Welles was the Secretary of the Navy in the Cabinets of both Lincoln and Andrew Johnson; he was an insider, an eye-witness to the most dramatic events and decisions at the highest level of government in two critical periods of U.S. history: the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction. His diary, in three volumes, spans the years 1861-1869. Volume 1 covers 1861 through March 1864.

Welles started his diary, which constitutes the first chapter, with a recap of events from March 6, 1861 (two days after Lincoln’s inauguration) through the first week in August, 1862. Each chapter thereafter is a day-by-day account, usually one chapter per month, although sometimes a chapter will cover two months. According to his son Edgar, and by his own account, Welles would betake himself to his study at the end of the day and there write in his diary. He was an excellent writer; while there are obvious differences in some usages in English, there is nothing in his style or language to impede even a casual reader 150 years later. He was a careful and keen observer, as is clear from the diary.

Welles was from Connecticut--not the Connecticut we know today which is more or less a bedroom community of New York City, but a Connecticut that was definitely New England in heritage. Welles comes across as a stern, upright not to say righteous person, with a rigid sense of ethics in a corrupt age made more corrupt by war, who would rather die than take a bribe or be moved by personal considerations. There is a series of prtraits throughout the book of different important personages; fortunately, we’re spared the usual ones of Lincoln, Grant, andLee, for example. Instead, the frontispiece is a marvelous portrait of Welles--full white beard, dignified and looking every inch the New england patriarch that he was. Other portraits--of Seward, Sumner, Admiral Foote, and a priceless one of Halleck, whom Welles obviously loathed, are worth in themselves reading the book.

The diary is from the beginning an absolutely absorbing work. Reading the first chapter, even though it is a summary of the first year and a half, gave me chills; it is as if I were right there, with Welles, Stanton, Chase, Seward and Lincoln himself, a party to the drama, anguish, and decisions of the darkest days of the war. This sense of being an eye witness to momentous events carries through the entire book. BUT what makes it even more fascinating is the perspective; Gettysburg, for example, is not given anywhere near as much importance in the entire government as is the fall of Vicksburg.

One striking aspect that recurs constantly is the lack of communications. At that time, all news was sent by telegraph, and the Army controlled the telegraph. Getting news from the front where battles were being fought was a chancy thing, dependent on whether the wires were up (both sides loved to send raiding parties of cavalry to cut telegraph wires, among other things) and on whether or not the commander wanted to send back information, as well as how he presented that information. It is amazing, in this day, to read about Lincoln and Stanton hanging around the War Office, which is where the telegraphed news from the front came in, waiting, sometimes vainly, for news from the fighting.

For the most part, Welles tries to be objective, but when he is not, it is actually pretty funny. For example, he writes of many times when one Cabinet member or another, or some Senator, would rush in with news and opinions, lamenting the fact that if this were true or such and such were to happen, the country would surely fall and all would be lost. With remarkable insight, Welles almost always dismissed such fears as being groundles, and he was always right. BUT let it come to one of HIS hobby horses, it’s a different story. The best example is his reaction to Salmon Chase, Secreatry of the Treasury, and his decision to print paper money--greenbacks--as a way of paying for the war (does this sound a bit familiar today?). Welles was extremely distressed--lamented that the departure from specie (hard currency such as gold and silver) to irredeemable paperbacks would be the death knell of the country, carrying on, totally unconsciously, in exactly the same way Seward did when he was certain that England would declare war over a minor event. It makes for very funny reading.

Welles, being the philosophical descendant, if nothing else, of the Puritans, was fairly judgmental about ordinary human foibles in the officers and politicians he encountered--and he was devastating in his denouncement of a few. From the beginning, it’s clear that one of the objects of his indignation and disapproval is Seward. History has been much kinder to Seward (after he got over his delusion that he was smarter than Lincoln) than Welles; to listen to Welles, Seward was completely unfit for his position and actually endangered the United States by his actions out of ignorance. Halleck he dismisses with contempt; there he has history on his side. The portrait of Halleck shows the man perfectly, I think. However, Welles ran the Navy Department, so he comments most often on Naval officers. His comments about the characters and behavior of major players such as Farragut, Dahlgren, Foote, Porter, and DuPont are fascinating, since he mostly portrays them as selfish out of ambition, and, with a few exceptions, without the qualities needed in wartime conditions, being too conditioned by peace.

Because of his position, Welles wrote a great deal about maritime affairs,not just the navy but incidents with England over ships seized and in particular, seizure of mail. almost nothing comes through in the general histories about these affairs, and it’s interesting to read Welles’ description of his confrontations with Seward

To continue with the theme that nothing really changes, Welles suffered from the hindrance of the Chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, Senator John Hale. According to Welles, Hale, in revenge for Welles refusing to award contract patronage to him, did everything in his power to discredit the Navy in general and Welles in particular ( I thought a lot about Tim Geithner while reading these sections). Much of what you read is duplicated in kind if not in detail in today’s world. History has judged that the ironclads, which were called monitors after the first union design, made a critical difference in the war, especially on the Mississippi. But Welles was under constant attack from critics who felt that the ironclads were a failure.

Welles’ diary was one of Goodwin’s main sources of information in writing Team of Rivals, and it’s easy to see why. This is an absorbing, at times gripping account from one man’s point of view of the major events in a critical period of U.S.History.

Highly recommended. ( )