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Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,944

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This is the grave of Gideon Welles.

Born in 1802 in Glastonbury, Connecticut, Welles grew up in a wealthy Jeffersonian family. His father was a shipping merchant. He went to some fancy schools and then Norwich University for college, which is a military academy in Vermont that is still around today and is where ROTC was invented. He read for the law and passed the bar and then went into journalism. He edited the Hartford Times, the anti-Federalist newspaper in that city that would remain around into the 1970s. He was a strong Jacksonian as the Democratic Party developed. He won a seat in the Connecticut legislature in 1827 and was there until 1835. For years after that, he was basically a Democratic Party insider who was close to Martin Van Buren. As such he got sweet patronage posts, including Postmaster of Hartford, where he was from 1836-41 and then was Chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing for the Navy from 1841-46. And if that’s not a total patronage post title, I don’t know what is.

But Welles’ relationship with the Democratic Party became increasingly strained in the 1840s as the party moved whole-heartedly into supporting slavery. The Second Party System was founded on the principle of never discussing slavery and that’s how people such as Welles liked it. But that was never tenable for long and as Democrats went all-in under James K. Polk and his war to steal half of Mexico to expand slavery, Welles began to balk. He followed his buddy Van Buren into the doomed Free Soil Party of 1848, which for both men was much more about outrage over what had happened to the Democrats than a true commitment to the ideals of free soil.

But like a lot of disaffected Democrats, his disgust moved into more strong anti-slavery views than most of the Whigs who formed the new Republican Party in 1854. Furious at what the Democrats had become, he started the Hartford Evening Press that became the major mouthpiece in Connecticut for Republican policy and would remain so for the rest of the century. He was a major supporter of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. That meant he came under consideration for a major position. Now, Welles was a complete insider. He had no electoral experience or policy experience, not really. He was a man of the newspapers and, earlier, of patronage posts. But putting together a 19th Cabinet was not an easy task. Everyone wanted a piece, if not for themselves than for their guys. Also, the different regions of the country demanded someone representing them. The thing about the early Republican Party is that it was largely a party of New York and the Midwest, not so much New England, at least when it came to major players. Sure, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was VP, but that was such a minor position in terms of policy. So New Englanders wanted to make sure that one of their own got into a major position. That led to Welles being named Secretary of the Navy. At the very least, he had that long ago patronage position around supplying the Navy, which I guess gave him some vague knowledge of what needed to be done in the department.

This way of dividing up a Cabinet could be disastrous–Simon Cameron provided the necessary patronage to Pennsylvania as Lincoln’s first Secretary of War but was also massively corrupt. But Welles was actually pretty good at the job. It wasn’t easy. William Seward saw himself as basically running everything and would give orders that intervened on Welles’ department. For example, when Lincoln decided to relieve Major Robert Anderson and the troops at Fort Sumter, Welles ordered the Powhatan, the top warship of the time, to do that. Except–whoops!–Seward had already ordered it to go to Fort Pickens in Florida without telling anyone. This was indicative of the problems of the early Lincoln Cabinet, which would never totally go away. That doesn’t mean Welles was always right. He was skeptical of Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan to blockade southern ports and squeeze them into submission by taking control of all the water. Seward and he argued over this in front of Lincoln. The president fell on the side of Seward and Scott and that was of course the correct decision.

Still, Welles was good at his job. He and Lincoln remained close through the war. And since Welles’ ego was less problematic than Seward or Salmon Chase, they had an easier relationship. Whatever Welles might have thought of the Anaconda Plan at first, he was quite effective at implementing in. Lincoln would call him “my Neptune.” In fact, Welles probably had less personal ambition than any other member of Lincoln’s Cabinet. Welles simply prosecuted the war to the best of his ability. That included investing in ironclads and moving forward with building a lot of ships fast. He was smart at promotions within the Navy as well.

Unfortunately, Welles was also one of the Lincoln folks who became pretty sympathetic with the South after the war. Seward was in the same boat here. They stayed with Andrew Johnson and wanted to found a third party to support Johnson’s policies around national reconciliation, which meant not caring about Black people. Welles did not exactly like Johnson. He felt the president’s personal behavior was awful. But this is like “respectable” Republicans worrying about Trump’s personal behavior in private today but not actually caring about it enough to do anything about it. And in any case, Welles happily testified in favor of Johnson during the president’s impeachment trial. So this is all a big downer on Welles’ legacy, as it is with Seward’s.

To say the least, Welles had burned his bridges with Republicans after defending Johnson and there would be no place for him after 1868. So he returned to Connecticut, promoted his own legacy, and wrote a biography of Lincoln’s relationship with Seward. He did work with the Navy to create the Medal of Honor. Under Trump, only the finest Americans get this award. His health also began to fail in the mid 1870s. He died in 1878 of strep throat and other things. He was 75 years old.

Gideon Welles is buried in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Hartford, Connecticut.

If you would like this series to visit other Secretaries of the Navy, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Adolph Borie is in Philadelphia and George Robeson is in Belvidere, New Jersey. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

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