Seth Kaller, Inc.

As Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy, “old Neptune” played an essential role in fencing off and defeating the Confederacy.

“There is a good deal of stir among the soldiers, who are coming in numbers daily, and we shall soon have the city [Washington] more full than any before in our country. A good feeling prevails among almost the whole population. Traitors are getting at discount here, and I hope they will be despised everywhere.” (Welles letter to his son, April 7, 1861)

Gideon Welles (1802–1878) was a Connecticut native, journalist, Democratic state legislator, Hartford postmaster, and chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing for the Navy early in his career. In 1848, Welles left the Democratic Party over the expansion of slavery. He founded an influential Republican organ, the Hartford Evening Press, in 1856. 

GIDEON WELLES. Substantial archive of his handwritten school writing and math books, personal and family correspondence, diaries, and manuscripts. Detailed description on request.

Inventory #27383       Price: $480,000

Collection Highlights

• Gideon Welles’ Schooling. Autograph Manuscripts Signed.
• Autograph Workbooks, ca. 1817 to 1821, from his time as a student at the Episcopal Academy of Cheshire, Connecticut, and the American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy at Norwich, Vt. (later Norwich University), reflect both the seriousness and whimsy of a young man.
• Autograph Student Notebook, over a foot in height, adorned with humorous caricatures—a theme that carries over to several individual sheets. Some of the figures are patriotic, others risqué, or some combination.
• Autograph Notebook devoted to handwriting exercises, containing many examples of Welles’s efforts to establish his own proper signature.
• Autograph Mathematics Workbook, which includes questions of compound interest, simple interest, and problems of “Division of Vulgar Fractions.” A poem on the last page begins: “When stormy winds are o’er and past / Shall pleasant calm appear / For oft times heard in ashes deep / The burning coals of fire.”

Gideon Welles, 145 Autograph Letters Signed, to his son Thomas Glastonbury Welles, mostly during the Civil War.

Sept. 28, 1862, re Battle of South Mountain: “Had a letter to day from Robert ... the dead lay in rows so that he had to pick his way along for fear of stepping on them. The ground was covered, and they were in heaps behind the walls & fences, all dead, boys and old men side by side.” 

Feb. 19, 1863, after Thomas entered the Navy rather than finishing his education: “I rec’d your letter and resignation this morning, just as I was putting on my coat to attend a special cabinet meeting. It of course unfitted me for any duty, for I thought if my children would throw away advantages, I might as well give up also the labors and burdens that oppress me.” 

May 3, 1863: “I did not read the testimony of McClellan until I got your letter calling my attention to it. You are right and he is guilty of a gross perversion of the real facts…. the government has done well in displacing him. Whether Hooker will prove himself a better general and a better man, time will disclose.”  

April 18, 1865, on Lincoln’s assassination: “The great calamity which has befallen the country has … disarranged everything…. Nothing since the death of Washington has ever cast so great a gloom over the whole country. That one so gentle, and so kind, whose feelings would permit him to harm no human being, should have been so assaulted and slain is among the most appalling acts ever recorded…. General Ord will not commit the mistake of Weitzel…. R.M.T. Hunter and Judge Campbell must not think that they are to dictate terms, or negotiate treaties. They are conquered rebels, and have no rights.” 

Additional material

• Gideon Welles, Autograph Letters Signed, to other family members.
• More than 230 letters to Welles, most from close family members.
• Four of Welles’s diaries; and additional family manuscripts, photographs, and printed ephemera.
• Leather portfolio, gilt-stamped “Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy”
• Welles’s signed Bible
• Welles’s signed copy of Lincoln’s Cooper Institute Address
• Miniature watercolor portrait of Welles, 2½ x 4 in. oval, attributed to Jean-Henri Prudhomme