I went up in the evening boat, and found General Wool’s aide-de-camp, Captain Arnold, of the army, on the wharf, with a letter in his hand, which he said was for me.  I asked for it, but he said he knew its importance, and preferred we should go to General Wool’s room together, and the general could hand it to me in person.  We did go right up to General Wool’s, who took the sealed parcel and laid it aside, saying that it was literally a copy of one he had sent to Governor Johnson, who would doubtless give me a copy; but I insisted that I had made a written communication, and was entitled to a written answer.

At that moment several gentlemen of the “Conciliation party,” who had come up in the same steamer with me, asked for admission and came in.  I recall the names of Crockett, Foote, Bailey Peyton, Judge Thornton, Donohue, etc., and the conversation became general, Wool trying to explain away the effect of our misunderstanding, taking good pains not to deny his promise made to me personally on the wharf.  I renewed my application for the letter addressed to me, then lying on his table.  On my statement of the case, Bailey Peyton said, “General Wool, I think General Sherman has a right to a written answer from you, for he is surely compromised.”  Upon this Wool handed me the letter.  I opened and read it, and it denied any promise of arms, but otherwise was extremely evasive and non-committal.  I had heard of the arrival at the wharf of the Governor and party, and was expecting them at Wool’s room, but, instead of stopping at the hotel where we were, they passed to another hotel on the block above.  I went up and found there, in a room on the second floor over the bar-room, Governor Johnson, Chief-Justice Terry, Jones, of Palmer, Cooke & Co., E. D. Baker, Volney E. Howard, and one or two others.  All were talking furiously against Wool, denouncing him as a d—–­d liar, and not sparing the severest terms.  I showed the Governor General Wool’s letter to me, which he said was in effect the same as the one addressed to and received by him at Sacramento.  He was so offended that he would not even call on General Wool, and said he would never again recognize him as an officer or gentleman.  We discussed matters generally, and Judge Terry said that the Vigilance Committee were a set of d—–­d pork-merchants; that they were getting scared, and that General Wool was in collusion with them to bring the State into contempt, etc.  I explained that there were no arms in the State except what General Wool had, or what were in the hands of the Vigilance Committee of San Francisco, and that the part of wisdom for us was to be patient and cautious.  About that time Crockett and his associates sent up their cards, but Terry and the more violent of the Governor’s followers denounced them as no better than “Vigilantes,” and wanted the Governor to refuse even to receive them.  I explained that they were not “Vigilantes,” that Judge Thornton was a “Law-and-Order”