The Secession Crisis Diary of Gideon Welles

The diary of Gideon Welles has long been recognized as one of the best available sources for studying Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. A Connecticut newspaperman, Welles arrived in Washington in March 1861 to serve as secretary of the Navy, a position he would hold for the next eight years. Welles's wartime and postwar diaries are so insightful that no study of the Lincoln or Johnson administrations or of the Civil War-era Navy-could be complete without citing them. Here, the authors reproduce Welles's 1861 pocket diary in its entirety. In attempting to transcribe his handwriting, the authors have rendered words as accurately as they could, however, to silently correct Welles's spelling in a few cases. In a number of instances it is clear what word he intended, though some letters are nearly impossible to decipher. In these sorts of instances the authors thought it best for the sake of readability to silently correct Welles's mistakes. Welles often omitted periods when he ran out of room in a line on the edge of the page. The authors also have silently inserted the correct punctuation. Finally, in one instance they silently deleted the repeated word "the." Words that could not be definitively deciphered are marked as illegible and possible renderings are offered in a footnote.