May 9, Monday. We had yesterday great feelings, deep interest, but little news, —little in the way of detail, though great in importance. Nothing came from General Grant, who is no braggart and does not mean to have tidings precipitated in advance. A dispatch from General Ingalls to Quartermaster-General Meigs calls for forage, which indicates an onward movement. Other incidental information is to the same effect. At least this is my inference and others’ also.
To-day’s news confirms the impression, yet we have nothing specific. All our conclusions, however, are one way, and there can be no doubt the Rebels have fallen back and our forces have advanced.
Mr. Heap, clerk to Rear-Admiral Porter, arrived yesterday from Alexandria on the Red River. He brings a deplorable account of affairs in a confidential dispatch from Admiral Porter and more fully detailed by himself. The misfortunes are attributed entirely and exclusively to the incapacity of General Banks. Neither Admiral Porter nor Mr. Heap admit any mitigating circumstances, but impute to his imbecility the loss of the expedition and the probable sacrifice of the fleet and the army. They accuse him of equivocating, of electioneering, of speculating in cotton and general malfeasance and mismanagement.
I took Heap with me to the President and had him tell his own story. It was less full and denunciatory than to me, but it seemed to convince the President, who I have thought was over-partial to Banks, and I have thought that Seward contributed to that feeling. The President, after hearing Heap, said he had rather cousined up to Banks, but for some time past had begun to think he was erring in so doing. He repeated two verses from Moore, commencing
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“Oh, ever thus, from childhood’s hour,
I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay,” etc.
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It would not do to retain him in military command at such obvious sacrifice of the public interest.
I am not one of the admirers of Banks. He has a certain degree of offhand smartness, very good elocution and command of language, with perfect self-possession, but is not profound. He is a pretender, not a statesman, a politician of a certain description; has great ambition but little fixed principle. It was Seward’s doings that sent him to New Orleans.
Who got up the Red River expedition I know not, otherwise than by Admiral Porter, who writes me he has seen the orders from Halleck. I know that I called on Stanton in company with Seward last summer with a view of getting up an expedition to capture Mobile; that Stanton sent for General Halleck; that the latter, when he came, was not prepared to adopt our views, wanted to hear from General Banks, was thinking of operations west of the Mississippi, etc. Seward surrendered without a word of remonstrance. Halleck was to let us know as soon as he heard from Banks, and I have never had a word from him since.
