The Secession Crisis Diary of Gideon Welles
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The diary of Gideon Welles has long been recognized as one of the best available sources for studying Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. A Connecticut newspaperman, Welles arrived in Washington in March 1861 to serve as secretary of the Navy, a position he would hold for the next eight years. Welles’s wartime and postwar diaries are so insightful that no study of the Lincoln or Johnson administrations—or of the Civil War–era Navy—could be complete without citing them.
Welles began keeping an almost nightly journal of his experiences in Washington, D.C., during the summer of 1862. Many years later, his son Edgar T. Welles published excerpts from his father’s diary in Atlantic Monthly. In 1911 Edgar released a three-volume edition that he claimed included only minor revisions. “A few strong expressions, purely personal and private, have been omitted,” Edgar wrote in the preface, “but the omission has always been indicated and the reader may have full confidence that the text of the diary has been in no way mutilated or revised.”[1] This assertion was patently untrue.
In 1924 historian Howard K. Beale, then a graduate student at Harvard University, conducted a study of the original manuscript diary at the Library of Congress. Beale found that Edgar had substantially edited and revised his father’s diary, censoring a number of passages that might have been embarrassing to his father or his father’s contemporaries. The 1911 edition also incorporated many of Gideon Welles’s revisions from the 1870s, passing them off as having been written during his time in the cabinet. Finally Edgar included a number of passages that were nowhere to be found in the original manuscripts at the Library of Congress. In 1960 Beale published a new three-volume edition of the diary, undoing “the extensive editing by the diarist himself” as well as “the further altering by the son.” The Beale edition reproduced the pages of the 1911 edition with handwritten annotations marked throughout the text, indicating where the 1911 edition was untrue to what Welles had originally written in the 1860s.[2] Unfortunately, Beale’s annotations can be difficult to decipher.
Fortunately, in 2014 Harvard historian William E. Gienapp and his wife, Erica L. Gienapp, released The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy: The Original Manuscript Edition through the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. Rather than work from the 1911 edition, as Beale had done, the Gienapps re-transcribed Welles’s original manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress, scrupulously omitting Welles’s later emendations. The final product was a beautifully produced and carefully annotated verbatim transcription of what Secretary Welles had written while he served with Lincoln. (Unlike the earlier editions, the 2014 edition concludes in April 1865.)[3]
All three editions of Welles’s diary include a “retrospective” in which Welles describes the period from March 6 through July 1861. The 1911 and 1960 editions present the retrospective as part of the original diary, while the Gienapps suggest that it was written sometime after Welles left office in June 1869.[4] None of the published editions include anything earlier; however, Welles kept other diaries during his lifetime. The Huntington Library, in San Marino, California, holds a sizable collection (approximately 600 pieces in ten boxes) of Welles’s papers. Included among these papers are diaries for the years 1846–1849, as well as a small pocket diary with an entry for each day in January and February 1861.[5] Never before published, this pocket diary offers an invaluable portrait of Welles’s reactions to the secession crisis, his criticisms of the Buchanan administration, and his views of Abraham Lincoln as president-elect.
This article reproduces Welles’s 1861 pocket diary in its entirety. In attempting to transcribe his handwriting, we have rendered words as accurately as we could; we chose, however, to silently correct Welles’s spelling in a few cases. In a number of instances it is clear what word he intended, though some letters are nearly impossible to decipher. This problem is compounded by the fact that he sometimes omitted letters from words, such as “the” without an “e,” or “Lincoln” without a “c,” or “friend” without an “i.” In these sorts of instances we thought it best for the sake of readability to silently correct Welles’s mistakes. Welles often omitted periods when he ran out of room in a line on the edge of the page. In these instances we have silently inserted the correct punctuation. Finally, in one instance we silently deleted the repeated word “the.” Words that could not be definitively deciphered are marked as illegible and possible renderings are offered in a footnote.
We thank Michael Musick as well as our friends and colleagues at Christopher Newport University for assistance in transcribing several difficult words.
1. Edgar T. Welles, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 1:vi.
Howard K. Beale, ed., Diary of Gideon Welles: Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln and Johnson, 3 vols. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1960).
William E. Gienapp and Erica L. Gienapp, eds., The Civil War Diary of Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy: The Original Manuscript Edition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014).
Gideon Welles, “Retrospective, March 6, 1861–July 1862,” in ibid., 639–83.
Gideon Welles Papers, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
George D. Morgan (1818–1891) was a New York City merchant whom Welles would soon hire to procure ships for the Union Navy. Morgan was married to Welles’s wife’s sister, Caroline.
George Gilman Fogg (1813–1881) was secretary of the Republican National Executive Committee in 1860, minister to Switzerland under Lincoln, and U.S. senator from New Hampshire after the war.
Truman Smith (1791–1884) served several terms in Congress as a Whig from Connecticut between 1830 and 1854. In 1862 Lincoln appointed him a judge under the treaty with England for the suppression of the slave trade.
Henry A. Perkins (1801–1874) was president of the Hartford Bank.
Cincinnatus A. Taft (1822–1884) was a homeopathic physician in Hartford.
Edgar T. Welles (1843–1914), a son of Gideon Welles, was a student at Yale College. He later became the chief clerk of the Navy Department from 1866 to 1869.
Thomas G. Welles (1846–1892), a son of Gideon Welles. After attending the Naval Academy in 1862 he became a commissioned officer in the army. See Hartford Daily Courant, March 21, 1892.
John A. Welles (1849–1885), youngest son of Gideon Welles to reach adulthood, served for many years as a teller at the state bank. See Hartford Daily Courant, November 9, 1885.
Lafayette Sabine Foster (1806–1880), a Republican, served as U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1855 to 1867.
Isaac Toucey (1792–1869), a Democrat from Connecticut, was secretary of the Navy under James Buchanan.
Welles attended Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Hartford.
Mark Howard (1817–1887) was a founding member of the Republican Party in Connecticut. In 1861 Lincoln nominated him to be consul to Messina, but Howard declined the appointment. Later Lincoln appointed him an internal revenue collector in Connecticut.
Edward Spicer Cleveland (1825–1903) served for several years as a Democrat in the Connecticut legislature. After the Lecompton Constitution was adopted in 1857 he became a Republican. Lincoln appointed him postmaster of Hartford in 1861.
James Dixon (1814–1873), a Republican, served as U.S. senator from Connecticut from 1857 to 1869.
Thaddeus Hale Welles (1806–1876) of Glastonbury was Welles’s only surviving brother.
Joseph Roswell Hawley (1826–1905) entered the Union Army as a captain in 1861 and rose to the rank of major general in 1865. Following the war, he served as governor of Connecticut as well as in Congress.
A copy of Welles’s letter is retained in his papers at the Library of Congress.
The Hartford Retreat for the Insane was chartered in 1822. By the 1860s it offered custodial care for the mentally ill.
Possibly “Mayor,” and possibly “McDowell” or “McDonnell.” The Institute of Living in Hartford (the successor organization of the Hartford Retreat) is unable to identify any patient that matched any of these names.
These words appear to be “can” or “care” and “hardly.”
Henry Brewster Stanton (1805–1887), husband of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was a reformer and abolitionist.
John Denison Baldwin (1809–1883) was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1860 and U.S. Representative from Massachusetts from 1863 to 1869.
Joseph Pratt Allyn (1833–1869) wrote for the Hartford Evening Press and later was appointed Associate Justice of the Arizona Territory by Lincoln.
John Bigelow (1817–1911) served as U.S. consul in Paris during the Civil War.
Edward Lillie Pierce (1829–1897) was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1860. During the war he worked with contrabands in Virginia and South Carolina.
Charles Francis Adams (1807–1886), a son of John Quincy Adams, served as U.S. Representative from Massachusetts from 1859 to 1861, and as minister to England from 1861 to 1868.
Francis Wilkinson Pickens (1807–1869) served as governor of South Carolina from 1860 to 1862.
John Adams Dix (1798–1879) of New York served as secretary of the treasury under James Buchanan and later became a general in the Union Army.
Joseph Holt (1807–1894) of Kentucky served as postmaster general and secretary of war under James Buchanan. Later he became judge advocate general of the U.S. Army from 1862 to 1875.
Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter (1809–1887) of Virginia was expelled from the U.S. Senate on July 11, 1861. He later served as Confederate secretary of state and in the Confederate Senate. For Hunter’s speech, see Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 328–32 (January 11, 1861).
Samuel Welles (1840–1866) was a nephew of Gideon Welles.
On January 12, 1861, William H. Seward of New York delivered a speech in the Senate outlining his desire for preservation of the Union and not antagonizing the southern states. See Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd sess., pp. 341–44.
This word appears to be “menacing” or “mercenary.”
Howell Cobb (1815–1868), a Democrat from Georgia, served in the U.S. House of Representatives, as governor of Georgia, and as secretary of the treasury before the Civil War. He later became a major general in the Confederate Army.
Robert A. Toombs (1810–1885) was a U.S. senator from Georgia, 1853–1861, and later served as Confederate secretary of state and as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army.
John Slidell (1793–1871) served as U.S. senator from Louisiana, 1853–1861, and later as a Confederate diplomat in France.
Judah P. Benjamin (1811–1884) served as U.S. senator from Louisiana, 1853–1861, and later held three positions in Jefferson Davis’s cabinet.
David Levy Yulee (1810–1886) was a U.S. senator from Florida.
Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) of Mississippi resigned from the U.S. Senate on January 21, 1861, and later became president of the Confederacy.
Albert Gallatin Brown (1813–1880) was a U.S. senator from Mississippi, 1854–1861, and later served in the Confederate Army and Confederate Congress.
James Murray Mason (1798–1871) was a U.S. senator from Virginia from 1847 to 1861, when he was expelled for supporting the rebellion. He later served as a Confederate diplomat in London.
John J. Crittenden (1787–1863) of Kentucky had spent many years in Congress dating back to 1817. The Crittenden Compromise was a proposal introduced in Congress in December 1860 that would have amended the Constitution to protect slavery in an attempt to appease the South.
John C. Breckinridge (1821–1875) of Kentucky served as vice president under James Buchanan. He later became a major general in the Confederate Army and Confederate secretary of war.
This word appears to be “daring” or “dying.”
Horace N. Congar (1817–1893) was editor of the Newark Daily Mercury for ten years.
Nathaniel P. Banks (1816–1894) was governor of Massachusetts from 1858 to 1861. He later became a Union general.
George Ashmun (1804–1870) presided over the Republican National Convention in 1860 and was part of the delegation that called upon Lincoln to inform him that he’d won the nomination.
John Albion Andrew (1818–1867), a Republican, was governor of Massachusetts from 1861 to 1866.
Possibly Cyrus F. Knight (1831–1891), an Episcopal minister in Boston, or Rev. Merrick Knight (1817–1896), a Congregationalist minister in Hartford. Thanks to Bill Uricchio, parish historian at St. John’s, for assistance in identifying this guest preacher.
Most likely Prescott & Gage, a photographic gallery in Hartford.
For information on Fogg’s visits to Springfield, see Michael Burlingame, ed., Sixteenth President-In-Waiting: Abraham Lincoln and the Springfield Dispatches of Henry Villard, 1860–1861 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), 61–62, 71, 76, 233, 235, 239–40, 261.
Abel N. Clark (1819–1867) was an owner of the Hartford Daily Courant with his partner Thomas Day from 1857 to 1864, when he took sole ownership.
William A. Buckingham (1804–1875), a Republican, served as governor of Connecticut from 1858 to 1866.
Hubert Welles (1858–1862) was a son of Gideon Welles.
Simon Cameron (1799–1889), a Republican from Pennsylvania, was notorious for his corruption. Originally desiring to be secretary of the treasury, Cameron served as Lincoln’s first secretary of war from 1861 to 1862.
This word appears to be “received” or “revived.”
It is unclear who Barnard was.
Hannibal Hamlin (1809–1891), a Republican from Maine, was vice-president-elect.
Alexander Hamilton Stephens (1812–1883), a Whig-turned-Democrat from Georgia, initially opposed secession. During the war he served as vice president of the Confederacy.
This word may be “the” or “up.”
Welles appears to have started writing the word “from” but then stopped when he realized the name would be in the subsequent quotation.
Calvin Day (1803–1884) was a commission merchant in Hartford and friend of Welles’s.
Gurdon Trumbull (1790–1875) was a politician and judge in Hartford.
Several words in this line are nearly impossible to decipher. They appear to be “force/form/favor the rightly duped/despot/disposed & give the rallying[?] back/cry/let.”
Edward A. Washburn (1819–1881) served as rector of St. John’s Church from 1854 to 1862.
Probably a relative of Welles’s wife, Mary Jane Hale Welles.
Edward Thaddeus Welles (1847–1872) was a nephew of Welles.
While much of the correspondence mentioned in the diary is held in Welles’s papers at the Library of Congress, some is in private hands. One of these letters from Buckingham, dated February 2, 1861, was, as of June 10, 2019, for sale on eBay.
Preston King (1806–1865), a Republican, served as U.S. senator from New York from 1857 to 1863.
James C. Loomis (1807–1877) lost to Governor Buckingham in the gubernatorial election on April 1, 1861.
Mary Downing Valentine Hale (1832–1901) was married to the brother of Welles’s wife, Mary Jane Hale Welles, and lived in Lewistown, Pennsylvania.
Sarah D. Hale is listed in the 1860 census as two years old.
It is unclear who Mary Curtin was. She may have been a relative of Pennsylvania governor Andrew G. Curtin.
Charles Floyer Pond (1809–1867) was president of the New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield Railroad Company. A Democrat, he supported Stephen A. Douglas for president in 1860, and in 1864 he served as an elector for George B. McClellan.
Possibly “disperse” or “dispense.”
Thomas Holliday Hicks (1798–1865), a Unionist, served as governor of Maryland from 1857 to 1862.
Moses Pierce (1793–1897) was an uncle of ex-president Franklin Pierce. His son Edwin M. Pierce (1834–1861) died in Norwich, Connecticut, on February 14.
Schuyler Colfax (1823–1885), a Republican from Indiana, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1855 to 1869 (Speaker, 1863–1869), and as vice president under Ulysses S. Grant.
Samuel Austin (1808–1876) of Suffield was a farmer who was active in Republican politics. He served as a presidential elector for Lincoln in 1860.
James G. Bolles (1802–1871) was president of the North American Fire Insurance Company in Hartford. Lincoln appointed him a collector of internal revenue in Connecticut in 1863.
Possibly Elijah H. Owen of the firm Day, Owen and Co.
Probably Rowland Swift, cashier at the Bank of Hartford.
Horatio King (1811–1897) of Maine served as postmaster general under James Buchanan.
Henry C. Deming (1815–1872), a Republican, served as mayor of Hartford, 1854–1858 and 1860–1862.
Edwin D. Morgan (1811–1883) served as governor of New York from 1859 to 1862 and as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1856 to 1864. He later served as U.S. senator from New York.
Possibly Edwin Taylor, owner of a steam planing mill.
It is unclear who J. S. Williams was.
The New Haven city directory for 1860–1861 lists seventeen men with the last name Pardee. None appear to be connected to anyone named English.
Possibly James E. English (1812–1890), a Democrat from New Haven, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1861 to 1865, and later as governor and U.S. senator; or Charles L. English, also of New Haven, who corresponded with Welles about this time.
James F. Babcock (1809–1874) was editor of the New Haven Palladium.
“Hegira” refers to Muhammad’s departure from Mecca to Medina in A.D. 622.
Ichabod Goodwin (1794–1882), a Republican, served as governor of New Hampshire from 1859 to 1861.
Possibly Eliphalet Ladd and Juliette Niles, who are listed as part of the same household in Hartford in the 1860 census. Juliette was the niece of Welles’s late friend U.S. senator John Milton Niles.
David E. Twiggs (1790–1862), an officer who had served in the War of 1812 and Mexican-American War, became a Confederate general. In February 1861 he surrendered Federal property at San Antonio to Texas state authorities.
Probably Edward P. Fowler, listed in the Hartford city directory for 1861 as an artist. According to the Hartford Daily Courant, May 7, 1861, a Hartford photographer named Fowler had joined a local military company and was shot in New Haven when he “attempted to haul down a secession flag, which a dirty head had raised there.”