10. Colonel Hobart, Twenty-first Wisconsin, and Colonel Hays, Tenth Kentucky, have been added to the Board--the former at my request.
11. To-day I dined with a Wisconsin friend of Colonel Hobart's; had a good dinner, Scotch ale and champagne, and a very agreeable time. Colonel Hegg, the dispenser of hospitalities, is a Norwegian by birth, a Republican, a gentleman who has held important public positions in Wisconsin, and who stands well with the people. In the course of the table talk I learned something of the history of my friend Hobart. He is an old wheel-horse of the Democratic party of his State; was a candidate for governor a few years ago, and held joint debates with Randall and Carl Schurz. He is the father of the Homestead Law, which has been adopted by so many States, and was for many years the leader of the House of Representatives of Wisconsin. All this I gathered from Colonel Hegg, for Hobart seldom, if ever, talks about himself. I imagine that even the most polished orator would obtain but little, if any, advantage over Hobart in a discussion before the people. He has the imagination, the information, and the oratorical fury in discussion which are likely to captivate the masses. He was at one time opposed to arming the negroes; but now that he is satisfied they will fight, he is in favor of using them.
To-night Colonels Hays and Hobart held quite an interesting debate on the policy of arming colored men, and emancipating those belonging to rebels. Hays, who, by the way, is an honest man and a gallant soldier, presented the Kentucky view of the matter, and his arguments, evidently very weak, were thoroughly demolished by Hobart. I think Colonel Hays felt, as the controversy progressed, that his position was untenable, and that his hostility to the President's proclamation sprang from the prejudice in which he had been educated, rather than from reason and justice.
12. Old Tom, known in camp as the veracious nigger, because of a "turkle" story which he tells, is just coming along as I wait a moment for the breakfast bell. The "turkle," which Tom caught in some creek in Alabama, had two hundred and fifty eggs in "him." "Yas, sah, two hunder an' fifty."
Tom has peculiar notions about certain matters, and they are not, by any means, complimentary to the white man. He says: "It jus' 'pears to me dat Adam was a black man, sah, an' de Lord he scar him till he got white, cos he was a sinner, sah."