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Abraham Lincoln Signed Military Commission for Secretary of Navy Gideon Welles’s Son |
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A rare commission for the sone of one of Lincoln’s most important cabinet members, signed nine days after his second inauguration and just over a month before his assassination.
President Lincoln signed this military commission to promote Thomas G. Welles, the eighteen-year-old son of his Secretary of the Navy, to an aide-de-camp with the rank of captain. A month later, he was present at the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. A few months after that event, Welles was promoted to the brevet rank of major and left the army with the brevet rank of lieutenant colonel in 1866.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Partially Printed Document Signed, as President, commission appointing Thomas Glastonbury Welles Aide-de-Camp with the rank of captain, March 13, 1865, Washington, D.C. Countersigned by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. On vellum, 15¾ x 19½ in.
Inventory #27437
Price: $15,000
Thomas Glastonbury Welles (1846-1892) was born in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the fifth child of Gideon and Mary Jane Welles. He entered the Naval Academy on September 20, 1862, but apparently resigned in May 1863. He then joined Company F of the 1st Connecticut Volunteer Cavalry as a lieutenant. In March 1865, President Abraham Lincoln promoted him to be an aide-de-camp with the brevet rank of captain, to date from September 1864. A few months later, he was promoted to the brevet rank of major. He served as an aide-de-camp to Generals Anson D. McCook, Ulysses S. Grant, and Edward O. C. Ord, and was brevetted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1866. He settled in Hartford after the war. In January 1873, Thomas married Susan M. Hale (1852-1880), with whom he had four children. After her death, he married Maude Hough (1860-1938), with whom he had two children.
