Gideon Welles

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Gideon Welles
William H. Seward , Secretary of State, Edwin M. Stanton , Secretary of War, Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, Salmon P. Chase , Secretary of the Treasury

Gideon Welles (born July 1, 1802 in Glastonbury , Connecticut , † February 11, 1878 in Hartford , Connecticut) was an American politician . In the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln and his successor Andrew Johnson , he was Secretary of the Navy of the United States from 1861 to 1869 and during this time played a key role in building a powerful Northern Navy that was able to implement the blockade of the Southern States during the Civil War .

Life

Welles attended the Cheshire Academy and the Norwich Military Academy in Vermont and was first a lawyer, later a journalist in Hartford. In 1826 he founded the Hartford Times magazine . He also sat for the Democrats in the House of Representatives from Connecticut and has held several official posts, such as the postmaster in Hartford from 1836 to 1841 and the Head of the Supply Office of the Navy from 1846 to 1849. He was also three times the State Comptroller elected by Connecticut.

Due to his firm rejection of slavery , he broke away from the Democrats, first in 1848 in support of Martin Van Buren's Free Soil Party and finally with the establishment of the Republican Party in 1854, which he helped to build in Connecticut. To support them, he founded the Hartford Evening Press in 1856 . In the election to governor for the Republicans in 1856, he was third with 10.1 percent of the vote, behind the victorious William T. Minor of the Know-Nothing Party and the Democrat Samuel Ingham . Welles was an active partisan of Abraham Lincoln, who made him Secretary of the Navy on March 7, 1861 . In this function, he greatly expanded the navy of the northern states and, even after initial resistance, supported the policy of blocking the ports of the southern states ( anaconda plan ), which could be effectively implemented, not least thanks to Welles' efforts, and which contributed significantly to the positive outcome for the northern states contributed to the civil war.

Welles also served as Secretary of the Navy under Lincoln's successor, Johnson, but left the Cabinet in 1869 to contest the President's reconstruction policy. But he was loyal to Johnson in his impeachment proceedings . Welles switched back to the Democratic Party and returned to Hartford, where he published his magazines and was active as a writer. Among other things, he published a biography: Mr. Lincoln and Mr.  Seward (New York 1873).

He left a diary that is considered an important source for the Lincoln Cabinet and the Civil War. The first edition was published by his son in 1911 (it had been edited by Welles himself), an edition based on the original appeared in 1960.

literature

  • John Niven Gideon Welles; Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy . Oxford University Press, 1973.
  • Welles, Gideon . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 28 : Vetch - Zymotic Diseases . London 1911, p. 506 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Gideon Welles  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ourcampaigns.com: CT Governor
personal data
SURNAME Welles, Gideon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1802
PLACE OF BIRTH Glastonbury , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH February 11, 1878
Place of death Hartford , Connecticut