April 12, Tuesday. To-day have a letter from Admiral Lee respecting the exportation of French tobacco from Richmond. This is an arrangement of Mr. Seward to which I have always objected, but to which the President was persuaded to yield his assent some months ago. The subject has lingered until now. Admiral Lee says the French naval vessels and transports are at the Roads and about to proceed up the James River, and inquires if he shall keep an account of their export.
I took the dispatch to the Cabinet-meeting to ascertain from Mr. Seward what his arrangements were, but he was not present. When the little business on hand was disposed of, I introduced the subject to the President, who told me he had seen the dispatch to me and also one to Mr. Stanton from General Butler. He saw them both at the telegraph office, and after he got home he had sent for Fred Seward and Mr. Stanton. They appear neither of them to think the subject of much consequence, but after Stanton had returned to the War Department and read Butler’s dispatch, he sent the President word that Mr. Seward ought to give the subject attention. The President had therefore told Fred Seward to telegraph his father, who is in New York, to return.
It is curious that the President, who saw Admiral Lee’s dispatch to me, should have consulted the Secretary of War and Assistant Secretary of State without advising me, or consulting me on the subject. He was annoyed, I saw, when I introduced the topic. The reason for all this I well understood. He knew full well my opposition to this whole proceeding, which I had fought off two or three times, until he finally gave in to Seward. When, therefore, some of the difficulties which I had suggested began to arise, the President preferred not to see me. It will not surprise me if this is but the beginning of the trouble we shall experience.
At the Cabinet-meeting, Chase, after presenting his weekly exhibit, showing our national debt to be over sixteen hundred millions, said he should have to request the Navy Department and also that of the Interior to make no farther calls on the Treasury for coin. I told him he must provide for foreign bills which stood different from any others, and if he had paid the Interior or any other Department than the State and Navy, which had foreign bills, and possibly the War Department some foreign purchases, I thought it not right; that I had experienced great difficulty in making California payments, but had met them, because I supposed all domestic bills were treated alike.
Chase did not meet the point squarely, but talked on other subjects, and answered some questions of the President’s about the daily custom receipts, and explained the operations of his gold dollar certificates, etc. I brought him back to the Navy matter by asking him how our paymasters and agents were to draw abroad, — by what standard of value. He said the legal-tender standard. “What is that standard,” I inquired, “in Nassau, in Rio, in China, or London?”
He made me no other answer than that he was anxious to reduce the price of gold, and that something must be done to effect it. Talked of taxing bank circulation and driving it out of existence. I told him that might be a step in the right direction, perhaps, provided he did not increase his paper issues, but that if he issued irredeemable Treasury paper instead to an unlimited amount, there would be no relief; that by reducing the amount of paper and making it payable in specie on demand he would bring his legal tenders and gold nearer to equality. The President remarked that something must be done towards taxing the bank paper; said he did not fully comprehend the financial questions in all their bearings; made some sensible inquiries of Mr. Chase concerning his issues, which were bought for custom-house purposes.
Mr. Usher made some inquiries and suggestions about bringing down the price of gold and compelling banks and others to disgorge that were worthy an old Whig of thirty years gone by. His ideas were crude, absurd, and ridiculous. He evidently has never given the subject attention.
Mr. Grimes and Mr. Hale had a round in the Senate yesterday. The former had the best of the debate, but still did not do himself, the Department, and the service full justice.
