Scope and Contents:
Gideon Welles was Secretary of the Navy in the Lincoln and Johnson administrations. This collection contains photostats of letters in the Welles collection of the Library of Congress, including three letters between Charles Sumner and Welles, June 15, June 30, and July 4, 1866, and letters to Welles from Edward Bates, Oct. 23, 1866; from Montgomery Blair on May 17, 1873; from James C. Welling on Apr. 7, 1874, and from Orville Hickman Browning on May 20, 1874. The letters touch on the suffrage in the South, the rights of former slaves, the disorder of government administration following the Civil War, and other topics..
The collection also includes a letter to Welles from D. Kaine, Uniontown, Pa., Jan. 18, 1877, regarding Lincoln's ancestry, and a Feb. 21, 1878 letter from Browning to Welles's wife after his death.