Gideon Welles (July 1, 1802
– February 11, 1878) was the United States
Secretary of the Navy
from 1861 to 1869. His buildup of the
Navy to successfully execute
blockades of Southern ports was a key component of
Northern victory of the
Civil
War. Welles was also instrumental in the Navy's creation of the
Medal of Honor.
Biography
Gideon
Welles, the son of Samuel Welles and Ann Hale, was born on July 1,
1802 in Glastonbury,
Connecticut
.His father was a shipping merchant and
fervent Jeffersonian; he was a member of the Convention which
formed the first state
Connecticut Constitution in 1818
that abolished the colonial charter and officially severed the
political ties to England. The constitution is also notable for
having reversed the earlier Orders and provided for freedom of
religion.
He was a direct descendant of Gov.
Thomas
Welles, the Fourth Colonial Governor of Connecticut and the
transcriber of the
Fundamental
Orders.
He married on June 16, 1835, at Lewiston, Mifflin County,
Pennsylvania, Mary Jane Hale, who was born on June 18, 1817 in
Glastonbury, Connecticut the daughter of Elias Hale and Jane
Mullhallan. Her father, Elias, graduated from
Yale College in 1794, and was a lawyer. She
died on February 28, 1886 in Hartford, Connecticut and was buired
next to her husband in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford,
Connecticut. Gideon and Mary Jane were the parents of six
children.
He was educated at the
Episcopal
Academy at Cheshire, Connecticut, and earned a degree at the
American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy at Norwich, Vt.
(later
Norwich University). He
became a
lawyer through the then-common
practice of reading the law, but soon shifted to
journalism and became the founder and editor of
the
Hartford Times in 1826.
After successfully gaining admission, from 1827-1835, he
participated in the
Connecticut House of
Representatives as a Democrat.
Following his service in the Connecticut General Assembly,
he served in various posts, including State Controller of Public
Accounts in 1835, Postmaster of Hartford
(1836-41), and Chief of the Bureau of Provisions and
Clothing for the Navy (1846-49).
Welles was a Jacksonian Democrat, who worked very closely with
Martin Van Buren and
John Milton Niles. His chief rival in the
Connecticut Democratic Party was
Isaac
Toucey, whom Welles would later replace at the Navy Department.
While Welles dutifully supported
James
K. Polk in the 1844 election, he
would abandon the Democrats in 1848 to support Van Buren's Freesoil
campaign.
Mainly because of his strong
anti-slavery views, Welles shifted allegiance
in 1854 to the newly-established
Republican Party, and founded
a newspaper in 1856 (the
Hartford Evening Press) that
would espouse Republican ideals for decades thereafter. Welles'
strong support of
Abraham Lincoln in
1860 made him the logical candidate from New England for Lincoln's
cabinet, and in March 1861 Lincoln named Welles his
Secretary of the
Navy.
Tenure in Lincoln's Cabinet
Welles found the
Naval Department in
disarray, with Southern officers resigning en masse. His first
major action was to dispatch the Navy's most powerful warship, the
USS Powhatan, to
relieve Fort Sumter.
Unfortunately, Lincoln had simultaneously
ordered the Powhatan to both Fort Sumter
and Pensacola, Florida, ruining whatever chance
Major Robert Anderson had of
withstanding the assault. Several weeks later, when
William H. Seward argued for a blockade of Southern
ports, Welles argued vociferously against the action but was
eventually overruled by Lincoln. Despite his misgivings, Welles'
efforts to rebuild the Navy and implement the blockade proved
extraordinarily effective. From 76 ships and 7600 sailors in 1861,
by 1865 the Navy expanded almost tenfold. His implementation of the
Naval portion of the
Anaconda Plan
strongly weakened the Confederacy's ability to finance the war
through limiting the cotton trade, and while never completely
effective in sealing off all 3,500 miles of Southern coastline it
was a major contribution towards Northern victory. Lincoln
nicknamed Welles his "
Neptune".
Despite his successes, Welles was never at ease in the
United States Cabinet. His
anti-English sentiments caused him to clash with
William H. Seward,
Secretary of State, and Welles's
conservative stances led to arguments with
Salmon P. Chase and
Edwin
M. Stanton, the Secretaries of
the Treasury
and of
War,
respectively.
Tenure in Johnson's Cabinet
After Lincoln's assassination Welles was retained by President
Andrew Johnson as
Secretary of the Navy. In 1866,
Welles, along with Seward, was instrumental in launching the
National Union Party as a third party alternative supportive of
Johnson's reconciliation policies. Welles also played a prominent
part in Johnson's ill-fated "Swing Around the Circle" campaign that
fall. Although Welles admitted in his diary that he was dismayed by
Johnson's behavior on the trip, particularly the president's
penchant for invective and engaging directly with hecklers, Welles
remained loyal to Johnson to the end, even congratulating him in
1875 when Johnson, now an ex-president, was launching a comeback
political bid with his election to the U.S. Senate from
Tennessee.
Welles ultimately left the Cabinet on March 3, 1869, having
returned to the
Democratic Party after
disagreeing with
Andrew Johnson's
reconstruction policies but supporting him during his impeachment
trial.
Later Life and Death
After leaving politics, Welles returned to Connecticut and to
writing, editing his journals and authoring several books before
his death, including a biography,
Lincoln and Seward, published in
1874. Towards the end of 1877, his health began to wane. A
streptococcal infection of the throat killed Gideon Welles at the
age of seventy-five on February 12, 1878.
His body was interred
at Cedar Hill Cemetery in
Hartford,
Connecticut.
The Diary of Gideon Welles
Welles' three-volume diary, documenting his Cabinet service from
1861-1869, is an invaluable archive for Civil War scholars and
students of Lincoln alike, allowing readers rare insight into the
complex struggles, machinations and inter-relational strife within
the President's War Cabinet. Although offering a unique and quite
non pareil portrayal of the immense personalities and problems
facing the men who led the Union to ultimate victory, the first
edition (published in 1911) suffers from rewrites by Welles himself
and after his death, by his son; the 1960 edition is drawn directly
from his original manuscript. The 1911 version of his diary may be
found on Google Books:
Vol. I (1861-March 30, 1864),
Vol. II (April 1, 1864-Dec. 31, 1866),
Vol. III (Jan. 1, 1866-June 6, 1869).
Posthumous Dedications
Two ships have been named
USS
Welles in his honor.
The Dining Commons at Cheshire Academy and the Gideon Welles
School in Glastonbury, Connecticut are also named after him.
References
- Boulard, Garry "The Swing Around the Circle--Andrew Johnson and
the Train Ride that Destroyed a Presidency" (iUniverse, 2008)
-
http://books.google.com/books?id=BFFPAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=samuel+welles+and+mary+hale&source=bl&ots=Nb5z-XJjCc&sig=7cokLHT-mVBGmLf_ScsF0dMRWNc&hl=en&ei=1-j4SZy-F-mClAex_oG_AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2#PPA113,M1
-
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B04E1DE1E38E033A25757C0A9659C94679FD7CF
- http://www.courant.com/media/acrobat/2009-04/46517497.pdf
-
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?faid/faid:@field(DOCID+ms003053)#Biographical%20Note
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