He directed Seward to
telegraph immediately cancelling the order detaching the
Powhatan. Seward made a desperate attempt to put him off,
protesting, it was too late to send a telegram that night. "But
the President was imperative," writes Secretary Welles, in
describing the incident, and a dispatch was sent.
Seward then, doubtless in his agitation, did a strange thing.
Instead of telegraphing in the President's name, the dispatch
which he sent read merely, "Give up the Powhatan...Seward." When
this dispatch was received at Brooklyn, the Powhatan was already
under way and had to be overtaken by a fast tug. In the eyes of
her commander, however, a personal telegram from the Secretary of
State appeared as of no weight against the official orders of the
President, and he continued his voyage to Pensacola.
The mercurial temper of Seward comes out even in the caustic
narrative written afterwards by Welles. Evidently Seward was
deeply mortified and depressed by the incident. He remarked,
says Welles, that old as he was he had learned a lesson, and that
was that he had better attend to his own business. "To this,"
commented his enemy, "I cordially assented."
Nevertheless Seward's loss of faith in himself was only
momentary. A night's sleep was sufficient to restore it.
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