Uneventful Cabinet Meeting

April 17, 1863

Little news from military fronts, so the regular cabinet meeting at the White House has little to discuss. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles complains in his diary that “little was before the Cabinet, which of late can hardly be called a council. Each Department conducts and manages its own affairs, informing the President to the extent it pleases.” He directs particular disapproval toward Secretary of State William H. Seward, who “encourages this state of things. He has less active duties than others, and watches and waits on the President daily, and gathers from him the doings of his associates and often influences indirectly and not always advantageously their measures and movements, while he communicates very little, especially of that which he does not wish them to know.”