Gideon Welles

By 1867, Lincoln had been dead almost 2 years, Johnson was in the middle of his term, and Reconstruction was the focus of Congress. Gideon Welles was what was known then as a War Democrat--a States Rights conservative politician from Connecticut but who refused to concede the right to secession and who believed in and supported the war to end the rebellion, which is what the Civil War was officially called.

Welles was a doctrinaire, rigid, judgmental man who, during this period of time that was characterized by the struggle between Congressional Republicans and Andrew Johnson as to the course of Reconstruction, filled page after page after page of his diary raging against Johnson’s opponents, in the harshest of terms. He might think at least somewhat well of a Congressman or Senator, but let there be any indication that that person was at all for the Republican Reconstruction policies, and Welles immediately turned against him in the harshest fashion. Not only Congress but other members of the Cabinet, and Army and Navy officers were targets; Grant in particular comes in for scathing remarks. Some examples out of hundreds:

“The conservative and timid Republicans and some Radicals have been intimate with McCulloch and impressed him with their cowardly, shrinking views.”

“It is a misfortune that a man so ignorant, so wanting incivility as well as intelligence as E.B. Washburne should be in the position he occupies.”

“A shameless, brazen effrontery and villainy mark certain Senators. Howard and Chandler of Michigan, Sumner, Cameron, Conkling, and others have already made themselves parties against the main whom they are to adjudge {Johnson’s impeachment trial}...have broken down the barriers of the Constitution, while the President has striven to defend them, and for his defense he is to be tried, and condemned by these violators, conspirators and perjurers.”

“Stevens, with his arrogance, insolence, and vicious despotism...”

And on and on. You get the idea.

His hatred of Seward and Stanton continued unabated from the Lincoln years, and if anything, increased.

His portrait of Andrew Johnson is fascinating. He and Johnson agreed almost point-for-point in their political views, but Welles became increasingly disillusioned with what he saw as Johnson’s hesitation, too conciliatory an attitude towards Congress, especially the Senate, and his concession of too much of executive rights to Congress. But no one was more loyal in Johnson's defense during impeachment than Welles

Welles, despite his condemnation of the Radicals and anyone else who disagreed with him, was a politician of his times. He was an overt racist as were the overwhelming majority of Americans of the period; he condemns Senator Sumner from Massachusetts and Congressman Stevens from Pennsylvania for their policies and denounces them as having no principles, no morals, no ethics, just grasping for power--cunning, deceitful men--those are some of his nicer remarks--but in reality, Sumner and Stevens with a few others were about the only ones who were truly egalitarian with respect to the ex-slaves and Afro-Americans in general. Johnson had nothing but contempt for “the nigger” and openly proclaimed that the US was a white man’s land to be governed by white men only. So Welles was not alone nor in the minority. It’s difficult reading.

But Welles also always kept in focus what he considered the crucial questions of the times, and those centered around what the Constitution allowed the Federal government to do and what were the rights and prerogatives of the states. The Civil War had necessitated a much greater concentration of power in the federal government out of necessity. The Radical Republicans and many moderates wanted to extend that power to grant civil rights to the freedmen; Stevens was outspoken in his belief that the Federal government should impose a social revolution on the South. There is almost no right or wrong on these questions--just which interpretation of the Constitution serves during what period of time. That discussion goes on today (and at times with far less intelligence than in 1866-8).

While this diary can be read on its own, I don’t recommend it. You can get so caught up in Welles’ world view that you begin to wonder if he was right in his judgment of nearly everyone. After all, the years 2001-2009 in the US do not inspire confidence in US politicians in any aspect of government, and I find it all too easy to believe in corruption, lack of principle, abuse of power, lack of truthfulness, and other unpleasant but too prevalent behaviors in politics.

To try to get some sort of balanced view, about half way through this volume I started reading Eric Foner’s Reconstruction. I highly recommend that book whether or not you ever pick up the Welles’ diaries, but it is especially eye-opening in relation to Welles' statements. Read Welles on Sumner and Stevens and then read excerpts of speeches and writings of those two men, and you wonder if Welles was talking about entirely different people. The blatant racism of Johnson, Welles and others, who denounced black suffrage because blacks “weren’t ready”--were ignorant, lazy, degenerate etc., etc-- is shown to be the falsehood it is. This is no place for a review of Foner, but I recommend it if you start in on Welles once you get past the Lincoln years.

Although not for everyone, the diary is very accessible with the caveats listed, and I think a must for those who are interested in a really neglected period of US history, Reconstruction. Highly recommended.… (más)

Roughly the first half of the diary concerns itself about the war and covers the period of some of the bloodiest fighting from the Wilderness on, to the end of the war. Its most poignant part is Welles’ reaction to Lincoln’s death. He was present in the Peterson house (where Lincoln was taken after he was shot in Ford’s Theater) when Lincoln died, having spent the night with Stanton and others keeping vigil. Welles was the epitome of the stern, upright New England patriarch, morally incorruptible, not given to much emotion, but Lincoln’s death was a profound shock that temporarily shattered Welles as it did everyone else. Welles loved and respected Lincoln, revered him, although even such an admirer as he did not truly see Lincoln’s political greatness. But his grief comes across in the pages of his diary.

And this volume of his diary is really split by the two Presidencies--the “before”, of Lincoln’s, and the “after” of Andrew Johnson’s. Until Lincoln’s death, we have Welles as usual--disapproving of Stanton and Seward, sternly doing his upright best to run the Navy Department honestly, trying in vain to root out unscrupulous contractors, dealing with the egos of naval officers, holding out against pressures from various important people for preference, whether for preferment for their friends or relatives in the Navy or in the awarding of contracts or in various rather loathsome political schemes in the Navy Yards. He continues to have a fatherly attitude towards Lincoln, deploring Lincoln’s naiveté about Seward, thinking the President wise but too kind, his love for Lincoln clear in every sentence he wrote about the man.

Then came Johnson and the end of the war. Johnson is widely rated as one of the worst Presidents the United States has had, but Welles in the beginning thought highly of him. He is full of praise of Johnson’s acumen but worries, as he did with Lincoln, about Johnson’s tendency to work too hard.

The break point comes with Reconstruction and the policy towards the former Rebel states--and the 14th amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

The US Civil War has received enormous popular attention and rightly so. It was a turning point in the country’s history. However, there’s just about no play given to Reconstruction, which was also a critical period.

Welles was against slavery--but that did not mean he was for ‘negro equality”. Absolutely not. In time, maybe, when the “negroes” were ready--educated, etc--the vote. No doubt there were some who were ready but the majority? Definitely not. Welles was no more racist than the majority of Americans.

Where he did break with the majority, however, was his opposition--along with Johnson--to the 14th amendment granting citizenship to Afro-Americans. Welles had been a Democrat and was a believer in States Rights--not to the point of secession from the Union, but was for a very strict interpretation of the Constitution and very limited Federal power. Theoretically, his objection to the amendment was based on procedure--at the time the amendment was proposed, the 11 rebel states had still not been formally readmitted to the Union. In Welles view, proposing an amendment to the Constituion while eleven states were without what he viewed as legitimate representation in congress was constitutionally illegal. As time went on, more and more states were readmitted, but Welles continued his opposition, and took it to absurd lengths. Page after page of his diary is filled with denunciations of the Radicals and those who voted with them. He refused to believe that decent men would go along with a policy he himself had deemed unconstitutional and wrong; therefore, they were dupes of men like Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, Ben Wade, and Henry Winter Davis. From the disapproval of Stanton and Seward evident in his first volume, he goes to what does certainly appear to be something approaching hatred. He constantly rails at at the weakness, greed, and self-serving of politicians (true since Cain and Abel), bitterly denouncing all those who put partisanship--Republican party discipline--above the good of the country; the irony is that he himself does not realize just how partisan he is. No one is "good and true” unless they opposed the 14th Amendment. No problem with the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, but citizenship for a race he considered inferior? No way.

It is fascinating to follow Welles, as he becomes ever more strident, ever more paranoid. Much as he originally favored Johnson, by the end of 1866, he was severely disapproving of Johnson’s inability, as he saw it, to stand up to the Radicals.

There’s more to the diaries than this. The United States nearly went to war with France over French imperialism in Mexico in this time period, and Welles gives a valuable record of the events. Welles was an honest and able administrator, and his fight against corruption was only partially successful. He does give us a look into the personalities and social scene in Washington at that time, or as much as he can given his extreme views on so many in the Administration and Congress.

This volume of the diary is well worth reading, but I found that reading Eric Foner’s Reconstruction was valuable in giving a perspective on the politicians and issues that so obsessed Welles. It’s an invaluable look into attitudes that were prevalent at the times, one part of the political and social spectrum of beliefs that the people of the United States held at that time.

If for nothing else, his eyewitness account of the death of Lincoln and the subsequent mourning is worth reading. But his very personal account of Reconstruction as it was being enacted is priceless.

Highly recommended.… (más)

Welles was the Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinets of both Lincoln and Andrew Johnson; he was an insider, an eye-witness to the most dramatic events and decisions at the highest level of government in two critical periods of U.S. history: the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction. His diary, in three volumes, spans the years 1861-1869. Volume 1 covers 1861 through March 1864.

Welles started his diary, which constitutes the first chapter, with a recap of events from March 6, 1861 (two days after Lincoln’s inauguration) through the first week in August, 1862. Each chapter thereafter is a day-by-day account, usually one chapter per month, although sometimes a chapter will cover two months. According to his son Edgar, and by his own account, Welles would betake himself to his study at the end of the day and there write in his diary. He was an excellent writer; while there are obvious differences in some usages in English, there is nothing in his style or language to impede even a casual reader 150 years later. He was a careful and keen observer, as is clear from the diary.

Welles was from Connecticut--not the Connecticut we know today which is more or less a bedroom community of New York City, but a Connecticut that was definitely New England in heritage. Welles comes across as a stern, upright not to say righteous person, with a rigid sense of ethics in a corrupt age made more corrupt by war, who would rather die than take a bribe or be moved by personal considerations. There is a series of prtraits throughout the book of different important personages; fortunately, we’re spared the usual ones of Lincoln, Grant, andLee, for example. Instead, the frontispiece is a marvelous portrait of Welles--full white beard, dignified and looking every inch the New england patriarch that he was. Other portraits--of Seward, Sumner, Admiral Foote, and a priceless one of Halleck, whom Welles obviously loathed, are worth in themselves reading the book.

The diary is from the beginning an absolutely absorbing work. Reading the first chapter, even though it is a summary of the first year and a half, gave me chills; it is as if I were right there, with Welles, Stanton, Chase, Seward and Lincoln himself, a party to the drama, anguish, and decisions of the darkest days of the war. This sense of being an eye witness to momentous events carries through the entire book. BUT what makes it even more fascinating is the perspective; Gettysburg, for example, is not given anywhere near as much importance in the entire government as is the fall of Vicksburg.

One striking aspect that recurs constantly is the lack of communications. At that time, all news was sent by telegraph, and the Army controlled the telegraph. Getting news from the front where battles were being fought was a chancy thing, dependent on whether the wires were up (both sides loved to send raiding parties of cavalry to cut telegraph wires, among other things) and on whether or not the commander wanted to send back information, as well as how he presented that information. It is amazing, in this day, to read about Lincoln and Stanton hanging around the War Office, which is where the telegraphed news from the front came in, waiting, sometimes vainly, for news from the fighting.

For the most part, Welles tries to be objective, but when he is not, it is actually pretty funny. For example, he writes of many times when one Cabinet member or another, or some Senator, would rush in with news and opinions, lamenting the fact that if this were true or such and such were to happen, the country would surely fall and all would be lost. With remarkable insight, Welles almost always dismissed such fears as being groundles, and he was always right. BUT let it come to one of HIS hobby horses, it’s a different story. The best example is his reaction to Salmon Chase, Secreatry of the Treasury, and his decision to print paper money--greenbacks--as a way of paying for the war (does this sound a bit familiar today?). Welles was extremely distressed--lamented that the departure from specie (hard currency such as gold and silver) to irredeemable paperbacks would be the death knell of the country, carrying on, totally unconsciously, in exactly the same way Seward did when he was certain that England would declare war over a minor event. It makes for very funny reading.

Welles, being the philosophical descendant, if nothing else, of the Puritans, was fairly judgmental about ordinary human foibles in the officers and politicians he encountered--and he was devastating in his denouncement of a few. From the beginning, it’s clear that one of the objects of his indignation and disapproval is Seward. History has been much kinder to Seward (after he got over his delusion that he was smarter than Lincoln) than Welles; to listen to Welles, Seward was completely unfit for his position and actually endangered the United States by his actions out of ignorance. Halleck he dismisses with contempt; there he has history on his side. The portrait of Halleck shows the man perfectly, I think. However, Welles ran the Navy Department, so he comments most often on Naval officers. His comments about the characters and behavior of major players such as Farragut, Dahlgren, Foote, Porter, and DuPont are fascinating, since he mostly portrays them as selfish out of ambition, and, with a few exceptions, without the qualities needed in wartime conditions, being too conditioned by peace.

Because of his position, Welles wrote a great deal about maritime affairs,not just the navy but incidents with England over ships seized and in particular, seizure of mail. almost nothing comes through in the general histories about these affairs, and it’s interesting to read Welles’ description of his confrontations with Seward

To continue with the theme that nothing really changes, Welles suffered from the hindrance of the Chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, Senator John Hale. According to Welles, Hale, in revenge for Welles refusing to award contract patronage to him, did everything in his power to discredit the Navy in general and Welles in particular ( I thought a lot about Tim Geithner while reading these sections). Much of what you read is duplicated in kind if not in detail in today’s world. History has judged that the ironclads, which were called monitors after the first union design, made a critical difference in the war, especially on the Mississippi. But Welles was under constant attack from critics who felt that the ironclads were a failure.

Welles’ diary was one of Goodwin’s main sources of information in writing Team of Rivals, and it’s easy to see why. This is an absorbing, at times gripping account from one man’s point of view of the major events in a critical period of U.S.History.

Highly recommended.… (más)

Shortly before this was written, Seward had died. A eulogy given for him made it seem like it was Seward, and not Lincoln, who was the mastermind of State department policies at home and abroad. Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, was appalled at that suggestion, and wrote a book slamming Seward. Well, not so much slamming Seward as showing that Lincoln was clearly Seward's master when it came to running the nation and the State Department. If it wasn't for Lincoln, Seward probably would have caused Great Britain to go to war against us, which, obviously, would have been disastrous. This book provides many fascinating anecdotes about interactions within cabinet meetings and other times. The book is one long chapter, but eminently readable. A must-read for any Lincolnphile.… (más)