Description:

Navy Secretary Welles Orders Lt Com. Bunce 1864

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles sent this letter ordering Lieutenant Commander Francis M. Bunce to leave the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron and travel north. Bunce reported that he arrived in Hartford, Connecticut on May 21. Four months later, Bunce reported aboard the monitor USS Dictator under the command of Commodore John Rodgers. The Dictator cruised off the East Coast of the United States from December 1864 through the end of the Civil War.

GIDEON WELLES, Manuscript Letter Signed, to Francis M. Bunce, April 26, 1864, Washington, D.C. 1 p., 7.75" x 9.75" Expected folds; separation on fold of integral docketing leaf

Complete Transcript
Navy Department
Washington, 26 April 1864.
Sir,
On the receipt of this order, you will regard yourself as detached from the South A. B. Squadron, and you will return North in the first public conveyance, reporting your arrival, by letter, to the Department, and also informing it of the date of your detachment in obedience to this order.
Very respectfully,
Gideon Welles
Secretary of the Navy
Lieutenant Commander / Francis M. Bunce
South A. B. Squadron / off Charleston, S.C.

[Docketing:]
Forwarded / J A Dahlgren / Rear Admiral Comdg / S. A. B. Squadron

Forwarded May 14th/64 / S C Rowan / Commodore Cmdg / New Ironsides

Reported for passage North / May 17th 1864 / ? ? / ? / Cmdg Massachusetts

Arrived at Hartford, Conn. / May 21st 1864 / F. M. Bunce / Cmdr.

Gideon Welles (1802-1878) was a Connecticut native, journalist, Democratic state legislator, Hartford Postmaster, and Chief of the Bureau of Provisions and Clothing for the Navy early in his career. In the 1848 presidential election, Welles left the Democratic Party over the issue of the expansion of slavery. Welles founded an influential Republican organ, the Hartford Evening Press, in 1856. Abraham Lincoln appointed Welles as Secretary of the Navy, and Welles was highly effective in mobilizing the resources of the country for an extensive blockade and offensive operations against the Confederacy. Abraham Lincoln nicknamed Welles his "Neptune," and Welles served as Secretary of the Navy from 1861 to 1869.

Francis Marvin Bunce (1836-1901) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1857. He was promoted to lieutenant by the beginning of the Civil War and participated in the Union blockade of the Confederacy as part of the Gulf Squadron and then served as executive officer of the gunboat USS Penobscot during the siege of Yorktown in the Peninsula Campaign. He later supported the attack on Morris Island and Fort Wagner outside Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. In 1863, he participated in the siege of Charleston aboard the monitor USS Patapsco. He later served on or commanded several other monitors for the remainder of the war. After the war, he commanded the monitor USS Monadnock in its voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco, the first extended ocean voyage by a monitor. Over the next three decades, he alternated land and sea duty and gained promotion to captain (1883), commodore (1894), and acting rear admiral (1895), when he took command of the North Atlantic Squadron. He favored training ships to act as a squadron rather than individually and the outbreak of the Cuban War of Independence heightened tensions with Spain. In 1897, he took command of the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn, from which he sent the battleship USS Maine to Key West, Florida, from which it was deployed to Havana, where its explosion triggered the Spanish-American War. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1898 and retired from the Navy at the statutory retirement age of 62 on December 25, 1898.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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