A Connecticut Yankee in Lincoln’s Cabinet: Navy Secretary Gideon Welles Chronicles the Civil War

Chapter 6: Navy Department Challenges

106 Chapter 6 Navy Department Challenges Running the Navy Department, Welles faced a multitude of challenges that tested his administrative skills, judgment, political astuteness, and more than once, his patience. This chapter examines a diverse selection of these challenges. It concludes with diary entries recording both the criticism and the praise Welles received from various contemporaries and his own brief assessment of his performance. ConFederate CommerCe raiderS One of the most persistent problems the navy faced was the Confederacy’s employment of fast commerce raiders, which played hob with American merchant ships, whalers, and ocean-going fishing boats for much of the war. Approximately a dozen raiders were active at one time or another. The two most famous – the CSS Florida and the CSS Alabama – were built in English shipyards and went into service in March and July of 1862, respectively.1 The Alabama captured or sank a total of 64 American merchant vessels and whalers and also a Union warship (the USS Hatteras in January 1863). The Florida took 37 vessels before being rammed and captured by the USS Wachusett in the Brazilian port of Bahia in October 1864. According to historian James McPherson, the most successful single raid was made by the CSS Tallahassee, which between its departure from Wilmington, North Carolina, on August 6, 1864, and its safe return on August 25th , captured 33 fishing vessels and merchantmen during a foray along the Atlantic coast as far 1 It was illegal for British shipbuilders to construct warships for a belligerent power that would use them against a friendly nation. Confederate agents and English shipbuilders managed to circumvent the law by having vessels such as the Alabama and Florida armed and otherwise outfitted as warships only after they had left British territorial waters. After mid 1863, however, a crackdown by the British government largely put a stop to this subterfuge. Navy Department Challenges 107 This cartoon represents Welles as a burden to Lincoln because he is too far along in years to handle the multiple demands of his job. On the left in the background is the ironclad CSS Virginia (originally the USS Merrimack) and on the right the rebel comerce raider CSS Nashville, both of which pose threats that Welles seems to be ignoring. Source: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 3, 1862. 108 Navy Department Challenges as Halifax, Nova Scotia.2 The following four excerpts reveal Welles’s frustration at the navy’s failure to snare the Tallahassee. August 12, 1864: Have news this evening that a new pirate craft, the Tallahassee , has appeared off New York, burning vessels.3 Steamers ordered off in pursuit. August 15, 1864: Depredations by the piratical Rebel Tallahassee continue. We have sixteen vessels in pursuit, and yet I feel no confidence in their capturing her. It is so easy to elude the pursuit of the most vigilant – and many in command are not vigilant – that it will not surprise me if she escapes. Should that be the case, the Navy Department will alone be held responsible. I am already censured in some of the papers for not having vessels, two or three, cruising at the time she appeared. Had that been the case we could not have communicated with them when we received intelligence , but, being in port, several were at once dispatched in pursuit. I find I have become very indifferent to the senseless complaints of the few loud grumblers. August 18, 1864: Mr. Seward brought me this A.M. a dispatch from Consul Jackson at Halifax, saying the pirate Rebel Tallahassee had arrived at that port. I had on Sunday morning last, the 14th , sent orders to Commodore [Hiram] Paulding [commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard] to immediately dispatch the San Jacinto, then just arrived at New York . . . to proceed to Halifax, anticipating that the pirate craft would go thither for coal. The Commodore on the same day sent me a dispatch that orders had been given the San Jacinto to proceed to sea, and a second telegram, received that evening, said she would pass through the Sound. When, therefore, I to-day got word that the Tallahassee was in Halifax, I thought the San Jacinto should be there. I immediately inquired at what time she had sailed, that I might calculate with some certainty. This evening I have a telegram from Captain Case, Executive Officer, Brooklyn Yard, that the San Jacinto has not yet sailed...