Gideon Welles

Gideon Welles, the son of Samuel Welles and Ann Hale,^[1] was born on July 1, 1802, in Glastonbury, Connecticut.^[2] His father was a shipping merchant and fervent Jeffersonian;^[3] 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 pre-American Revolution political ties to England. In contrast to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the successor constitution of 1818 provided for freedom of religion. He was a member of the seventh generation of his family in America. His original immigrant ancestor was Thomas Welles,^[4][5] who arrived in 1635 and was the only man in Connecticut's history to hold all four top offices: governor, deputy governor, treasurer, and secretary. He was also the transcriber of the Fundamental Orders. Welles was the second great-grandson of Capt. Samuel Welles and Ruth (Rice) Welles, the daughter of Edmund Rice, a 1638 immigrant to Sudbury and founder of Marlborough, Massachusetts.^[6]

He married on June 16, 1835, at Lewiston, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, Mary Jane Hale,^[7] who was born on June 18, 1817, in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the daughter of Elias White Hale and Jane Mullhallan. Her father, Elias, graduated from Yale College in 1794 and practiced law in Mifflin and Centre Counties, Pennsylvania.^[8] She died on February 28, 1886, in Hartford, Connecticut, and was buried next to her husband in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford. 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).^[2] 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 to 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).^[9]

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 Free Soil campaign.^[10]

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. He was the Republican nominee for governor in the 1856 Connecticut gubernatorial election, coming in third behind William T. Minor and Samuel Ingham.

 

 

Welles' strong support of Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election made him the logical candidate from New England for Lincoln's cabinet. In March 1861, Lincoln named Welles his Secretary of the Navy.

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 on Lincoln's instructions. Unfortunately, Secretary of State Seward had just ordered the Powhatan to Fort Pickens, Florida on his own authority, ruining whatever chance Major Robert Anderson had of withstanding the assault. Several weeks later, when 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 7,600 sailors in 1861, the Navy expanded almost tenfold by 1865. His implementation of the Naval portion of the Anaconda Plan strongly weakened the Confederacy's ability to finance the war by 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."^[11]

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 autumn.^{[citation needed]} 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, and supported him during his impeachment.^[12] On April 17 and 18, 1868, Welles testified in the impeachment trial of Johnson, having been called as a witness by Johnson's defense team.^[13] His son Edgar also testified that day.^[14]

 

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.^[2]

He was a Third Class Companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. While the Loyal Legion did consist predominantly of Union officers who had served in the American Civil War the Order's constitution provided for honorary members (i.e. Third Class Companions) who were civilians who had made significant contributions to the war effort. Welles was also instrumental in the Navy's creation of the Medal of Honor.^[15]

Towards the end of 1877, his health began to wane. Welles died from a streptococcal throat infection, at the age of seventy-five, on February 12, 1878.^[2] His body was interred at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford, Connecticut.

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.^[16][17] In the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, Welles Park was dedicated in his honor in 1910,^[18] and an adjacent restaurant, opened in 2014, was also named after Gideon Welles.^[19]

He was not an ancestor of Orson Welles as the actor had claimed on The Dick Cavett Show. ^[20]

• Bibliography of early American naval history

• Boulard, Garry "The Swing Around the Circle—Andrew Johnson and the Train Ride that Destroyed a Presidency" (iUniverse, 2008)
• Earle, Jonathan Halperin (2004). Jacksonian antislavery and the politics of free soil, 1824-1854. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-2888-5. OCLC 1098629620. Archived from the original on August 19, 2016. Retrieved July 7, 2016.
• Hale, Oscar Fitzalan (1909). Ancestry and descendants of Josiah Hale : fifth in descent from Samuel Hale of Hartford, Conn., 1637. Rutland, VT: Tuttle. OCLC 608535741.
• Niven, John (1973). Gideon Welles; Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195016932. OCLC 797990.
• Norton, Frederick Calvin (1905). The governors of Connecticut : biographies of the chief executives of the commonwealth that gave to the world the first written constitution known to history. OCLC 958732197.
• Siemiatkoski, Donna Holt. The Descendants of Governor Thomas Welles of Connecticut, 1590–1658, and His Wife, Alice Tomes Baltimore: Publisher, Gateway Press, 1990.
• Winters, John (1963). The Civil War in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-0834-5. OCLC 1391726.

• Welles, Gideon (1911). Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson. Vol. I. Boston; New York : Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Welles, Gideon (1911). Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson. Vol. II. Boston; New York : Houghton Mifflin Company.
• Welles, Gideon (1911). Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson. Vol. III. Boston; New York : Houghton Mifflin Company.

 

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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Welles, Gideon".

• Lincoln and Seward: by Gideon Welles, New York: Publisher, Sheldon and Company, 1874.
• Mr. Lincoln's White House: Gideon Welles
• Gideon Welles Archived August 22, 2007, at the Wayback Machine at the Naval Historical Center
• Welles Family Association, Inc.
• Biographical sketch of Thomas Welles Connecticut State Library
• Lost Letters of Gideon Welles
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Welles family papers, 1712-1871