Collection Overview

Related Material

Scope and Content

Collection consists largely of correspondence, drafts of letters and supporting material wriiten in both personal and official roles. Such correspondence is arranged chronlogically. Of note are Three letterbooks kept while Welles was Secretary of the Navy. Other naval material consists of commissions to sailors from presidents Madison through to Van Buren.

Two slim diaries or commonplace books written by Welles in his yout and a collection of menus, invitations and other societal notices (Series VI: Ephemera) constitute the rest of Welle's personal material in this collection.

Organization

1. Correspondence
2. Dratfs of Letters
3. Diaries
4. Insurance Records
5. Printed Political Material
6. Ephemera
7. Naval Commissions

Arrangement

Collection is arranged chronologically within in each series.

Biographical Sketch

In 1826he was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly from Glastonbury, serving from 1827-1835. As a legislator he worked to outlaw imprisonment for debt and to abolish property and religious qualifications came a model for similar statutes in other states.

In 1826 Welles also became part-owner and editor of the Hartford Times, a leading Jacksonian organ in the state. A skilled political organizer and journalist, he used his editorial, and legislative positions to promote the initially unpopular Jacksonian Democracy in Connecticut, and was instrumental in carrying the state for Jacksonin the presidential contest of 1832, and for Van Buren four years later. He was rewarded with the postmastershipof Hartford, a powerful patronage position, which he held from 1836 to 1841.

During the Polk administration, through the influence of his associate on the Times, U. S. Senator John M. Niles, Welles was appointed chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing , the only civilian to head a bureau in the U. S. Navy Department . Serving throughout the Mexican War , Welles brought an unwonted efficiency to the Bureau's administration and eliminated much of the graft which had previously characterised its operations.

While not an ardent abolitionist, Welles was personally opposed to slavery and to its extension into the territories; and in the presidential contest of 1848, he gave quiet encouragement to the Free Soil candidacy of his old associate,

Martin Van Buren

A founder of the Republican Party in Connecticut (1855-6), Welles was its first candidate for governor; and while he failed of election, partly from his refusal to court support from the Know-Nothing element, his strong showing won him a place on the Republican National Committee (1856-1864). In that role he exercised a strong influence on the drafting to the national Republican platforms of 1856 and 1860. He was also instrumental in founding the Hartford Evening Press to promote the interests of the new party; and he wrote many of its editorials and political articles.

Appointed Secretary of the Navy in 1861, Welles proved to be a firm, efficient and energetic administrator. Under his direction, the department was singularly free from corruption and political favoritism Versed in international law, he also, with Charles Sumner, provided a useful counterweight in the Cabinet to the sometimes ill-conceived policies of Seward. With Blair and Bates he represented in the Cabinet the conservative position on matters of constitutional law.

Welles was an early and enthusiastic advocate of an ironclad navy; and his energetic promotion of the plans of John Erickson led to the construction of the Monitor, and ultimately to a highly effective ironclad steam navy. Welles was also an early advocate of giving protection and employment in the navy yards and aboard ship to runaway slaves -- with pay equivalent to their white counterparts; and he supported the President's emancipation measures.

He also backed the President's moderate reconstruction policies, agreeing with Lincolnthat the Union was indissoluable and that the states, as such, had never left the Union. Under Johnson he continued to oppose Congressional reconstruction on constitutional grounds, while deploring the President's often tactless and inept attempts to carry out Lincoln's policies. By 1868 he had returned to the Democratic f old; and in 1872 he was acting with the Liberal Democrats, though he had little enthusiasm for their presidential candidate, Horace Greeley.

From 1869 until his death in l878 Welles wrote numerous political and historical articles, including a series of wartime recollections which appeared in The Atlantic and Galaxy. The latter, gathered into a volume entitled Lincoln and Seward exploded the growing myth that Seward and not the President was the directing force in the Lincoln administration. Welles extensive Civil War diaries are also an important historical source., but they must be read with caution. Welles revised the manuscript extensively, and neither of the published versions (1911 and 1960) are entirely accurate, nor do they adequately reflect the original and subsequent revisions.

No orator, Welles tended to avoid the limelight. But like his rival and sometimes uneasy ally, Thurlow Weed, Welles exerted tremendous influence on the po litical world through his incisive editorial writing and his able and untiring "behind the scenes" political activity. A man of single-minded integrity, and of unwavering loyalty to both his principles and the administrations under which he served, Welles exercised an incalculable influence on the political life of mid-nineteenth century America.