Soon after President Lincoln had formed the resolution to attempt the relief of Sumter, and whilst it was yet a secret, a young man connected with the telegraph office in Washington, with whom I was acquainted, a native of the same town with myself, brought to me successively two telegrams conveying to the rebel authorities information of the purposes and decisions of the Administration. One of these telegrams was from Mr. Harvey, a newspaper correspondent, who was soon after, and with a full knowledge of his having communicated to the rebels the movements of the Government, appointed Minister to Lisbon. I had, on receiving these copies, handed them to the President. Mr. Blair, who had also obtained a copy of one, perhaps both, of these telegrams from another source, likewise informed him of the treachery. The subject was once or twice alluded to in Cabinet without eliciting any action, and when the nomination of Mr. Harvey to the Portuguese Mission was announced--a nomination made without the knowledge of any member of the Cabinet but the Secretary of State and made at his special request--there was general disapprobation except by the President (who avoided the expression of any opinion) and by Mr. Seward. The latter defended and justified the selection, which he admitted was recommended by himself, but the President was silent in regard to it.[51] Trumbull says in his letter that Lincoln and Seward told the committee that they did not know that Harvey had sent the dispatch before he received the appointment. Welles says that both of them knew it beforehand, and that it was a matter of Cabinet discussion in which Lincoln, however, took no part. How are we to explain this contradiction? It was impossible for Lincoln to utter an untruth, but if we may credit Gideon Welles, _passim_, it was not impossible for Seward to do so and for Lincoln to remain silent while he did so, as he remained silent while the Cabinet were discussing the appointment of Harvey. If Seward, at the meeting of which Trumbull wrote, in this private letter to his wife, took the lead in the conversation, as was his habit, and said that there was no knowledge of Harvey's telegram to Governor Pickens until after Harvey had been appointed as minister, and Lincoln said nothing to the contrary, he would naturally have assumed that Seward spoke for both. There is reason to believe that Seward had previously prevailed upon the President to agree to surrender Fort Sumter, as a means of preventing the secession of Virginia. Evidence of this fact is supplied by the following entry in the diary of John Hay, under date October 22, 1861: