Background

Sumner Welles was born in New York City on October 14, 1892.

Education

He was educated at Groton School and graduated from Harvard in 1914. Entering the diplomatic service in 1915, he served as chargé d'affaires in Japan.

Career

In 1921 he was placed in charge of Latin American affairs in the U. S. State Department. During his short term he undertook a special mission for the department in the Dominican Republic, assisting in the reorganization of Dominican finances. From this assignment came his most important literary work, Naboth's Vineyard, still the best history of the area. In 1933 Welles was appointed undersecretary of state in Franklin Roosevelt's administration, an appointment made easier by his earlier association with Roosevelt. His service in this post for more than a decade was the most distinguished part of his career. Welles was one of the architects of the good-neighbor policy aimed at a better understanding between the United States and Latin America. During one of his earlier assignments as ambassador to Cuba (troubled by revolution in 1932-1933), he seemed to toy with the idea of intervention, and he did play a part in removing the radical Grau San Martín regime from office. But as his career developed, he came more and more to advocate nonintervention. He attended the series of Latin American conferences that distinguished the Roosevelt administration-the conferences at Buenos Aires in 1933 and in 1936, at Lima in 1938, at Havana in 1940, and at Rio de Janeiro in 1942. In 1940 he also made a special trip to Europe by order of the President to assess the war situation and to talk with European leaders. Nothing came of this mission. A serious dispute arose in the Rio conference of 1942 as to the form by which the nations of Latin America would declare their solidarity with the United States. Hull and Welles both appealed to Roosevelt, and Roosevelt sustained Welles's idea. The rift between Welles and Hull widened, and in the fall of 1943 Welles resigned. During the last 18 years of his life, Welles wrote several books: A Time for Decision (1946), Where Are We Heading (1948), Seven Decisions (1951). He also edited, with Donald McKay of Harvard, an important series of volumes on the relations of the United States with Latin America. He died on September 24, 1961, in Bernardsville, N. J.

Achievements

• He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Under Secretary of State from 1936 to 1943, during FDR's presidency. The street adjacent to the current Embassy of the United States in Riga, Latvia was named after Sumner Welles (as Samnera Velsa iela) in 2012.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Time for Decision

    (The author Welles, was the son of an aristocratic family ...)

  • Where are we heading?

    (The former under secretary of state writes on internation...)

  • The world of the four freedoms,

    (Collection of speeches by Under Secretary of State Sumner...)

  • Seven Decisions That Shaped History

    (STATED FIRST EDITION. WITHDRAWN LIBRARY BOOK WITH USUAL S...)

  • The United States and the Caribbean

    (Harvard Univ. Press, 1947. 253-page Hardcover. DJ missing...)

  • Naboth's Vineyard: The Dominican Republic 1844-1924. In two volumes
  • Sumner Welles: FDR's Global Strategist

Views

Quotations: "There are few of us so blind as not to realize that unless the moral force of religious conviction impels, the goal of truth and lasting international cooperation cannot be attained; there are few of us who do not appreciate the vital truth of the words, 'If God does not build the house, those who build it build in vain. '"

Personality

Welles was a highly competent diplomat, but he did not always get along well with Roosevelt's secretary of state, Cordell Hull, and his personal intimacy with the President was irksome to Hull.

Connections

On April 14, 1915, Sumner Welles married Esther "Hope" Slater of Boston, the sister of a Harvard roommate, in Webster, Massachusetts. Welles and his wife had two sons. In 1923, Slater obtained a divorce from Welles in Paris "on grounds of abandonment and refusal to live with his wife. " On June 27, 1925, Welles married Mathilde Scott Townsend (1885–1949), "a noted international beauty". Mathilde died of peritonitis in 1949 while vacationing in Switzerland with Welles. On January 8, 1952, Welles married Harriette Appleton Post, a childhood friend, in New York City.

Father:

Benjamin J. Welles

Mother:

Frances Wyeth Swan

Wife:

Mathilde Scott Townsend

They were married from 1925 to her death in 1949.

Wife:

Harriette Appleton Post

They were married from 1952 to his death in 1961.

Wife:

Esther "Hope" Slater

Sumner Welles was married to Esther from 1915 to 1923.

Son:

Arnold Welles

Son:

Benjamin Welles

References

• Sumner Welles, Postwar Planning, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1937-1943 (Gutenberg-e)
• The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy: Volume XIII: Cordell Hull 1933-44 in two volumes Volume II
• Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welles