There were thirty-five states, including those in rebellion, and two territories about to become states. Presumably the affirmative votes of twenty-eight states would be required for ratification. In this speech Trumbull gave public expression to his feelings regarding the feeble prosecution of the war to which he had given private expression in the letters to friends referred to in the preceding chapter. He said: I trust that within a year, in less time than it will take to make this constitutional amendment effective, our armies will have put to flight the rebel armies. I think it ought to have been done long ago. Hundreds of millions of treasure and a hundred thousand lives would have been saved had the power of this republic been concentrated under one mind and hurled in masses upon the main rebel armies. This is what our patriotic soldiers have wanted and what I trust is now soon to be done. But instead of looking back and mourning over the errors of the past, let us remember them only for the lessons they teach for the future. Forgetting the things which are past, let us press forward to the accomplishment of what is before. We have at last placed at the head of our armies a man in whom the country has confidence, a man who has won victories wherever he has been, and I trust that his mind is to be permitted, uninterfered with, to unite our forces, never before so formidable as to-day, in one or two grand armies, and hurl them upon the rebel force.[71] The feeling here expressed by Trumbull was the prevailing sentiment at Washington at that time, even in President Lincoln's Cabinet. Both Gideon Welles and Edward Bates shared it. Welles wrote: In this whole summer's campaign I have been unable to see or hear or obtain evidence of power or will or talent or originality on the part of General Halleck. He has suggested nothing, decided nothing, done nothing but scold and smoke and scratch his elbows. Is it possible that the energies of a nation should be wasted by the incapacity of such a man? When Welles said to the President that he had observed the "inertness if not incapacity of the General-in-Chief, and had hoped that he [the President] who had better and more correct views would issue peremptory orders," Lincoln replied that it was better that he, who was not a military man, should defer to Halleck, rather than Halleck to him. Additional light is thrown by an entry in Hay's "Diaries"[72] under date April 28, 1864, where Lincoln says: