Sumner Welles

Benjamin Sumner Welles (October 14, 1892September 24, 1961) was an American government official and diplomat in the Foreign Service. He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Under Secretary of State from 1936 to 1943, during Roosevelt's presidency.

Born in New York City to a wealthy, well-connected political family, Welles graduated from Harvard College in 1914. He entered the Foreign Service at the advice of Franklin Roosevelt, who was a family friend. Welles was excited by Woodrow Wilson's ideas about how American principles could reorder the international system based on liberal democracy, free-trade capitalism, international law, a league of nations, and an end to colonialism.

Welles specialized in Latin American diplomatic affairs and served several posts in Washington and in the field. President Calvin Coolidge distrusted Welles because of his divorce and private sex life. He left public service and from bases in his two mansions in the Washington area he wrote a book on the history of the Dominican Republic.

When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he put Welles in charge of Latin American affairs as Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Welles became heavily involved in negotiations that removed Cuban president Gerardo Machado from power and replaced him with rival Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada. He was later promoted to Under Secretary of State, in which role he continued to be active in Latin American issues, but also expanded into European affairs as World War II began in Europe in 1939. In 1940, he issued the Welles Declaration which condemned Soviet occupation of the Baltic states and proved to be a minor point of contention among the Soviets and their Western allies once the U.S. entered the war in 1941. Welles used American power and his senior position to intrude into the domestic affairs of other countries, especially choosing leaders who supported American policies. After the fall of France, he downgraded French affairs because they no longer were a major power. Roosevelt relied on Welles much more than on the official Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who became the enemy of Welles.

Welles was forced out of government service by Secretary Hull when it was revealed he had solicited two men for sex. Returning to private life, he continued to write books on foreign relations and became an advisor to media organizations. He was a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the post-war "red scare", though he was never formally sanctioned. He died in New Jersey in 1961, survived by his third wife and several children.

Early life

Benjamin Sumner Welles was born in New York City, the son of Benjamin Sumner Welles Jr. (1857–1935) and Frances Wyeth Swan (1863–1911). He preferred to be called Sumner after his famous relative Charles Sumner, a leading Senator from Massachusetts during the Civil War and Reconstruction. His family was wealthy and was connected to the era's most prominent families. He was a grandnephew of Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, known as "''the'' Mrs. Astor". Among his ancestors were Thomas Welles,Donna H. Siemiatkoski, ''The Descendants of Governor Thomas Welles of Connecticut, 1590–1658, and His Wife, Alice Tomes'' (Gateway Press, 1990) a colonial Governor of Connecticut, and Increase Sumner, Governor of Massachusetts from 1797 to 1799. Although the two men were occasionally mistaken for cousins, Welles was no relation to director Orson Welles.

The Welles family was also connected to the Roosevelts. A cousin of Sumner Welles married James "Rosy" Roosevelt, Jr., half-brother of future President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). At the age of 10, Welles was entered in Miss Kearny's Day School for Boys in New York City. In September 1904, he entered Groton School in Massachusetts, where he remained for six years. There he roomed with Hall Roosevelt, the brother of Eleanor Roosevelt. In March 1905 at the age of 12 Welles served as a page at Franklin D. Roosevelt's wedding to Eleanor.

Welles attended Harvard College where he studied "economics, Iberian literature and culture", and graduated after three years in 1914.

Diplomatic career

After graduating from Harvard, Welles followed the advice of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and joined the U.S. Foreign Service. A ''New York Times'' profile described him while he joined the foreign service: "Tall, slender, blond, and always correctly tailored, he concealed a natural shyness under an appearance of dignified firmness. Although intolerant of inefficiency, he brought to bear unusual tact and a self-imposed patience."''The New York Times''
Harold B. Hinton, "Welles: Our Man of the Hour in Cuba"
August 20, 1933, accessed November 8, 2010 He secured an assignment to Tokyo, where he served in the embassy as third secretary only briefly.

Latin America

Welles soon became a specialist in Latin American affairs. He served in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1919 and became fluent in Spanish. In 1921, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes appointed him to head the Division of Latin American Affairs.

In March 1922, Welles briefly resigned from the State Department. He was unsympathetic to the view held by American diplomacy that military might was meant to protect the overseas interests of American business. Hughes brought him back the next year as a special commissioner to the Dominican Republic. His particular assignment was to oversee the withdrawal of American forces and to negotiate protection for overseas investors in the Dominican Republic's debt. Welles remained in that post for three years and his work was accomplished after his departure in a 1924 treaty.

In 1924, President Coolidge sent Welles to act as mediator between disputing parties in Honduras. The country had lacked a legitimate government since the election of 1923 failed to produce a majority for any candidate and the legislature had failed to exercise its power to appoint a new president. Negotiations managed by Welles from April 23 to 28 produced an interim government under General Vicente Tosta, who promised to appoint a cabinet representing all factions and to schedule a presidential election as soon as possible in which he would not be a candidate. Negotiations ended with the signing of an agreement aboard the USS ''Milwaukee'' in the port of Amapala.

Years out of government service

Coolidge, however, disapproved of Welles' 1925 marriage to Mathilde Scott Townsend, who had only recently divorced the President's friend, Senator Peter Gerry of Rhode Island. He promptly ended Welles' diplomatic career.

Welles then retired to his estate at Oxon Hill, Maryland. He devoted himself to writing and his two-volume history of the Dominican Republic, ''Naboth's Vineyard: The Dominican Republic, 1844–1924'' appeared in 1928. ''Time'' described the work as "a ponderous, lifeless, two-volume work which was technically a history of Santo Domingo, actually a careful indictment of U.S. foreign policy in the Hemisphere". James Reston summarized its thesis: "we should keep in our own back yard and stop claiming rights for ourselves that we denied to other sovereign States".''The New York Times''
James B. Reston, "Acting Secretary"
August 3, 1941, accessed November 8, 2010

He served as an unofficial adviser to Dominican President Horacio Vásquez.

During the presidential election of 1932, Welles provided foreign policy expertise to the Roosevelt campaign. He was a major contributor to the campaign as well.

Cuba

In April 1933, FDR appointed Welles Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, but when a revolution in Cuba against President Gerardo Machado left its government divided and uncertain, he became instead the President's special envoy to Cuba. He arrived in Havana in May 1933. His mission was to negotiate a settlement so that the U.S. could avoid intervening as U.S. law, namely the Platt Amendment

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