Gideon Welles

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1874.

"Of course in the Andrew Johnson drama the spectacular act is the impeachment. Americans who so lately had been holding their breath as they watched the great strugglewaged by Grant and Sherman against Robert E. Lee, now had to watch with more painful feelings the assault of Benjamin F. Butler and Thaddeus Stevens against the President of the United States." --John T. Morse, Jr., in the Introduction, 1909Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson Vol. III offers the view and experiences of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War, of the Abraham Lincoln administration, and of the Andrew Johnson administration that followed. This volume covers the period of January 1,1867 to June 6, 1869. It was a lifelong custom of Gideon Welles to keep a diary, including during his years in public office. By 1909, his diaries, edited by Welles's son Edgar, were published.

Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson Vol. II offers the view and experiences of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War, of the Abraham Lincoln administration, and of the Andrew Johnson administration that followed. This volume covers the period of April 1,1864 through December 31, 1866.

Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson Vol. I offers the view and experiences of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War, of the Abraham Lincoln administration, and of the Andrew Johnson administration that followed. This volume covers the period of 1861 to March 30, 1864.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1869.

Gideon Welles's 1861 appointment as secretary of the navy placed him at the hub of Union planning for the Civil War and in the midst of the powerful personalities vying for influence in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet. Although Welles initially knew little of naval matters, he rebuilt a service depleted by Confederate defections, planned actions that gave the Union badly needed victories in the war's early days, and oversaw a blockade that weakened the South's economy. Perhaps the hardest-working member of the cabinet, Welles still found time to keep a detailed diary that has become one of the key documents for understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln administration. In this new edition, William E. and Erica L. Gienapp have restored Welles's original observations, gleaned from the manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress and freed from his many later revisions, so that the reader can experience what he wrote in the moment. With his vitriolic pen, Welles captures the bitter disputes over strategy and war aims, lacerates colleagues from Secretary of State William H. Seward to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, and condemns the actions of the self-serving southern elite he sees as responsible for the war. He just as easily waxes eloquent about the Navy's wartime achievements, extols the virtues of Lincoln, and drops in a tidbit of Washington gossip. Carefully edited and extensively annotated, this edition contains a wealth of supplementary material. The appendixes include short biographies of the members of Lincoln's cabinet, the retrospective Welles wrote after leaving office covering the period missing from the diary proper, and important letters regarding naval matters and international law.

Gideon Welles, the Connecticut journalist-politician who served as Lincoln's secretary of the navy, was not only an architect of Union victory but also a shrewd observer of people, issues, and events. Fortunately for posterity, he recorded many of his observations in his extensive diary. A Connecticut Yankee in Lincoln's Cabinet brings together 250 of the most important and interesting excerpts from the diary, dealing with topics as varied as the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Marine Band's concerts in Washington's Lafayette Square, Lincoln's sense of humor, rivalries among cabinet members, Welles's often caustic opinions of prominent politicians and military leaders, demands for creation of a navy yard in his home state, the challenge of blockading 3,500 miles of Confederate coastline, the struggle against rebel commerce raiders, the battles of Antietam and Gettysburg, the Fort Pillow massacre of African American troops, and Lincoln's assassination. Together, the excerpts provide a candid insider's view of the Civil War as it unfolded, and an introduction provides the reader with context. Published by the Acorn Club.