Scope and Content Note
The papers of Robert W. Shufeldt (1822-1895) span the years 1836-1910, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1860-1880. Shufeldt’s forty-five year naval career was interrupted by a nine-year period in the merchant marine service and in surveying for a proposed isthmian canal route. The correspondence for his broken-service years, however, includes many papers of interest on naval affairs.
The Shufeldt collection consists primarily of correspondence, letterbooks, and subject files, supplemented by diaries, notebooks, journals, logbooks, newspaper clippings, printed matter, and a small file of material concerning explorations in Africa by Shufeldt’s youngest son, Mason. The topics of interest are the nineteenth-century navy, its growth and development; Civil War naval and diplomatic activities; foreign relations in the 1870s and 1880s, especially with Africa and Asia; and the Tehuantepec, Mexico, surveying expeditions. The collection is organized into nine series: Diaries, Notebooks, Logbooks, and Journals; Letterbooks, Letterpress Books, and Letter Index Books; Official Correspondence; General Correspondence; Subject File; Newspaper Clippings; Printed Matter; Miscellany; and Mason A. Shufeldt File.
Shufeldt resigned his commission in the navy in 1854 and entered the merchant marine to command the Quaker City. Later, he became interested in the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico and in 1860 led an expedition through that region. In 1861, Shufeldt was appointed consul general to serve in Cuba. Correspondents for the years 1839-1861 include A. D. Bach, George Bancroft, Charles Stuart Boggs, Benjamin F. Butler, John Adolphus Dahlgren, Samuel Ffrancis Du Pont, David Glasgow Farragut, John Pendleton Kennedy, James Murray Mason, Matthew Calbraith Perry, David D. Porter, and Gideon Welles.
Shufeldt returned to active duty in the navy in 1863 with the rank of commander. During the Civil War, her served both ashore and afloat. After the Civil War, Shufeldt served at sea in the Far East and in 1868 he returned to the United States and was assigned ordnance duty ashore in New York.
In 1870, Shufeldt was promoted to the rank of captain and was assigned special duty in command of a survey expedition to Tehuantepec, Mexico. After the exploration, Shufeldt recommended that this territory be considered as a likely site for a transisthmus canal.
In 1878, Shufeldt was given command of the Ticonderoga that was to sail on a round-the-world cruise. The documentation for the cruise fills about one-third of the containers in this collection. After returning to the United States in 1881, he was reassigned to Peking, China, as the naval attaché.
Shufeldt was appointed president of the Naval Advisory Board, for which he served two years before retiring in 1884. It was during this last tour of duty that he helped formulate the plans for a new navy incorporating the technological advance from sail to steam propulsion and from wood to iron and steel hulls.