John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[184] shared the conviction that his appointment marked a new epoch for the Union, and would not be popular with the Confederates. No man ever entered upon the duties of his high office under more favorable auspices — in all the loyal States there was no dissent — the claim that it was a concession to the border States was unfounded. The simple truth is that he was appointed in the interest of no section or preconceived policy, and with no reference to his views on slavery, but solely for “the unqualified and uncompromising vindication of the authority and integrity of the Union.” It was confidently predicted that he would “walk straight on in the path of duty,” with “remarkable energy and vigor,” free from dictation “from the General-in-Chief,” that he would adopt “no hasty and ill-advised plans” for assuming the offensive, nor become “a harsh critic or lordly superior” to the commanders in the field. Special attention was called to “the treason which skulks and plots within our lines” --among the clerks and officers of the various departments, and especially in the patrician houses and social circles of both Washington and Baltimore, and among the clergy and people throughout the district east of Chesapeake Bay. While the nation might bear with the social and ecclesiastical exhibitions of disloyalty and spite which were of daily occurrence, it could no longer permit the open and clandestine communications with the enemy which had made known the government's most secret plans for the last year almost as soon as they had been formed. The article denounced such disloyal practices in unmeasured terms, and pointed out that it was specially the business of the new secretary to put a stop to such “flagrant treachery,” urged him to watch the officers who expressed their apprehensions that “the war for the Union was about to be perverted into a war upon slavery,” and to ferret out and arrest “the correspondents and counsellors of the rebel generals across the Potomac.”