proper time to take upon ourselves other quarrels nearer.”

The President said he had borne, as well as he could, the malicious war which had been waged upon him for doing his duty — administering the government for the whole country, not for a faction. If the schemes of the radical managers to control the Executive had sometimes annoyed him, they had not caused him to deviate from what he was satisfied was right and for the best interest of the country. But it did grieve and wound him to witness such men as Doolittle desponding and giving way. Cowman, an intelligent, sensible and good senator, he said, was also complaining, and it was hard to be under the necessity of holding these men up, when compelled to encounter the whole opposition. Their discouragement afflicted him more than all that the radicals had done or would do.

Only a day or two since, Cowan had, with others, pressed earnestly for some changes in Pennsylvania, which they said ought by all means to be made, and on their representations he had finally agreed to make some changes. “But just as they were being ordered, Cowan began to show doubt, asked a suspension, and finally backed down and would consent to but two of the changes he had urged. These men take on themselves no responsibility while goading me on to move, when I am breasting this storm.” This he said he was ready to do. It was a duty and he could meet it, but it pained him to have good and true friends waver.

At the proper time he should be ready to act, but his friends must permit him to judge when to act. It would be pleasanter to him to have more cordiality, a more free intercourse of opinion, more unity and earnestness on the part of all his Cabinet, for there was obvious distrust among them — distrust of each other — and that on topics where the administration was most interested.

I have given the substance and, so far as I can recall, the words. There was much desultory conversation intermixed.

Wednesday , April 25, 1866.
Major-General Benjamin F. Butler is exercising a great and dangerous influence at the Treasury Department. He has been employed in some cases and is using his opportunities to press others where he is employed as counsel. As he has talents but no principles, is avaricious and unscrupulous, I have given our friends McCulloch and Chandler at the Treasury an occasional admonition concerning him.
In 1863 the Grey Jacket, a steamer laden with cotton, was captured by the Kennebec on the way from Mobile to Cuba. The cargo and vessel were valued at about half a million of dollars, and were condemned on the showing of the captain and owners. An appeal was taken. But the case was so flagrant that there was no avoiding condemnation. The owners had employed various counsel, first Nott and others of New Orleans, then Seward and Blatchford of New York, but all have on hearing the facts abandoned the case. About the first of last December it was put in the hands of General Butler, who commenced a series of intrigues and manœuvres, and from his persistence and unscrupulousness had evidently a large contingent fee. (I have heard it stated at $125,000.) But he found no favor at the Navy Department. His last appeal with me was a half threat to go to Congress and make an appeal to their sympathies for a man who had lost his all by this capture and condemnation. I replied that my appeal for sympathy in behalf of the sailors who had noblydone their duty in sunshine and storm, in winter and summer, day and night, would probably be as effective as his. He then changed, proposed that the captors should take one-half and the claimant the other, surrendering by this arrangement the moiety which should go to the naval pension fund. I told him that was impossible. The Secretary of the Navy could make no such arrangement; moreover he was the trustee of that fund and held it sacred.
One other futile attempt was made in company with the Attorncy-General, whom he persuaded to come with him; but after a brief talk Speed appeared to think he had been imposed upon and abandoned the case.
Failing at these points, Butler commenced intriguing at the Treasury, where he was listened to by Chandler, and finallyCaleb Cushing was employed at Chandler’s suggestion to give a written opinion, General Butler being the prompter. Cushing was timid, hesitated to present his opinion unsustained, and Gen. Butler drew up a preamble and resolution which he procured Thad Stevens to present and procured to be passed under the previous question, without debate, to the effect that cases of this description should be suspended until the judgment of the Supreme Court should be obtained next winter. There are one or two clauses in certain acts which Chase procured to be inserted when he was striving to absorb the whole government in the Treasury Department, having the Presidency in view. These clauses Butler and Cushing made the foundation of their proceeding. Stevens’s resolution was passed on the 9th and Cushing’s opinion is dated on the 11th.
The whole thing is disgraceful even to a lobby agent, and discreditable to the Treasury Department, which has, so far as the Secretary is concerned, unwittingly lent itself to Butler — how far the Assistant Secretary is involved is uncertain. There are some dark intimations. Great derangement in order to get a great fee has been effected.

(To be continued.)