X-Nico

6 unusual facts about Gideon Welles


Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batteries

Insurance underwriters pressured Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles for remedy.

CSS Mississippi

Farragut was already under some time pressure from Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who feared that if the two ironclad "monsters" (a term widely used at the time to characterize CSS Louisiana and Mississippi) were to be successfully completed, they would be able to shatter the blockade.

Gideon Welles

In an interview with Dick Cavett on The Dick Cavett Show, actor and director Orson Welles revealed, nonchalantly, that he was the great-grandson of Gideon Welles, and had known a dinner party hostess from the American Civil War era familiar with his great-grandfather Gideon.

Union blockade

The Navy Department, under the leadership of Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, quickly moved to expand the fleet.

In December 1864, Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles sent a force against Fort Fisher, which protected the Confederate's access to the Atlantic from Wilmington, North Carolina, the last open Confederate port.

William Longshaw, Jr.

Longshaw’s gallantry in this action was praised by Rear Adm. John A. Dahlgren and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles.


Benjamin F. Isherwood

After the presidential inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant, Isherwood's longtime patron, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, could no longer protect him.

Funeral and burial of Abraham Lincoln

Edwin M. Stanton, Gideon Welles, Hugh McCulloch, John Palmer Usher, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant, and Montgomery C. Meigs left the escort at the depot, and at 8 A.M. the train departed.


see also