Catalog 64

T he R aab C ollection ~Philadelphia~

T he R aab C ollection

C atalog 64

P.O. Box 471 Ardmore, PA 19003 (800) 977-8333 www.raabcollection.com

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During the Revolution, Virginia Governor Thomas Jefferson Orders the Defense of the Western Frontier

Having written and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 while a representative to the Continental Congress, Jefferson returned to Virginia late that year. He served until 1779 in the House of Delegates, one of the two houses of the General Assembly of Virginia that were established in 1776 by the state’s new constitution. In this post, Jefferson sought to liberalize Virginia’s laws. Joined by his old law teacher, George Wythe, and by James Madison and George Mason, he introduced a number of bills that were resisted fiercely by those representing the planter class. In 1776 he succeeded in obtaining the abolition of entail (which limited the inheritance of land to the wealthy class); his proposal to abolish primogeniture (requiring that entire inheritances go to the eldest son) would become law in 1785. Jefferson proudly noted that “these laws, drawn by myself, laid the ax to the foot of pseudoaristocracy.” He believed education to be a crucial part of the success of the “experiment” undertaken in 1776 and had faith in the educated “common man” and his ability to elect wise and virtuous leaders. With this in mind, and intending to establish a free system of tax-supported elementary education for all persons except slaves, Jefferson wrote a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,

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a Bill for Establishing a Public Library, and a Bill for Establishment of a System of Public Education; these were defeated, as was his measure to modernize the curriculum of the College of William and Mary.

In June 1779, Jefferson took office as Governor of Virginia. That very month he introduced his bill on religious liberty, which touched off a quarrel that caused turmoil in Virginia for 8 years. The bill was significant, as no other state - indeed, no other nation - provided for complete religious liberty at that time. Jefferson’s bill stated “that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions on matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”

Since the Revolutionary War was ongoing, one of Jefferson’s primary tasks was to provide for the defense of the state. At that time, Virginia’s military commitments stretched from the Mississippi in the west to the Continental Army in the East, from troops dispatched to Charleston in the South to Virginian George Rogers Clark operating in the Northwest. They were combatting not only the British, but tribes of Indians who were taking part in the war as Britain’s allies. In one famous campaign, Clark acted on his belief that the best way to end Indian raids was to seize British outposts north of the Ohio River, thereby destroying British influence with the Indians. He led a successful expedition into the Illinois country, and in February 1779 took the British stronghold in what is present Vincennes, Indiana. In another, in April 1779, in retaliation for raids on colonial settlements, American troops from North Carolina and Virginia attacked Chickamauga Indian villages in Tennessee. There were plenty of military challenges in the West but not enough men to handle them.

Virginia responded. The Governor received authorization to appoint an officer in every county (the county lieutenants, who were mainly already serving as justices of the peace) to recruit men for the duration of the war, and if there were not enough volunteers, to impose a draft. Jefferson and the state’s Council worked with the Board of War on specific defense measures, and before Jefferson had been in office for two months, together they formulated a plan for the defense of the Western frontier and instructions for the Governor to send to county lieutenants to obtain their compliance. The order was issued on July 23, 1779 over Jefferson’s signature, as the “Executive Council Orders For the Defense of the Western Frontier”. It related that “The act of General Assembly entitled an act for raising a body of troops for the defense of the Commonwealth having directed that two battalions shall be raised for the Western and two for the Eastern service, the Board advises the Governor to order that the men to be raised according to the said act” be apportioned as provided. The county lieutenants were also requested to recommend to the Governor two men that could be relied on to assume positions of command as a captain and a lieutenant.

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The Men to be raised in your County...and th e Officers to be recommended by you, are to hol d themselves in readiness on the shortest warning

Hampshire County, now part of West Virginia, was then on the Northwest frontier of Virginia. It was concerned with Western defense and was assigned to the Western service pool. Autograph Letter Signed, Williamsburg, August 17, 1779, to the County Lieutenant of Hampshire. “You are desired to call together your Field Officers and in conjunction with them to recommend to the Executive a Captain and Lieutenant to take command in one of the battalions to be raised for the defence of the Western frontier, under an act of the late Assembly entitled an act for raising a body of troops for the defence of the Commonwealth. The men to be raised in your County under the same act, and the Officers to be recommended by you, are to hold themselves in readiness on the shortest warning to proceed to such Western rendezvous as shall be notified to them by the Executive or the Field Officer who shall be directed to take command of them. Be pleased to transmit your recommendations to the Executive in Williamsburg by the earliest opportunity you can, and also to report to them from time to time your progress in raising your men.”

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Jefferson’s political enemies criticized his performance as war governor mercilessly. He was charged with failure to provide for the adequate defense of Richmond in 1780-81, and of cowardice and “pusillanimous conduct” when he fled the capital at the time of that crisis. In June 1781 he retired from the governorship. The Virginia assembly subsequently voted that “an inquiry be made into the conduct of the executive of this state.”

Jefferson was exonerated: in fact, the assembly unanimously voted a resolution of appreciation of his conduct. The episode left Jefferson feeling bitter about the rewards of public service, but that feeling didn’t last long. In 1785 he headed for Paris to succeed Benjamin Franklin as American ambassador to France. $35,000

President James Monroe Seeks to Discharge “my duty, with advantage to my country ” He prefers a man who has “served his country in our revolutionary struggle” James Monroe was one of the most diligent public servants in the nation’s first half century. When appointing officials, he sought the best men, and not merely relying on others, often set about the task of finding them and assuring himself that they were the right people for the job.

When the post of Collector at Petersburg, Virginia opened up, he wrote a prominent member of that community requesting his opinion of the leading candidates. That man was Thomas Shore, Postmaster of Petersburg, whose father (referenced below by Monroe) was physician Dr. John Shore, Mayor and Controller of the Port of Petersburg at various times. At the request of President-elect Thomas Jefferson, the elder Shore helped successfully test and promote in America use of the experimental process of smallpox vaccination developed by Dr. Edward Jenner in England. Mordecai Barbour, a prime candidate, was an officer in the Revolution, serving under the command of General LaFayette. He was also an officer in the Culpepper County militia at the siege of York and conveyed the prisoners to Winchester. Barbour ’s father had been a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses and his son John became the Governor of Virginia.

Autograph Letter Signed as President, Washington, March 10, 1824, to Thomas Shore, headed “confidential,” and showing much about Monroe’s leadership style. “The friendship which existed between your father & myself, and the confidence with which your character inspires me, will explain my motive in writing to you this letter. The vacancy in the office of Collector at Petersburg occasioned by the death of my late friend General Jones, has produced an extensive competition among men of real merit, several of whom are personally known to me, and for whom I have esteem. One of them, Mr. Mordecai Barbour, less known to me personally than two or three others, is represented to have served his country in our revolutionary struggle, & to have been wounded in an action near Jamestown. This service gives him a claim of great force, provided his character in all other respects is such as to justify his appointment. I wish therefore that you would be so good as to communicate to me freely and without delay your opinion on this subject, & also the estimation in which he is held by the citizens of the town. Among the other candidates, there are several between whom it would be painful to discriminate. Among these, Mr. Peterson stands on ground which seems to justify a preference in his favor, provided his qualifications are deemed adequate. The circumstance to which I allude is the office which he now holds, that of surveyor of the customs. I mention him only in the event that it should be deemed improper to nominate Mr. Barbour. I wish you to communicate to me responding to the standing of these gentlemen, and of the others who are candidates for the vacant office to aid me in the discharge of my duty, with advantage to my country, and to give satisfaction to my fellow citizens of Petersburg & and the neighboring country.” $5,000

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James Madison Approves of the “love of truth & devotion to the cause of Science” Henry Rowe Schoolcraft was an explorer, geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his travels and early studies of Native American cultures. He explored and wrote about Arkansas, Missouri and the Great Lakes region, and is best remembered for his discovery of the source of the Mississippi River. In 1822, he spoke before the American Geological Society on the subject “Memoir on the Geological Position of a Fossil Tree discovered in the Secondary Rocks of the River Des Plaines.” The rocks were petrified, and this led Schoolcroft to a discussion of their composition, strata and age, and the ages and agents it took to develop them, which led him to a conclusion that they predated the earliest organic life. That speech was published and Schoolcroft sent a copy of the paper to former President James Madison.

Science was important to Madison, and he associated it with freedom of information and liberty. In his First Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1809, he specifically stated his intention “to favor in like manner the advancement of science and the diffusion of information as the best aliment to true liberty...” Another time he wrote, “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” In writing about Thomas Jefferson after his death, he listed Jefferson’s scientific knowledge even before his political accomplishments: “[He] will live in the memory and gratitude of the wise & good, as a luminary of Science, as a votary of liberty, as a model of patriotism, and as a benefactor of human kind.”

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The present is a very inquisitive age, and its researches of late have been ardently directed to the primitive composition and structure of our Globe

Madison responded with great interest to Schoolcroft’s speech, and in that response commented on the 19th century’s growing and notable interest in science, and his belief that science will provide mankind with answers to many questions. He also congratulated Schoolcroft on the part he was playing. Autograph Letter Signed, Montpellier, January 22, 1822, to Schoolcraft. “I have received a copy of your Memoir on the fossil tree, which you politely forwarded. Of the decisive bearing of this phenomenon on important questions in geology, I rely more on your good judgment than my own. The present is a very inquisitive age, and its researches of late have been ardently directed to the primitive composition and structure of our Globe, as far as it has been penetrated, and to the processes by which succeeding changes have been produced. The discoveries already made are encouraging; but vast room is left for the industry & sagacity of Geologists. This is sufficiently shown by the opposite theories which have been espoused; one of them regarding water, the other fire, as the great agent employed by nature in her work. It may well be expected that this hemisphere, which has been least explored, will yield its full proportion of materials toward a satisfactory system. Your zealous efforts to share in the contributions do credit to your love of truth & devotion to the cause of Science. And I wish they may be rewarded with the success they promise, and with all the personal gratifications to which they entitle you.” The address leaf bearing Madison’s franking signature is still present.

In time it would become known that the earth’s composition and structure are the result of varied forces, thus synthesizing into one coherent theory the elements Madison separated (and more). It is interesting that Madison implicitly considers as a given the idea that the earth is very old. $12,500

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Connecticut Responds to George Washington’s Call For More Troops For the Continental Army In a rare Revolutionary War broadside, it resolves to send its own militiamen to help with the expected summer campaign against the British In the spring of 1780, George Washington was waiting for the French to arrive and planning to launch a summer campaign against the British in New York. To accomplish this, he sought to maximize the number of troops at his disposal.

So the call went out for additional men, and the state of Connecticut heeded that call. In May, the General Assembly resolved to send 1,500 men to the Continental Army, and on June 30 the Governor, Jonathan Trumbull, and the state Council of Safety, met on the subject. In addition to raising the new recruits, they determined to call on men in the Connecticut militia to volunteer to serve with the Continental Army until December 31, well after the expected 1780 campaign would be ended. They then issued a broadside to communicate the information to the militia companies.

This broadside, entitled “At a Meeting of the Governor and Council of Safety, holden at Hartford, 30th June, A.D. 1780,” prefaced the call for volunteers by saying that “General Washington and the Committee of Congress” had written letters representing that it was “indispensably necessary for the safety of this and the United States” for this action to be taken. It then laid out the details of the Council’s resolution, the call for troops and their use in the Continental Army, and it was signed in print by Jedidiah Strong, Clerk. It is an extremely rare broadside.

William Worthington was colonel of the 7th Connecticut militia regiment, and he received a copy of the broadside. He turned it on the verso and dictated a letter to his company commanders, dated July 3, 1780, which was written out and signed for him by his adjutant, in which he notified them of its contents. “To the commanders of the several military companies and the 7th Regiment of militia...You will see by this act of the Governor and Council of Safety that 1000 of the state draft of the militia that were to serve for three months are now to serve in the Connecticut line of the Continental Army until the last day of December next and that 1520 are to serve as militia.

You are hereby directed and ordered to raise from the several companies under your command 46 rankand-file according to the details given you by the adjutant pursuing the design of the within resolve...”

This show of patriotism brought Washington more men, but the French arrived too late for a 1780 campaign. It was postponed until 1781, at which point the focus of the American attack was not New York, but Yorktown, Virginia. $2,500

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As Negotiations For the Treaty of Greenville Begin With the Indian Tribes, Lead American Representative William Henry Harrison Acts to Ensure the Security of the Negotiating Site At the Battle of the Thames in 1813, Harrison led the Americans to a decisive victory over British troops and their Indian allies, with the great chief Tecumsah being killed. This American victory led to the re-establishment of U.S. control over the Northwest frontier. The death of Tecumseh was a crushing blow to the Indian alliance he had created, and it effectively dissolved. Shortly after the battle, Harrison signed an armistice at Detroit with the chiefs or representatives of several tribes. He then transferred most of his regulars eastward to the Niagara River and went himself to Washington where he was acclaimed a hero. However, after a comparatively petty dispute, his political foe Secretary of War John Armstrong maneuvered Harrison into his resigning his commission as Major General on May 11, 1814. Armstrong accepted the resignation.

The President remained confident in Harrison and wanted to utilize his experience in dealing with Indian tribes (and warring against them). So the very day after Harrison officially resigned his commission, Madison appointed him to negotiate a treaty with the north-western Indian tribes. Michigan Governor Lewis Cass was named to assist in this mission. The focus of the negotiations would be to secure peace on the frontier and have the Indians turn their warriors against the British. The idea of demanding land cessions from the Indians was dropped at Harrison’s insistence, as it would complicate the negotiations and, he felt, after the war the land could be obtained with little trouble. Negotiations were to begin on July 5, 1814, but were postponed a few days, ostensibly because Harrison wanted the council house moved, but more likely because both Cass and some Indian tribes had not yet arrived. The Shawnee came on July 7, as did Cass, and on that day Harrison notified the tribes that negotiations would commence the next day. He also acted to make sure, with so many Indians there, that there would be sufficient American troops on site to defend the place should the need occur.

Letter Signed, Greenville, Ohio, July 7, 1814, to Othniel Looker, acting Governor of Ohio, with its address panel reading “Now at Dayton, Ohio.” “Since my letter of yesterday General Cass has arrived and informs that the troops here are to be withdrawn immediately from this place, a circumstance I was unacquainted with at the time I wrote to you last. General Cass and myself have therefore determined that as some troops are necessary to preserve good order & guard the public stores, it will be proper that [you] forward two full companies of those who may now be on their march nearest to this place.” He adds a P.S. “You will please instruct the officer who may command those troops that he is to be subject to the orders of the commissioners.” The address panel is still present, though separated.

The nearby troops Harrison refers were doubtless part of a two-pronged offensive under way at that very time. American troops under Colonel George Croghan, U.S. commander at Detroit, attempted to retake Fort Mackinac in Michigan, while a second force operated against Prairie du Chein on the Mississippi River. The goal of these attacks was to establish American control in the Upper Great Lakes. At Prairie du Chein the Americans were initially successful, but that was not the case at Fort Mackinac. The attack there was not successful.

On July 22, 1814, a treaty of peace and friendship was concluded between the United States and the Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Seneca, and Miami Indians. The document, known as the Second Treaty of Greenville, resulted in the tribes agreeing to become active allies of the United States, should hostilities with Great Britain continue. This treaty publicly marked an American policy of alliance with these Indians, and it caused the British peace negotiators at Ghent to abandon their Indian allies, thus hastening the end of the War of 1812. $5,000

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A Portion of the Great Filibuster Speech Given by John Quincy Adams on the House Floor That Blocked the Annexation of Texas and Laid the Foundation For Opposition to the Gag Rule Denouncing administration duplicity, “two Presidents of the United States had, for the last eighteen months, been goading Congress into a war with Mexico...”

Texas had barely won its independence in 1836 when it decided to become a part of the United States. A referendum held soon after the Battle of San Jacinto showed Texans favoring annexation by a vote of 3277 to 93. The question of the annexation of Texas quickly became one of the most controversial issues in American politics in the late 1830s and early 1840s.

Annexation was controversial on three important points: it meant the expansion of slavery into a vast new territory and there were concerns that U.S. annexation of Texas would provoke a war with Mexico, whose government never recognized General Santa Anna’s surrender of its former province. Lastly, having two Texans in the U.S. Senate would upset the sectional balance of power in that body.

This annexation controversy took place in an atmosphere already heightened by the fight over the gag rule in the U.S. House of Representatives. The gagging of anti-slavery petitions by Congress started in 1835, with pro-slavery forces effectively preventing any discussion of slavery in Congress. So anti-slavery forces began submitting petitions for the abolition of slavery, believing that since there was a right to petition the government guaranteed in the First Amendment to the Constitution, such petitions, and thus slavery itself, would have to be discussed. The pro-slavery congressmen responded with a series of gag rules that automatically “tabled” all such petitions, preventing them from being read or discussed. From the inception of the gag resolutions, John Quincy Adams led the opposition to the gag rules in the House, arguing that they were a direct violation of First Amendment rights. Rather than suppress anti-slavery petitions, however, the gag rules only served to offend Northerners and dramatically increase the number of petitions. In response, by December 1837 Congress tightened the gag rule even further.

In 1838, the first attempt was made in Congress to authorize the annexation of Texas. The elderly John Quincy Adams, then a member of the House of Representatives, staged a 22-day filibuster to block annexation. From June 16 to July 7, 1838, combining the related pro-slavery annexation and gag rule issues, he delivered a momentous speech on the floor of the House discussing freedom of petition and debate, the annexation of Texas, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and the duplicity of the administration and Southern slave states. As he delivered it, many Southern Congressmen got up and left the hall. Adams filibustered Congress for three weeks, giving up the floor only when Congress adjourned for the summer recess. His speech was so powerful in marshalling opposition to the Texas bill that the Van Buren administration withdrew its support and the annexation attempt was blocked.

After Congress ended its session in July, Adams lingered in Washington to write out and publish his extemporaneous address. It was published as a pamphlet in late 1838, and entitled, “Speech of John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts upon the right of the people, men and women, to petition on the Freedom of Speech and of Debate in the House of Representatives of the United States; on the Resolutions of Seven State legislatures and the petitions of more than 100,000 petitioners relating to the annexation of Texas to the Union.”

In the following two-page fragment from this speech, written out for publication, Adams denounces the duplicity of the Jackson and Van Buren administrations and their thirst for a war with Mexico. The pages are numbered 9 and 10. The content speaks for itself.

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“[A courier of] the Department of State, was afterwards sent to draw the circle of Popilius [demand an instanteous answer] around [Mexican] President Bustamente; and no sooner had another Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from Mexico set his foot in Washington, than he was insulted off to New Orleans, by a paragraph in the annual Message of the President of the United States to Congress, spurring that body to war, and telling them that negotiation was exhausted, and that they must provide self-redressing measures for the rights of their fellowcitizens, which lie the Executive Administration was no longer able to maintain.

“But the duplicity, which I have charged upon the late and present Administrations of our Government, in the conduct of our national intercourse with Mexico and Texas, has not only been signalized by its bearing upon those foreign States, but it has been practised with equal assiduity upon the People of this Union themselves. It was practised by the legerdemain trickery, which smuggled through both Houses of Congress, against the repeatedly declared sentiments of a large majority of the House of Representatives, in the form of a contingent appropriation for a Minister, the recognition of the Republic of Texas. It has been practised by the long-protracted suppression of all debate in both Houses, most especially in the House of Representatives, concerning our relations with Mexico, and above all with regard to the annexation of Texas to this Union. The systematic smothering of all petitions against this measure, extended to the resolutions of seven State Legislatures, could have no other intention than to disarm the resistance against it which was manifesting itself throughout all the slaveless States of the Union. It was distinctly seen that if a full, free, and unshackled discussion of the question in the House of Representatives should be permitted, its issue would show an overwhelming majority against the measure at this time.

“In no stronger light was this double-dealing ever disclosed than in the treatment of the petitions, memorials, and legislative resolutions, relating to the annexation, referred by the House to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and never looked into by them. The chairman of the committee actually charged the House with inadvertence in referring to the committee the petition from Lubec. He maintained that the subsequent reference of all the State resolutions, and all the petitions, had been contrary to the declared opinions of a large majority of the House, and he lamented that the motion to lay on the table, or the motion for the previous question upon the report of the committee, did not prevail. He represented the answer of the Secretary of State to the proposals of Mr. Memucan Hunt, as a prompt, positive, and irrevocable refusal; yet, what were the objections alleged by the Secretary against the acceptance of the offer? A war with Mexico; and a doubt just hinted of the constitutional power of Congress. But two Presidents of the United States had, for the last eighteen months, been goading Congress into a war with Mexico, and the chairman of the committee himself declared that he thought, with the precedents of Louisiana and Florida, there was no room for the Constitutional doubt. He, too, had been among the most eager and inveterate stimulants to a Mexican war, and if it was true, as two Presidents had assured Congress, and as the chairman himself had responded in choral unison to the assertion, that a declaration of war by the United States against Mexico would have been justifiable in February, 1837, what objection could that leave to the acceptance of the proposal from Texas in September of the same year? Nothing but the Constitutional doubt, and of that the chairman of the committee had disposed by declaring, with great equanimity, that in his opinion there was nothing in it.

“In his publication of the 21st of July, Colonel Howard’s replying to my indignant remonstrances against the thrice-repeated gag, and complaining that he and his colleagues of the Committee on Foreign Affairs had not enjoyed [the opportunity of refuting on the floor of the House the “many errors” of my speech]...”

When Woodrow Wilson wrote his “A History of the American People”, he considered this speech so important that he included it in the book. The only other pages from this speech we could find are in major institution. $11,000

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The duplicity, which I have charged upon the late and present Administrations of our Government, in the conduct of our national intercourse with Mexico and Texas, has not only been signalized by its bearing upon those foreign States, but it has been practised with equal assiduity upon the People of this Union

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Signer and Delaware Convention President George Read Acts on the Order of Congress to Organize an Effective Continental Army In late August 1776, General Washington and his army suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Long Island.

The British then moved on New York and by mid-September would take that city. American troops performed poorly; this was a low point for Washington and American arms. Yet American leaders were forced to accept that the British were intent on sending massive forces to end the Revolution. Washington implored Congress to act, and action must mean organization of a professional army, something many Americans would look on with disfavor. As Caesar Rodney wrote home to fellow Delaware signers of the Declaration of Independence George Read and Thomas McKean, justifying the need to act and the urgency: “By letter from General Washington to Congress, we are informed that General Howe with about 6 or 7 thousand of his troops took possession of New York on Sunday last. We are not so much Astonished that he should get possession of New York (because we have Expected it for Some time past) as at the Scandelous behaviour of our troops that were placed to defend the post Where the enemy Landed, who run away from their lines & breastwork, in a most dastardly manner.”

Just after the debacle at Long Island, the Continental Congress set about strengthening and reorganizing the army. On September 16, 1776, it passed the “Eighty-eight Battalion Resolve,” the measure that created the army that would eventually defeat the British.

This established an army of 88 regiments of infantry, with each of the 13 states assigned a quota based on its population. Enlistment terms were extended to three years or “the length of the war” to avoid the year-end crises that depleted forces (including the notable near collapse of the army at the end of 1776, which could have ended the war in a loss by forfeit). The act also gave Washington authority to raise further troops, it set the proper compensation for officers and soldiers, and guaranteed each officer a grant of land. Still more was to be done.

From the 7th to the 10th of October, 1776, Congress took further steps to clarify and bolster these efforts. On the 7th, it established the proportional distribution of regiments.

On the 8th, it set further compensation and gave instructions to the states for the disposition of the regiments. It also specifically mentioned applying this measure to a state’s troops serving in New York and New Jersey. Congress, as was its custom, ordered that notice of this information be provided to “the Assemblies, Conventions, and Councils of Safety of the several States.” John Hancock wrote to the states informing them of the acts and the importance of their cooperation. “The enclosed Resolves... will inform you of the ample Provision they have made for the Support of both officer & Soldier, who shall enter into the Service...The Pay of the former is considerably increased, and the latter is to receive annually a compleat Suit of Cloaths, or in Lieu thereof, the Sum of twenty Dollars, should he provide the Suit for himself. This additional Encouragement...will be the Means of engaging the Troops to serve during the War. For this Purpose also, I am to request you will appoint a Committee. or Committees to repair immediately to the Army, to induce such of the Troops as have been raised by your State, to enlist during the War, and to appoint Officers for the same. The Congress, for very obvious Reasons, are extremely anxious to keep the Army together... [I] beseech you, by that Love you have for your Country, her Rights, and Liberties to exert yourselves to carry them speedily and effectually into Execution, as the only Means of preserving her in this her critical and alarming Situation.”

Congress did yet more. On the 10th, it created a Navy from the ships that were struggling to compete with the British maritime behemoth. It appointed 24 commissioned naval officers and assigned to them vessels and arms. Among these were Dudley Saltonstall, Nicholas Biddle, and John Paul Jones.

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Anticipating the Declaration of Independence, the Delaware General Assembly declared its separation from the British government on June 15, 1776. Once American independence was declared in July, the General Assembly called for elections to a convention to draft a constitution for the state. The convention met in October, 1776, and George Read, who had just signed the Declaration of Independence and was a Delaware delegate to the Continental Congress, was elected President and presided. In the absence of a governor (the first one took office in February 1777), he was the senior Delaware official and thus acting in a governor ’s stead. During the convention, Read was apprised of the happenings in Congress first and foremost by Caesar Rodney, who wrote home after each major milestone during this period to his family and to Read. Plus, Read was receiving the official correspondence from Congress, very likely including the letter John Hancock addressed to governors requesting the cooperation of states in the Continental Army reorganization.

This document is completely in Read’s hand and quotes the October 1776 measures of Congress, with their call for state “assemblies, conventions and councils of safety” to take action to make the great re-structuring of the U.S. military a reality. He prepared it as part of compliance with Congress’ Order, and we conjecture that he created these edited extracts of the measures in order to present them to the Delaware convention for its participation.

Autograph Document, with signature tipped in, October, 1776, being extracts from the minutes of Congress from October 7-10, tracking the reorganization of the officer corps, army and navy. The document begins with a recitation of the salaries set for officers, also noting that enlistments are for the duration of the war. “Pay of Regimental Officers to be inlisted during Ye War.” Colonels are to receive 75 dollars and 500 acres of land. By contrast, ensigns received 20 dollars and 150 acres of land. By the 8th of October reference, Read recites the call to the states: “Recommended to assemblies conventions and Council of Safety of ye several states that have Regiments in ye Continental Service at NY Ticonderoga or N. Jersey to Appoint Committees to Proceed there and appoint their officers advising with Gen. Officers then as to the conduct, etc....Additional bounty annually to non commission officers and soldiers of a suit of Cloaths to consist for ye Present year...Recommendation to compleat ye Battalions by 10th November.” By the text on October 10th, Read lists the new Naval commanders: “Rank of ye Capts in ye Navy,” alongside the name of the vessel and number of guns. John Paul Jones sits at the 18th rank, commanding the Providence, which had 12 guns. The verso of the document reads “Extracts from minutes of Congress 7th & 8th Oct. 76,” implying perhaps that the top portion of the document was prepared when Read knew of Congress’s actions as of the 8th, and the bottom after news arrived of the naval measure of the 10th. The reference to November 10 as a target date confirms an October, 1776, date for this document.

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John Quincy Adams on Liberty, Mortality, Culture and the Glory of English Civilization Abigail Adams had no formal schooling, but her self-education included reading works by well known British writers, among them William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

Her favorite was John Milton, author of “Paradise Lost”, a giant on the British literary scene during the 17th century. His era was a time of social and religious confrontation, war and transition, and he sided with Parliament and approved of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. After the Restoration and triumph of the royal party, it became somewhat unseemly in Britain to speak well of Milton or advocate his work. But the same was not true in New England, whose inhabitants were descendants of those who made common cause with Milton. As for the Adamses of Massachusetts, love of Milton was a family trait. “If the Adamses had a culture hero,” writes Henry Wasser, “it was surely John Milton...as Charles Francis Adams said, ‘Milton was essentially the poet laureate of the Puritans...’” John Quincy Adams would later reflect on the familial partiality for Milton, “I was mortified even to the shedding of tears that I could not even conceive what it was that my father and mother admired so much in the book....I was nearly thirty when I first read the Paradise Lost with delight and astonishment.” The Adams family was famously fond of classics in English and Latin. John Adams would often accompany his correspondence with reference to civilizations and languages of old. John Quincy was a poet and literary scholar. To them, the span of Western Civilization was an arc that extended from Greece through England to the United States, a vision of culture and of freedom that had great context and texture.

In the Revolution, Americans as a whole had taken the position that there were fundamental liberties of Englishmen to which they were entitled, and that the present government of Britain had veered off the path and become a destroyer of liberties instead of a guaranteer of them. So both father and son had spent their lives fighting Britain, or rather the British King and Ministry and their supporters who were putting out the lights of freedom in their own homeland and in the colonies. But with the Napoleonic Wars long over, the difficulties between Britain and America mainly in the past, and a young new Queen and spirit in England, friendly ties began to again build.

Lord Wellesley was the brother of the Duke of Wellington. From 1797 to 1805, he served as chief administrator for the Crown in India, and later as ambassador to Spain, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. At the end of his distinguished life, he returned to his childhood lessons in and love of Latin and published “Primitiae et Reliquiae”, which included some thoughts demonstrating his love also of Milton. The work was in Latin, including some translations from English and other original works. As the New York Review wrote in 1841, “That a man of Lord Wellesley’s rank and character, whose whole life, and that a very long one, has been spent in his country’s service, and so spent as to call forth from the present premier a declaration in the House of Lords, that ‘never were services rendered by subject to sovereign in any state equal to those of the Marquess Wellesley’; that such a man should have preserved not only his fondness for the studies of his youth, but also his attainments in them undiminished to fourscore, is no inconsiderable proof, we think, both of the excellence of the system of instruction in the great public schools of England, in one of which he was educated, and of the pre-eminent adaptation of the studies themselves to create and fix in the mind a love for letters.” John McTavish, the British consul at Baltimore, was the grandson-in-law of Signer Charles Carroll of Carrollton. He sent Adams a copy of the privately printed book. Adams enjoyed both the work and what it said about England today that such a book on Milton would find favor, and he did some translations from the book’s Latin into English. McTavish informed Wellesley about these, and he was delighted and wanted to read them and include them in later editions.

“

“On whatsoever portion of the globe, the language of England shall be the mother tongue and a trace of Roman Liberty shall remain, they will be remembered and sink deep into the Souls of the virtuous and the free.”

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Autograph Letter Signed, two pages, Washington, December 16, 1841, to McTavish, speaking of England’s glory, Roman liberty, his joy at the rebirth of Milton’s popularity, and his belief that the virtuous and free would long remember such work. “Conformably to the obliging permission in your letter of the 20th ult, I enclose herewith my answer to the Marquess of Wellesley which I had recently the pleasure of receiving from you. And with it, in compliance with his Lordship’s request, I add a copy, in my own handwriting and certified by myself, of that version of his beautiful Latin verses upon Milton which he has honored with his approbation. There spoke to my heart, in that small number of the original lines, the spirit of England’s glory in the language of Roman liberty. There is in them a concentrated volume of history at the most portentious period of modern times. It was not random praise or blame that I saw in Lord Wellesley’s estimate of the character of Milton and of the age in which he lived. The rescue of the poet’s moral character from the shade which detraction had cast over it, claimed my gratitude, and desirous of conveying to you my sense of your kindness in the present of the volume, I knew not how better to express it, than in the attempt to interpret the voice of his Lordship’s Roman Muse in the native Anglo-Saxon of the bard himself. With the hope that this effort would be acceptable to you I did not anticipate that you would think it worthy of being communicated to Lord Wellesley, and little expected that he would confer upon it, by his indulgent reception of it, a value which I was far from attributing to it myself.

“His proposal to publish it in a new edition of his poems, in company with his original lines, is not only pleasing to me, but esteemed as a precious privilege. As a token after the lapse of two centuries of compatriot reverence for the memory of Milton, the Latin lines of Lord Wellesley will not be forgotten. On whatsoever portion of the globe the language of England shall be the mother tongue and a trace of Roman Liberty shall remain, they will be remembered and sink deep into the Souls of the virtuous and the free. To have been permitted to intertwine one sprig of olive in the chaplet of English oak and German laurel wreathed by the hands of Lord Wellesley round the brow of Milton, will I hope and trust be an honour prized by my children’s children, ages after all that is mortal of me shall have returned to dust.”

This letter is a work in itself and contains the very spirit of John Quincy Adams. It has political, cultural, linguistic, literary, educational and social aspects, and ends with the poetry of the elderly man’s ruminations on his own mortality. $8,000

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Declaration Signer George Read Writes Fellow Signer Caesar Rodney, a Month After Their State’s Ratification of the Articles of Confederation He was monitoring news of the War day-by-day in the newspapers George Read presided over Delaware’s constitutional convention in 1776, where he was the highest ranking official and acted as governor. Then his service as speaker of the Legislative Council (the upper house of the Delaware legislature) made him, in effect, the assistant governor of the state. In November 1777, after narrowly escaping capture

by British troops while en route from Philadelphia to Dover, he assumed the presidency (governorship) of Delaware, a post he held until March 1778. Back in the Legislative Council in 1779, he drafted the act authorizing Delaware’s ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Reflecting the views of the smaller states, Read argued that taxes levied

by Congress should be based on the population of the states, rather than on the value of lands and improvements, and that the title to western lands should be held jointly with specific limits placed on the claims of individual states to them. Caesar Rodney was another signer from Delaware and a colleague of Read in the Continental Congress. Rodney succeeded Read as Governor and was in this position when, in late February, Delaware became the second to last state to ratify the Articles. The states then looked to Maryland, the final state yet to ratify. Rodney and Read throughout the Revolutionary period were in constant communication, with each updating the other on matters of import.

An uncommon war-date Autograph Letter Signed, Newcastle, March 23, 1779, to Rodney. “Dawson, your express, will deliver you a canister of Tea which Mrs. Read procured for you some time since, no opportunity having offered for sending it to you previous to this - the cannister is borrowed and I am charged with the return of it in my next visit to Dover. We have nothing new I have not seen Saturday’s paper and I learn from Dawson that you have had Thursday’s. Mrs. desires her complements to Miss Sally and you. Geo: Read.” This letter is docketed

by Rodney. $6,000

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Abigail Adams on John Adams: The man “whom his country delighteth to honour...[he] has done them good, & not evil all the days of his life” An unknown and unpublished letter, very likely to Mercy Otis Warren, one of the more important women of her generation In September 1779, the Continental Congress appointed John Adams to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain and ordered that he proceed to Paris. He, accompanied by his sons John Quincy and Charles, sailed for France on November 15.

Their ship sprung a leak and the Adamses had to be landed in Spain instead. They traveled across northern Spain to France, reaching Paris on February 9, 1780. However, with Benjamin Franklin in charge there, Congress thought better of the assignment and instead dispatched Adams to The Hague as U.S. Minister to the Netherlands. He arrived in January 1781 and was charged with the task of obtaining Dutch political and financial support in the form of a treaty of friendship and commerce. His strenuous efforts were rewarded when in April 1782, the Netherlands extended its formal acceptance of his credentials, which constituted de facto recognition that the United States was an independent nation. Then, on October 8, 1782, a Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed and publicly announced, whereby the Dutch formally recognized the United States as an independent nation and agreed to loan it five million Guilders. This was a key step in the U.S. effort to take its rightful place in the world community of nations as a sovereign state. Adams then went to Paris, where on November 30, he, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay signed the preliminary peace treaty between the United States and Great Britain. He also signed the final treaty in 1783.

The Revolution was over, but Adams’s work was not. He returned to The Hague and on March 9, 1784, concluded a second Dutch loan in Amsterdam to save American credit. So John Adams efforts had helped the United States achieve its political and financial independence, and his place in history was assured.

At this point, the Adams family had been separated for almost five years, which was a great personal sacrifice, and there was no end to that separation in sight. So John and Abigail took advantage of the opportunity that peace provided to reunite their family.

Abigail and daughter Nabby would sail to Europe in June 1784, and all the Adamses would meet in London upon their arrival. This would be Mrs. Adams first trip abroad, so she would be leaving home and friends to make a long and difficult voyage into what must have been, to her, the unknown. But she felt her husband had been without her personal presence and support long enough. Her departure date was set for June 20, and she and friends and family said their good-byes.

Autograph Letter Signed, Quincy, Mass., June 18, 1784, very likely to her friend Mercy Otis Warren. “I thank you my dear madam for your kind billet [note], your oranges & every mark of your kind attention, the regard of my friends, & the fondness they testify towards me; pleased while it pains one, and I am sometimes tempted to think that it is worth while to endure a temporary separation to be thus flattered. When my heart is full with the painfull idea of leaving all you my dear friends, I reverse the meddle [mix] & reflect that every duty should be cheerfully submitted to & that I am going not to the ‘Banished Man, condemned in lonely woods to move,’ but to one whom his country delighteth to honour - one who has done them good, & not evil all the days of his life - and to one who is certainly entitled to every domestic blessing. Heaven con-

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tinue to [give] you & yours every favor you at present enjoy, & multiply upon you every blessing you wish both here & hereafter.” Here Abigail quotes from the last line of the “Henry” portion from Matthew Prior ’s “A Test of Love”, which speaks of a “Banished man, condemned in woods to rove.” This shows a remarkable level of erudition and learning on the part of a women with no formal education, and who was embarrassed about that fact.

Although the year is not specified in the letter, it is clearly ascertainable nonetheless.

From its context, the journey she was taking, the “separation” she was “enduring”, the negation of a characterization of her husband as “banished”, all require a conclusion that this was a major trip. And this 1784 trip, the greatest trip Abigail ever made, was the only time in her husband’s career of public service that Abigail took a journey to meet John in June of any year.

We would like to thank the Adams Papers curators at the Massachusetts Historical Society for invaluable input assisting our research. They confirm the 1784 date as fairly certain, and suggest that the recipient of the letter was none other than playwright Mercy Otis Warren, who at one time operated a market, hence the oranges. And with such a long voyage just ahead of Mrs. Adams, it is no wonder that Mrs. Warren gave her the oranges and that Mrs. Adams was grateful to receive them. It is worth noting that oranges were a very expensive, imported delicacy in 18th century America. Mercy Otis Warren was an author, poet and the first American female playwright. She wrote “Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous” in 1790 and in 1805 completed her three-volume “History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution.” She was a close friend of Abigail Adams and also corresponded with Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and especially John Adams. There is a book published that recounts the close relationship, ”Bonds of Friendship: the Correspondence of Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren.” A search of auction records discloses just one other letter of Mrs. Adams to Mrs. Warren being offered for sale in the past 35 years.

On May 6, 1785, John and Abigail Adams arrived in London for him to assume the post of the first U.S. Ambassador to Britain; he was presented to King George III on June 1. A few weeks later, Abigail was presented to the King and Queen Charlotte. The Adamses would not return to America until 1788. $18,500

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As the Controversy Over Slavery Explodes in 1849, Henry Clay Writes President Zachary Taylor Hoping He “may be able to preserve to our country the blessings of peace.”

He also seeks to establish and maintain a good relationship between the former rivals The annexation of Texas in 1845 caused the controversy over slavery to heat up, but the Mexican War intervened to deflect attention. When the war ended in early 1848, vast lands in the West were acquired from Mexico, and the question of whether slavery would be allowed in these territories quickly reignited the flames of sectionalism.

In 1849, the discovery of gold led to a land rush in California, and the territory filled quickly with people. With partisans on both sides angrily stirring the pot and fears rising that the country might be split asunder, it was apparent that the matter of slavery had become urgent.

The United States was not then the sole nation in turmoil.

In 1848, a series of political upheavals spread throughout the European continent. Described by some historians as a wave of revolutions, the period of unrest began in France but then propelled itself onward. It lasted well into 1849, ending in August with the defeat of Hungarian insurgents.

Henry Clay was three times the Whig candidate for president, and three times he was defeated, the final one being in 1844. He expected to run again in 1848, but many Whigs feared he could not win. Instead, Zachary Taylor, a Mexican War hero from Louisiana, won the Whig nomination, depriving Clay of the prize. As a candidate, Taylor had sidestepped the entire slavery controversy, but now that he was President he began developing what was seen as a pro-Northern solution. One of the leaders in Congress with whom he would have to deal on this and other subjects was Clay, who straddled the fence between the North and South and would not agree with his approach. Thus, Taylor and Clay were two men who saw themselves as political opponents, and many wondered what the relationship would be between the party’s long-time spokesman and its new sitting President, and whether they could work together. This would have national as well as party consequences, considering the issues facing the country. Their relationship was made all the more complicated by men seeking advantage from Tayor by trying to drive wedges between him and Clay.

Shortly after Taylor was inaugurated President in March 1849, Clay began getting reports that Taylor had ill will towards him and was speaking against him personally. On April 30, 1849, he received a letter from a friend Thomas Stevenson, saying that the reports were true but that he felt that experienced Washington hands would restrain Taylor from any overt actions against Clay. He stated that one Buckner H. Payne had related that this latter supposition was so, that Taylor was now speaking well of Clay. Stevenson added that peace between the two leaders was necessary for the country.

On May 12, to test the waters, Clay wrote Taylor directly, asking if he might appoint Clay’s son James to a diplomatic post. On May 28, the President responded by saying he was displeased with Payne having reported his conversation, but that he had only positive feelings about Clay, and that “it would afford me great pleasure to comply with your wishes” and appoint James Brown Clay as U.S. Ambassador to Portugal. The following is

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Clay’s response to Taylor, in which he makes short work of Payne, thanks the President for his friendly manner and for appointing his son, references that “strenuous exertions” were being made to alienate the two leaders, mentions the crises in Europe, and thinking of conflict here, ends by expressing his hope that Taylor can preserve peace in the United States.

“

Europe appears to be in a state of great and general disorder.

A war embracing the larger part of it seems to be almost inevitable.

Autograph Letter Signed, Ashland, June 6, 1849, to President Taylor. “I received your obliging letter of the 28th Ult., and on behalf of my son as well as myself I beg leave to tender an expression of our grateful thanks and great obligations for the prompt and friendly manner in which you have been pleased to accede to our wishes that he might be employed in the public service on a foreign mission. The time indicated by you for his departure suits him very well as he could not have conveniently left home in a shorter period. He will immediately commence his arrangements for going abroad and will be prepared in due season to obey the orders of Government.

“I had known Col. Payne (referred to in our last letter) in Kentucky, and had some business in which he conducted himself with integrity; but not living in the same neighborhood, I rarely saw him, and there was no very good intimacy between us. Last winter, when he approached me in New Orleans, I understood him to be a particular friend of yours. Standing in amiable relations as I supposed, to us both, and being about to go to Washington, I conversed freely with him on public affairs. He wanted me to recommend him for the office of Collector of that city, which I declined to do for several reasons; among others, that I had adopted as a general rule not to interfere in mere local appointments in other and distant states from that of my residence. I must confess that I was surprised that Mr. Payne should be an applicant for that office, and still more at the confidence with which he purposed to anticipate success. In the course of the conversation between us I probably remarked to him that I did not know that a recommendation from me, if I could give him one, would benefit him; for that, whilst my own feelings towards the President and his administration were entirely amicable, and that I should go to Washington with an anxious desire to find himself conscientiously able to support it, I did not know how far strenuous exertions, which had been made to alienate us might have succeeded. He asked if he might mention the purport of that conversion to you on his arrival at Washington; and I replied that I had not the least objection. He did not return to Kentucky, as you supposed, but on his reaching New Orleans he wrote to me, communicating an account of his visit to Washington, and of the friendly purport of his conversation with you about me. I ought to add that Mr. Payne is a member of an extensive and generally respectable connection in this state; but that one of his near relations has recently spoken of him to me in rather unfavorable terms. Personally I know nothing to his disadvantage.

“Europe appears to be in a state of great and general disorder. A war embracing the larger part of it seems to be almost inevitable. England and France can hardly look upon the Russian interference in the affairs of Austria and Hungary with indifference. I sincerely hope that you may be able to preserve to our country the blessings of peace.” He signs the letter “with the highest respect, faithfully your friend...” This is the only letter from Clay to Taylor we have seen; it is not in the “Henry Clay Papers” and appears to be unknown and unpublished. Clay was right about Russia and England and France. Tensions between them led to the Crimean War just five years later.

Clay’s son James went to Lisbon. Later he served in the House of Representatives from 1857-59. Payne did not receive the appointment as Collector he craved, and for which he inappropriately manipulated conversations of both Clay and Taylor. President Taylor soon developed a policy favoring the immediate admission of California and New Mexico as free states, avoiding the entire territorial process. Many in the South were unwilling to consider this, and Clay opposed the statehood solution in isolation, preferring instead to fashion some kind of game-changing compromise. In January 1850, Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850. Taylor opposed it, but it would pass after his death when Clay supported Millard Fillmore ascended to the presidency. $7,500

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Future President Franklin Pierce Writes Sitting President James K. Polk He and four other notables seek an appointment for a fellow New Hampshireman

It was commonplace before the civil service in 1883 for political notables from a state to try and secure Federal appointments for its citizens, and this applied to both civil and military positions. Here five prominent New Hampshire politicians go right to the top they petition directly to the President.

Autograph Letter Signed of New Hampshire U.S. Senator Charles G. Atherton, also signed by New Hampshire Congressmen Charles H. Peaslee and James H. Johnson, Supreme Court Justice and former Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury, and former Senator, general and future President Franklin Pierce, Washington, January 14, 1848, to James K. Polk, President of the United States. “The undersigned beg leave respectively to recommend Charles C.P. Parker of Portsmouth, New Hampshire for the office of assistant purser in the Navy.

They have entire confidence that Mr. Parker, from his character and capacity, and especially from his past opportunities of becoming acquainted with its duties, is particularly suited for the office.� This is one of two scarce letters of one president to another in this catalog.

This letter shows that though Pierce was then holding no office, he was considered powerful enough to co-sign a letter with a Justice and the state’s highest representatives in Washington. Today it would be considered inappropriate for a sitting Supreme Court Justice to intervene for a job-seeker. And since the Civil Service was instituted, there are fewer discretionary appointments for a president to make. $1,500

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The Mexican War Court Martial Record of George B. Crittenden, Future Confederate General Major George B. Crittenden was from an important Kentucky family and his father was a U.S. Senator from that state. He served in the Mexican War and later went on to become a Confederate general.

Crittenden had a problem with alcohol throughout his service and this surfaced significantly while he was in Mexico. There he performed admirably in combat, and received a brevet for gallantry at the bottle of Churubusco. However, he was constantly intemperate in his personal conduct and was charged with drunkenness several times, resigned his commission, and through the efforts of his father was reinstated in the army. In 1848, George was again arrested for drunkenness on duty. This time President Polk was not inclined to let him escape court-martial by resigning; a court martial was ordered and conducted at the castle at Perote from June 16-26, 1848. He pled not guilty and a lengthy trial was conducted. Presiding over the proceedings was Major Albert S. Miller, a hero of Monterey, and acting as jury were seven officers from captain to major, among whom were future luminaries of the Civil War: Confederate General Theophilus H. Holmes, Union General Samuel P. Heintzelman, Union General Silas Casey, and Union Colonel Electus Backus. Future Union General Charles C. Gilbert was Judge Advocate, and Lorenzo Thomas, who went on to become the Adjutant General of the United States, was then asst. adjutant general for General William O. Butler and was in charge of managing the trial. Witnesses were called, testimony taken, and a 44-page trial record was built. Crittenden was convicted and “cashiered” from the army.

President Polk himself approved of the verdict and sentence.

George’s father, Senator Crittenden, took up his son’s cause and pleaded for the help of others. Jefferson Davis, an old family friend, went to bat for him and Crittenden was reinstated in the army because of his influence. This is an official transcript of the entire proceedings dated January 31, 1849, marked “True copy” and signed by Roger Jones.

Jones, an officer in the War of 1812, served as Adjutant General of the U.S. Army from 1825 to 1852. He received brevets to brigadier general in 1832 and to major general in 1848. This copy was likely used in the effort to get Crittenden reinstated, or perhaps in opposition to such efforts. The document ended up in the papers of Union General Hugh Ewing, though whether he has a connection to Crittenden or came upon the document during the war is not known. $700

Engraved Passport Signed by William H. Seward as Secretary of State A large folio passport with the American eagle at top and the State Department seal engraved at bottom, issued to Daniel C. Temple on October 12, 1861, signed by William H. Seward as Secretary of State. The passport discloses that Temple was 27 years of age, stood 5’7”, had blue eyes and dark brown hair. Temple has also signed. $300

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During Zachary Taylor’s 1849 Northern Tour, Vice President Fillmore Writes Taylor of the “Enthusiasm of the People” to See the New President Rare letter from sitting Vice President to President General Zachary Taylor, the victor at Buena Vista in February of 1847, gained national fame during the Mexican War. “Rough and Ready” clubs formed nationwide to extol his victories, and a growing faction within the Whig Party began to call for his candidacy for the presidency. The pro-Taylor voices eventually became loud enough to drown out those Whigs who favored perennial candidate Henry Clay. Taylor had some very attractive credentials for an 1848 run for the presidency: he was a slave-holding Southerner who, as a lifetime military man, had abstained from active political involvement (so he had not alienated either side of the slavery question), and he held a level of status commensurate with a national hero. The selection of Millard Fillmore, who was from the Buffalo-Rochester portion of New York, would alleviate some Northern concerns and ultimately contributed to Taylor ’s electoral victories in New York and Pennsylvania.

Those states brought him the presidency.

Taylor was sworn in on March 5, 1849 and quickly acclimated to life in Washington. He enjoyed being among the people and would take walks through the city, his black silk hat and informal attire becoming well known to the Executive Mansion’s neighbors. For his first major trip as president, Taylor chose to head North, an area with which he was largely unfamiliar but which had been crucial to his winning in the recent election. On this trip, he was accompanied by Vice President Fillmore, Dr. Robert Wood, his son-inlaw, and others who would join him along the way. His ambitious itinerary included cities such as Baltimore, Lancaster, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Erie, Albany and Boston, and he would proceed by train and steamer. It also coincided with a wide-spread outbreak of cholera (it would eventually claim 10% of the populations of St. Louis and Cincinnati).

Large gatherings of people would amplify the risk of spread of the disease, but in spite of this danger, Taylor insisted on going; and once on the road the citizens insisted on seeing him. As John Eisenhower wrote in his biography of Taylor, “At every place the entourage stopped, great crowds gathered and gala events were lavishly planned. Taylor was an extrovert and he enjoyed such gatherings.”

Taylor left on August 9, 1849, and when he arrived in Pittsburgh gave a significant speech on protective tariffs. He reassured Northern Free Soilers that “the people of the North need have no apprehension of a further expansion of slavery.” As he continued on, he became ill. On August 24, south of Erie, his sickness became acute, and his wife was summoned; but he quickly recovered. His party at this point convinced him that while he could continue through New York, he would be wise to curtail his trip and avoid Boston. On September 1, he resumed his Northward trip, taking a steamer from Erie to Niagara Falls, and reaching there that evening. On the 3rd he was well enough to visit Goat Island near the Falls.

Fillmore, who was just miles away from his home, arranged many of the details of this portion of the itinerary and was charged with simultaneously satisfying pubic demand to see the President and ensuring the President’s well being. In this letter, after dispensing first with a military appointment recommendation, he informs Taylor of the mood of New Yorkers in preparation for his visit.

Autograph Letter Signed as Vice President, Buffalo, N.Y., September 3, 1849, to President Taylor. “I can do no less than forward you the enclosed letters from Dr. Cogswell and Adgt Genl. Stevens, recommending Major Birgh as paymaster, but from what you told me yesterday I presume the matter is settled and so advised them. Our citizens are anxious to see you and I

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think we can arrange it as to give them that opportunity with very little if any fatigue for you.

I have received a letter from Dr. A. Kelsey, chair of the committee at Rochester and advised him to avoid all display in your reception there, and give you as quiet a reception as the enthusiasm of the people will permit. I think our folks will desire to bring you up by water and probably only the chairman and myself will go down agreeably to the suggestion of Dr. Wood. Truly your friend, Millard Fillmore.”

This would have been one of the final visits of the president’s great Northern Tour. On the 6th, he arrived in Oswego to meet representatives of Thurlow Weed, and then took a train to Albany, where he attended a state dinner. He returned to Washington exhausted; but as Eisenhower summarized the trip, “his activities along the way were significant because they showed a growing political sophistication. Ominous as the trip was regarding Taylor ’s health, it demonstrated that he was learning his job.”

An uncommon letter from a sitting vice president to his president.

$5,500

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The Civil War Mementos and Effects of General Hugh Ewing, General W.T. Sherman’s Brother-in-law Including a fragment of the flag that flew over his headquarters at the siege of Vicksburg The Ewing family was a prominent one in the Antebellum period. Thomas Ewing was Secretary of the Treasury in 1841 and in 1849 became the nation’s first Secretary of the Interior. Three of his sons became Union generals in the Civil War: Hugh, Charles and Thomas Jr.; his foster son was William T. Sherman, for whom he obtained an appointment to West Point.

Sherman then married his daughter, and was thus both foster brother and brother-in-law to the Ewing sons. During the gold rush in 1849, Hugh Ewing went to California, where he joined an expedition ordered by his father, then Interior Secretary, to rescue immigrants who were imprisoned in the Sierra by heavy snows.

When the Civil War broke out, Hugh was quickly in the service as colonel of the 30th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He used his connections to aid Sherman overcome an early scandal that had led to his being relieved of command. Ewing would soon become one of Sherman’s generals, and the one Sherman considered his most reliable division commander. Before joining up with Sherman, Ewing was in the West Virginia theater in early 1862. Then in the September 1862 Antietam Campaign, Ewing’s command played a significant role. On September 14, at the Battle of South Mountain, he led the assault that drove the enemy from the summit; and at midnight of that day, he received an order giving him command of his own brigade. At Antietam three days later, Ewing’s brigade was placed upon the extreme left of the army, where, according to the report of the commander of the left wing, Gen. Ambrose Burnside, “by a brilliant change of front he saved the left from being completely driven in.”

Ewing transferred West to serve under his brother Sherman, and was with him throughout the 1863 campaign before Vicksburg. Vicksburg was the last remaining Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, and if it could be taken, the Union would split the Confederacy, gain complete control of this essential waterway, and complete the naval encirclement of the South that included the blockade at sea. Many in the Union leadership considered it the most important target of all. Grant first tried to breach the Confederate positions around Vicksburg by assaults, and Sherman’s forces, along with Ewing’s units, were involved. The assaults failed, except the final one on May 22, at which point the siege of Vicksburg began. There Sherman’s corps held the northern sector. The seige lasted until July 4, 1863, when the city and its defenders surrendered. Joseph Johnston was chief commander of the Confederate Department of the West, and was moving his army towards Vicksburg in a belated attempt to break the siege when the city was taken.

No sooner had Union forces entered the city than Grant gave Sherman orders at once to attack Johnston, and Ewing’s command was one of the units given that assignment. They left Vicksburg and ended up laying siege to Jackson, which they occupied a week later.

Then, by a succession of rapid marches which General Grant characterized as “almost unequalled,” Sherman (with Ewing as one of his generals) wrested the possession of Walnut Hills, Miss. from the Confederates, cutting their force in two, and compelling the evacuation of Haines’, Snyder ’s, Walnut, and Chickasaw Bluffs, together with all their works.

This enabled Grant at once to open communication with the fleet and his new base on the Yazoo and Mississippi Rivers, above Vicksburg.

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After the Vicksburg campaign, Ewing was placed in command of a division that formed the advance of Sherman’s army. In late 1863, Union troops held Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Confederate forces established themselves along Missionary Ridge and on Lookout Mountain, both of which had excellent views of the city and Union supply lines. Generals Grant, Sherman, and Thomas planned a double envelopment of Confederate forces, with the main attack by Sherman against the northern end of Missionary Ridge. Sherman arrived with his 20,000 men of the Army of the Tennessee on November 20 and immediately determined that the Confederates holding the positions he would attack were from Gen. Carter Stevenson’s command. The assault began on November 23 and ended in victory two days later. Sherman was quickly sent by Grant to strike to the southeast back into Mississippi, where he would receive supplies at Eastport and could repair supply roads.

Then, hearing of a Confederate force heading up through Alabama into Tennessee to threaten Nashville, while in Iuka on November 27, 1863, Sherman received orders from Grant to intercept that force. Sherman immediately went to do so with all his regiments.

This stopped the Confederate counterattack. Ewing became ill in 1864 and never returned to a major role in the conflict. After the war, he was U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands.

16

The following items owned by General Ewing came down through his family, and we obtained them directly from one of his descendants. They have never before been publicly seen no less offered for sale.

Vicksburg

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The Flag: A 7 by 10 inch fragment of the U.S. flag that flew over Ewing’s headquarters at Vicksburg.

The Campaign Map: A 12 by 18 inch hand-drawn map of the Vicksburg area, showing Union troops movements and marked with the position of Union units and siege lines before and during the siege. Ewing has himself drawn in the route that his division used to bypass Vicksburg on the south as a prelude to the eventual encirclement of the city. In faded writing at bottom, it is marked by Ewing as received. Although undated and unsigned by the engineers who prepared it, considering the paper it is written on, and the similarities in handwriting and ink color to known war date maps, we believe this was a map made by high command for Ewing during the siege.

Sherman’s Headquarters: An 8 by 11 inch pencil drawing captioned “Maj. Genl. W.T. Sherman Head Quarters, Walnut Hills, Miss., June 27, 1863.”

Announcement of the Surrender of Vicksburg: Autograph Letter Signed, Vicksburg, Sunday, July 5, 1863, to his wife Henrietta, whom he addressed as “My Love.” “Vicksburg surrendered yesterday at 10 o’clock. We move immediately on Johnston’s camp commanding the entire army. I fear love that my letters will now be interrupted but I will try & write frequently.

Love to all. Tom is just over & we start at once.” $5,500

17 18

The Ewing CDVs Eight Civil War CDVs that descended through the years in the Ewing family: They are Gen. John Sedgwick, killed at Spotsylvania; Gen. Elon Farnsworth, killed at Gettysburg; Gen. John A. Dix, who had recently served as Secretary of the Treasury; Union Chief of Staff Henry Halleck; Army of the Potomac commander George B. McClellan; plus three men who apparently served under Ewing, identified as Lt. Colby, Lt. Read, and Maj. Lawrence. The Farnsworth CDV is particularly uncommon. $800

The Missionary Ridge Campaign Ewing Reports Directly to Sherman: Letter Signed, Headquarters in the field, Trenton, Georgia, November 20, 1863, to Maj. Genl. William T. Sherman, reporting on the identity of the Confederates at his front and asking for orders. “The [Confederate] brigades of Brown, Lidell & Cumming, Stevenson’s Division, cover about all the troops on ‘Lookout’ from one end to the other as far as I can learn. Corse has full possession of the top of the mountain at his end. Do you want it held if they try to recover it in any force? I will not send up artillery until ordered.”

This letter is in the Official Records, and this is Ewing’s retained copy. John M. Corse was one of Ewing’s generals and held a position at the north end. He was ordered down to consolidate Union forces for the pending attack.

The Campaign Map, signed by the inventor of the skyscraper: A 13 by 17 inch linen map of the Iuka/Eastport, Mississippi area prepared in the immediate wake of the Missionary Ridge-Lookout Mountain battles (circa November 27, 1863), marked “Official” and signed by William LeBaron Jenney who was on Sherman’s staff as the chief engineer of the 15th Army Corps, a position he held at Vicksburg and through to the end of the war.

This detailed map showed the region’s topography, and marked the roads, railroads, farms, cities and towns, and other features Ewing would need to know to navigate the area. Ewing has endorsed the map, “Gen. Ewing, Commanding 4th Division, 15th Corps.”

After the war Jenney was a noted architect and invented skeleton construction, which made high rise buildings possible. He is known as the Father of the American skyscraper.

$2,500

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#17 Missionary Ridge Campaign

19

The Antietam Campaign and Early Service The Antietam Campaign Official Reports: These were prepared in duplicate (or sometimes more) by commanders, the text invariably being in the hand of an aide. The originals, signed by the colonels or generals, were filed with the adjutant’s office and appear in the Official Records; the retained copies were often both prepared and signed by the aides. Ewing filed some, plus he received copies of some from fellow officers when he was mentioned. These copies he kept even after the war ended. On September 14, 1862, just after the Battle of South Mountain, Ewing reported from the field on the experience and performance of his command, relating the numerous charges made into the face of the enemy and the successful result. On the 20th, Ewing’s colleague Col. E.P. Scammon filed a report on the same battle, mentioning Ewing, and provided Ewing with a copy; Ewing docketed it on the verso. On the 22nd, Scammon filed a report on Antietam that enclosed a copy of Ewing’s report. Scammon praised Ewing’s courage and detailed how his men had resisted a numerically superior enemy. On the 28th, Gen. J.D. Cox issued Special Order No. 8 listing the men from his command who were “honorably mentioned in the official reports of the engagement of the 17th instant...” Ewing was listed and praised for “energy and skillful bravery.” He received a copy and docketed it as referring to Antietam.

Ewing’s Personal Holograph Note Book: A 4 by 12 inch note book, comprising pages marked 9-20, all in Ewing’s hand and in his purple ink, which though undated was kept during his time in West Virginia early in the war. In it, he lists those to whom he issued passes through his lines, or otherwise dealt with, giving their names, address information, and occasionally making some germane notations. Once when “6 small sick children” came in, he ordered the asst. surgeon “out with medicine and food.” After seeing some refugees, he wrote “Fear God and keep the commandments, for this is all man.”

He also made note of those to whom he issued oaths of allegiance to the United States, prisoners (one was released because there were no grounds for his arrest), and spies (the evidence against Sam Foster was not good enough for him to act, so he sent Foster on to Charleston). He ordered protection for the family of a man who denounced the rebels, and when an elderly farmer comes to him with a tale that some Union soldiers stole property from him, Ewing busted those officers back to the ranks. When he sent a prisoner to Charleston, and the prisoner proclaimed his innocence and said he would see Ewing on Judgment Day, Ewing replied he would be glad to see him there. When a gangleader struck a boy’s head with a stone for voting, Ewing noted that if caught he would be shot.

And Ewing mentioned meeting Charles L. Clay, cousin of Henry Clay.

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Telegrams From General Rosecrans: There are two telegrams from Gen. William S. Rosecrans, one on U.S. Military Telegraph letterhead and one on commercial telegraph paper, from February 5 and February 6, 1862, respectively. Rosecrans asked for Ewing’s help in procuring rifles from Gen. McClellan, as he wanted to send the regiment “immediately towards Dixie.” In the later telegram, he stressed that he wanted Sharps carbines but would settle for Enfields if necessary. (pictured above) Roster of Physicians Serving With the Army: There is a large format three page “Roster of Medical Officers of the 4th Division, 15th Army Corps, January 1864.” For each of the 36 persons listed, there is a statement of rank (whether surgeon or asst. surgeon), regiment, date of commission, date of muster, age, residence, and remarks. We learn that the physicians were all from the midwest and serving midwestern units, and that they were aged 28-51, with a plurality in their 30s. The remarks are interesting, stating such facts as “Left with the wounded at Chattanooga,” “Sent north on hospital boat,” “Detailed for duty in hospital Iuka...by order of Genl. Sherman.” General Grant also was active in requesting the presence of these physicians, who were detached as needed elsewhere after battles and during outbreaks of illness.

This is the first such document we have seen, and was prepared for the Surgeon-in-Chief. $1,800

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20

The Policy of President Lincoln and His Administration: With Holding Maryland Key to Maintaining the Union, the Importance of Assisting Supporters in Baltimore Cannot Be Overstated

In the spring of 1861, with public opinion in Maryland divided, Lincoln takes action to reward Union loyaltists in Baltimore

In the opening months of 1861, with South Carolina out of the Union and other Southern states having called conventions to declare secession, feeling was divided in Maryland. The tobacco counties of southern Maryland and the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay were secessionist. The grain-growing counties of northern and western Maryland, containing few slaves, were safe for the Union. But the loyalty of Baltimore, with a third of the state’s population, was suspect. The mayor ’s unionism was tepid, the police chief openly sympathized with the South, and the city’s business leadership was split, having ties both North and South. Many in the city called for Maryland to convene a secession convention. Responding to the urgency of the hour, a meeting was held by Union men on January 10, 1861, at the Maryland Institute, with Archibald Stirling as president and a number of citizens, including John J. Abrahams, as joint vice presidents. The speakers applauded the pro-Union sentiments in orations by ex-U.S. Senator and Attorney General Reverdy Johnson and others. President-elect Lincoln had to pass through Baltimore on his way to Washington for his inauguration. Allan Pinkerton’s detectives uncovered a plot to murder him as he moved through Baltimore, so he famously had to pass through in stealth and disguise. After the war broke out on April 12, 1861, Confederate flags appeared on many Baltimore homes and buildings. On April 19, as the 6th Massachusetts Infantry marched through Baltimore headed to protect the capital, there was a riot and a number of soldiers were killed by the mob. Pro-Confederate Baltimore activists cut the telegraph lines north, pulled marking buoys from the harbor to prevent ship entry, and destroyed bridges to make train access almost impossible, while groups of citizens went to the White House to demand that no Northern troops be sent through Baltimore.

As thousands of pro-Union men and women fled the city, even Unionists like Reverdy Johnson began to call on Lincoln to avoid sending soldiers through the city lest rioting become pervasive.

Lincoln believed that holding the border states meant everything, writing, “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us.” Rather than withhold troops, he sent them into Maryland, and this had the effect of encouraging Union sympathizers there. He also suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and the army began arresting those with the most pronounced pro-Southern positions. In late May, Chief Justice Roger Taney questioned the President’s right to suspend the Writ and the contest between him and Lincoln was joined.

“

I would like our Union friends in Baltimore to be obliged

With war a reality, the U.S. government found itself in need of gunboats, and fast. So in May 1861 a circular was sent to naval administrative personnel stating that government contracts were to be offered and applications from shipbuilders accepted. The work would be awarded by competitive bid and otherwise (this “and otherwise” phrasiology had great meaning, as it provided flexibility in selecting ship builders). One shipbuilder interested in obtaining government contracts was John J. Abrahams, the same man who had stepped forward in Baltimore to support the Union cause five months earlier. A wellplaced businessman, he was one of the incorporators of the Board of Trade of the City of Baltimore during the previous decade. He let the Naval Officer at Baltimore know of his desire, and seemingly the entire U.S. government swung into gear beside him.

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The following grouping of letters and endorsements contains the sentiments of the senoir Union leadership about Baltimore in the days before its loyalty became an accepted fact.

We obtained it directly from a family that had it for generations, and it has never before been publicly offered for sale. First is an Autograph Letter Signed of the Naval Officer at Baltimore, a Federal appointee. “Mr. J.J. Abrahams is a good shipbuilder...and loyal to the Government. I trust he may have an opportunity of competing for some of the gunboats.” Next is an Autograph Letter Signed of Thomas Swann, pro-Union former mayor of Baltimore, June 3, 1861, to Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, certifying that “Mr. J.J. Abrahams is advantageously known as a competent and reliable shipbuilder...It affords me great pleasure to commend him to you...” Then Reverdy Johnson wrote an Autograph Letter Signed, Baltimore, June 3, 1861, to Navy Secretary Welles, “...introducing to you Mr. J.J. Abrahams of this city.

Mr. A. is a ship builder, and as I have reason to believe, an admirable man. Baltimore should have part...of building some of the vessels of war...” Finally, Maryland native and Lincoln Cabinet member, the ever-influential Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, wrote an Autograph Letter Signed, Washington, June 13, 1861, to fellow Cabinet member Navy Secretary Welles. “The writer of this you know is the Naval Officer at Baltimore & a most reliable & intelligent man. If you can give our people this employment I believe it will contribute as much almost as the vessels for which they are designed.” Blair ’s essential point, that the very act of employing large numbers of Baltimorians, and being seen present and visibly manufacturing in Baltimore, would do more to aid the war effort than the ships that would be built, is an important one.

Lincoln and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase responded with what must be understood as statements of policy. First Lincoln: Autograph Endorsement Signed as President, June 14, 1861, apparently to Welles. “If the public interest can be served as well, or nearly as well, I would like our Union friends in Baltimore to be obliged.” Then, perhaps because the Treasury would be paying the tab, the applicant took the matter to Chase, who added an Autograph Endorsement Signed, “My word is not needed in addition to the President’s; the importance of giving employment to loyal Union men in Baltimore cannot be overestimated.” These papers are not in Basler ’s “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” and are unpublished.

Abrahams got his contracts. There is a famous naval print from 1863 entitled “United States Gunboat “Eutaw”. Built by John J. Abrahams & Son Baltimore, Md.” $15,000

21

President Lincoln Is Grateful For Support For His Newly Issued Emancipation Proclamation The only known letter of Lincoln from January 1863 relating to or mentioning emancipation in private hands On September 22, 1862, President Lincoln issued a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation declaring that all slaves in states which were still in rebellion on January 1, 1863 “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” This caused a firestorm in the North, so while many praised the President, opposition was strong. Conservatives were mainly foursquare opposed to it. In the upcoming Congressional elections of 1862, the Democrats fought on a fierce anti-emancipation platform, with one delegate at their conference adapting their slogan to read; ‘The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was, and the Negroes where they are.’ The correspondence of soldiers in the field indicates that quite a number were against emancipation, and some threatened to throw down their arms if the war came to be about freeing Negroes rather than saving the Union. The election results in November 1862 seemed to endorse Democratic opposition to emancipation, with a net gain for them of 36 Congressional seats; they won other victories too, including the governorships of New York and New Jersey. The Republican Party actually gained some seats in the Senate, but this was before popular election of Senators, so it was hard to make a connection between that gain and public approval of the President’s actions.

On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Lincoln needed support now more than ever, and it was all the more satisfying if the support was public and helped enlist others to reach similar conclusions. George E. Fawcett was a teacher of instrumental music at Greenwood Academy in Muscatine, Iowa. He had published a number of previous musical compositions, and he was in the President’s corner. In late 1862, he wrote “The President’s Emancipation March” and dedicated it to Abraham Lincoln, who was, he wrote, “a foe to tyrants and my country’s friend.” The sheet music was published and disseminated by the well-known Chicago-based music publishing firm Root & Cady, which was the most successful music publisher of the Civil War and published many of the war ’s most popular songs. The firm’s founders were Chauncey Marvin Cady and E. T. Root, whose older brother was George F. Root, one of the Civil War ’s greatest composers whose his biggest hit was “The Battle Cry of Freedom”.

After the January 1 proclamation date, Fawcett sent a copy of the march to President Lincoln himself. Lincoln soon responded. Letter Signed on Executive Mansion letterhead, Washington, January 26, 1863, to Fawcett. “Allow me to thank you cordially for your thoughtful courtesy in sending me a copy of your “Emancipation March.” The body of the letter is in the handwriting of Lincoln’s secretary, future Secretary of State, John Hay. We searched the papers of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, auction records going back 38 years, and the primary resource in the field, Basler ’s “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.” We discovered that despite the enormity of his issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, following its signing on January 1, 1863, Lincoln wrote about or mentioned emancipation by name in just three letters during that month. One, written to John A. McClernand on January 8, was an important defense of the proclamation; it sold two decades ago for some $750,000 and is now owned by a foundation and on loan to the Library of Congress.

The other two letters were references to the proclamation; one was sent to John W. Forney on January 18, and it is in an institution; the other is this letter to George Fawcett.

“The President’s Emancipation March” was well-received, and being celebratory, doubtless assisted in generating support for both Lincoln and emancipation. A copy of the sheet music is in the American Memory section of the Library of Congress. $32,500

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22

The Telegram That Gave President Lincoln the Momentous News: Lee and the Confederates Were Headed Into Pennsylvania The Battle of Gettysburg was just eight days away During the first week of June 1863, Confederates of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia began leaving their positions around Fredericksburg, Virginia and heading northwest. This marked the start of the Gettysburg campaign. On June 11, lead elements of the Union Army began to move north from Fredericksburg in that general direction.

While both armies remained in Virginia, on June 14, 1863, Brig. Gen. Daniel Tyler assumed command of the Federal troops at Harpers Ferry. Lying at the northern tip of Virginia (now West Virginia) where that state meets Maryland, Tyler would find himself perfectly situated, and be responsible for, tracking Confederate movements north into Maryland and beyond. At this early point, JEB Stuart’s cavalry masked the Confederate army’s movements behind the Blue Ridge effectively, and Union General Joseph Hooker, then commander of the Army of the Potomac, did not know Lee’s intentions.

The campaign really became a reality when Confederate General Ewell began crossing the Potomac River from Virginia into Maryland late on June 15, along with Jenkins’s cavalry brigade. Hooker and his army remained in Virginia, with Hooker himself at Fairfax, unsure of the positions of Lee’s various corps and divisions and in desperate need of information about their destinations. His attention, and indeed that of the Union leadership, now focused on General Tyler, to whose lot it fell to provide up to date information on Confederate troop movements.

Author Craig Swain, in his definitive article on Union telegraph network topology during the Gettysburg campaign, relates that messages from Tyler were initiated at Maryland Heights, which line connected to a station at Point of Rocks further east, and from there signals passed to the Sugarloaf Mountain station. That station sent the telegrams on to Baltimore and the War Department in Washington. Telegrams to Hooker from Tyler could be sent directly via another route, but telegrams sent that other way actually took longer to arrive; so messages addressed to Hooker were generally sent to the War Department and forwarded on by it upon receipt. Swain states that many of Tyler ’s dispatches from June 23-26 have notes indicating the times received at the War Department, and these timelines indicate a situation where, since Tyler ’s telegrams arrived in Washington faster than those sent to Hooker directly, the War Department was likely privy to more information - faster - than the commander in the field, with regard to the tactical situation.

On July 1, 1863, Tyler wrote and sent to the War Department a report about his activities and observations from June 15 to June 26, and this document is published in the Official Records, Series 1, Part 2, Volume 27. Tyler reports that on June 17, he telegraphed that there were 7-8,000 Confederate infantry in Maryland, while some cavalry were “running into Pennsylvania.” These would have been quick raids rather than substantial units. The next day, Tyler wrote that the rebel infantry and artillery are “holding on” in Maryland.

From information “gleaned from the country and our scouts,” wrote Tyler on June 19, “no force exceeding 8-10,000 men” had crossed from Virginia into Maryland. The following day he reported that Ewell had 30,000 men between Winchester, Virginia and Williamsport, Maryland, of which just 8-10,000 men had crossed beyond Sharpsburg; some of these were foraging for supplies into Pennsylvania. Deserters from the Army of Northern Virginia claimed they were told their destination was Washington. However, on the night of June 21, at 10 PM, Tyler telegraphed Hooker that his scouts had positive information that 20,000 Confederate infantry were in the area of Sharpsburg. Since there were few cavalry, it was still unclear to Tyler what was in the offing. The next afternoon at 2 PM, he telegraphed that the rebels were “exclusively collecting plunder” in Maryland and into Pennsylvania, and that a wagon train was carrying that plunder back into Virginia.

The situation changed materially late in the afternoon of June 22, 1863. At 5 PM, Tyler relates that he telegraphed Hooker with news that “the enemy has been crossing to the Maryland side [of the Potomac River] all day.” General Early’s division crossed that day, and according to Tyler there were now 30-40,000 Confederates in Maryland, with their

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artillery and baggage. And as yet unknown to Tyler, some of Rodes’s division crossed north of Maryland and entered Greencastle, the first Confederate infantry in Pennsylvania. Lee’s plans still remained inscrutable, but not for long.

“

...A line of troops 10 or 12 miles long moving... It looks as if Lee’s movement is towards Hagerstown and on Pennsylvania.

Tyler received updated scouting information, and his report for the morning of June 23 says it all: “It is apparent that the enemy is moving in force into Pennsylvania, and at 10:00 a.m., [I] telegraphed Major General Hooker.” This is that original telegram, on imprinted United States Military Telegraph note paper, containing the first notification that Lee was marching on Pennsylvania, as received by the War Department and containing its notation “Rec’d 11:30 AM 23rd.” It is addressed “By telegraph from Md. Heights,” dated June 23, 1863, and is to Gen. Hooker. “The troops that were at Sharpsburg yesterday have all left, the infantry and artillery for Hagerstown and the cavalry for Frederick. Gen. Early’s division, 34 pieces of artillery and about 15,000 infantry, passed on yesterday to reinforce Rodes at Hagerstown. The signal officer just reports that the atmosphere is clear, and that he can see a line of troops 10 or 12 miles long moving in the direction of Berrysville toward Shepherdstown ford. It looks as if Lee’s movement is towards Hagerstown and on Pennsylvania. Gen. Ewell, I am sure, passed through Sharpsburg yesterday in an ambulance.” The Battle of Gettysburg was just eight days away.

President Lincoln visited the small War Department Telegraph Office morning, afternoon and evening, sometimes staying all night there. Since there was no such office at the Executive Mansion, it was where he received all his telegrams and obtained the latest news from the armies at the front. The place was a refuge for the President, who waited for incoming dispatches and talked while they were being deciphered. The book “Lincoln in the Telegraph Office” relates the story. As this telegram was received at the War Department Telegraph Office and has its notation, it would be the very document that brought Lincoln the momentous news. He may have read it himself, holding this paper. $17,000

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23

President Lincoln Requests a Personal Favor on Behalf of the Man Who Published His Debates With Douglas and Helped Him Secure the Presidential Nomination Richard P. L. Baber of Columbus, Ohio helped organize the Republican party in that state. He recognized that Lincoln’s performance during his debates with Stephen A. Douglas in nearby Illinois was laden with national significance, and being a printer, decided to publish Lincoln’s speeches. This was done in early 1860, just on time to kick off Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency. Baber quickly sent Lincoln by express twenty copies of the Ohio State Journal in which the publication announcement appeared, for distribution “amongst the Illinois press.” In May 1860, Baber was instrumental in turning the vote of the Ohio delegation at the Republican convention in Chicago to Lincoln.

Once Lincoln was inaugurated, he offered Baber the consulate at Matanzas, Cuba, but Baber declined the post. Instead, in the fall of 1861, he accepted a place as paymaster in the Army. He was sent South and by early 1864 was stationed in New Orleans. The summer heat down South was oppressive to him, and in April 1864 he wrote to President Lincoln seeking his intervention in obtaining a transfer North for that season. He cited many reasons and made it clear that his position was no sinecure, mentioning his extensive and arduous travel to outlying units to perform his tasks (twice going as far as Texas), his poor health, and his beliefs that he was sent South rather than kept in Ohio for political reasons and that the Paymaster General, Timothy P. Andrews, was prejudiced against him.

Lincoln took an interest in Baber ’s case. Autograph Letter Signed as President, on Executive Mansion letterhead, Washington, April 30, 1864, to Paymaster General Andrews, asking him for a personal favor on Baber ’s behalf. “I shall be personally obliged if you can, without detriment to the service, or inconvenience to yourself, allow Additional Paymaster Richard P.L. Baber, now and for long time in the far South, to serve somewhere Northward in his own state of Ohio if possible, through the approaching warm season.” This letter is not in Basler ’s “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” and appears to be unpublished.

Lincoln was always concerned to promote justice and fairness, and it turned out that he was not merely interested in Baber, but in the broader concept of rotation of paymasters serving in the South. On June 25, Lincoln again wrote Andrews, this time about the issue rather than the man. “I am so frequently called on by persons in behalf of Paymasters, who have already served a long time in the South, for leave to come North, as to induce me to inquire whether there might not, without much inconvenience be a rule of exchanges which would be fair to all, and keep none so long in an uncongenial climate as to much endanger health.” As for Baber, after the war, President Andrew Johnson named him a Brevet Lt. Colonel for his services. $25,000

“

...now and for long time in the far South, to serve somewhere Northward in his own state of Ohio if possible, through the approaching warm season.

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24

General U.S. Grant Appoints a Major General in His Command to Succeed Disgraced General Hurlbut

Stephen A. Hurlbut was an Illinois politician and Whig, as well as an old friend of President Lincoln. He used his political connections to secure an appointment as general, and he commanded the 4th Division of The Army of the Tennessee at Shiloh and in the advance towards Corinth and the subsequent siege. He also led a division at the Battle of Hatchie’s Bridge. Hurlbut was commander of the Union 16th Corps in Tennessee during the Vicksburg campaign in 1862–63 and his corps was responsible for the protection of Memphis. In 1863, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to relieve western Tennessee and northern Mississippi from the operations of Confederate General Van Dorn and large and destructive cavalry raids by General Nathan Bedford Forrest. In Memphis allegations surfaced against Hurlbut charging drunkenness, corruption and illegally trafficing in cotton to line his own purse.

By July 1863 Hurlbut had shown both Grant and Sherman that he lacked the ability or will to destroy or disperse either Van Dorn or Forrest. Recognizing this, General Grant left him in command at Memphis but detached large units from his command for service elsewhere. Grant’s growing lack of confidence in his military abilities, the dwindling size of his command, and also perhaps the accusations of his complicity in cotton smuggling in Memphis, led Hurlbut to submit his resignation to Grant on July 7. He told Grant that he urgently needed to return to his law practice, and saw his resignation as timely because he believed that Grant’s victory at Vicksburg had sealed the doom of the Confederacy in the West and thus effectively rendered his continued service unnecessary. Grant was only too happy to accept the resignation and endorsed it as approved. Meanwhile, on July 10, 1863, Hurlbut tendered his resignation directly to President Lincoln, with a side letter complaining to the President of his assignment to an obscure command at Memphis and the lapse of his legal endeavors.

In November 1862, Frederick Steele was made major-general of volunteers. At Vicksburg in 1863, he commanded the First Division of William T. Sherman’s 15th Corps, and he was rewarded for his service there with a promotion. His was a star rising as it was perceived Hurlbut’s was a star setting. Grant proceeded to recommend that Steele replace Hurlbut as head of the 16th Corps. Autograph Letter Signed, Headquarters, Vicksburg, Mississippi, July 27, 1863, to Adjutant General of the Army Lorenzo Thomas, replacing Hurlbut with Steele. “Major General S.A. Hurlbut having tendered his resignation, I would respectfully recommend, in case of its acceptance, the appointment of Major General F. Steele to the command of the 16th Army Corps.” Provenace: Goodspeed’s Book Shop in Boston. This is the first letter of Grant appointing a major general in his command that we have ever carried.

But Lincoln had confidence in Hurlbut, saw him as an able field commander, and was displeased by the idea of resignation. Instead, on July 31, the President wrote Hurlbut urging that he reconsider. He did so; on August 11,1863, Hurlbut withdrew his resignation. He continued to serve in command until April 1864, when Sherman removed him.

Hurlbut subsequently found himself that autumn in charge at New Orleans, where allegations of his smuggling activities reached significant proportions. There Hurlbut finally overreached himself by his disobedience of Federal cotton regulations and opposition to reconstruction policies in Louisiana. He was investigated by a special military commission and in June 1865 again resigned. This time his resignation was accepted.

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As for Steele, he was instead given command of Union forces in Arkansas with orders to clear the state of organized Rebels. He took Little Rock on September 10, and afterwards was in command of the Red River expedition. The objective in that expedition was to defeat Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith and consolidate Union control of Arkansas and Louisiana. Hampered by supply problems and guerrilla activity, Steele was unsuccessful and retreated to Little Rock to avoid being surrounded by Confederates, fighting battles at Jenkins’ Ferry and Marks’ Mills. $7,500

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25

One of Washington’s First Government Officials Gifts His Slaves to His Son, Who Became the Largest Slave Holder There Some of the people listed here were among the first slaves freed by the United States government, by act of Congress and signature of President Lincoln in 1862 Notley Young was a wealthy Maryland landowner and slaveholder and a friend of George Washington. He gave quite a lot of his land to establish the new Federal city, so the downtown of what is now Washington D.C. could be platted. His son Nicholas was born in 1763 and inherited property and slaves at his father ’s death in 1802. In the early years of the District of Columbia, Nicholas served as judge and notary a number of times.

In 1825, ailing himself, Nicholas decided to transfer ownership of some of his slaves to his son. Eventually that son, George Washington Young, would own 69 enslaved persons.

In fact, he was recorded as the District of Columbia’s largest slave owner when on April 16, 1862, President Lincoln signed the act of Congress freeing negro slaves in the District of Columbia and directing payment to the slaves’ owners. This was the first Federal law requiring freedom for slaves. Young petitioned for compensation pursuant to the law and received $17,771.85 upon their release, the highest sum paid out.

Autograph Document Signed, August 30, 1825, transferring ownership from father to son and giving the names of 19 slaves. “I, Nicholas Young of the District of Columbia, for and in consideration of the natural love and affection which I have for my son George Washington Young do hereby give and deliver...to my said son George Washington Young the following herein named Negro slaves: Sophy and infant, James, Primus, William, Lucy, Beck, Charity, Mary and Ellen, Steven, Harriet, Moses, Anny and Jacob, Nicholas, Peter, Frank and Tolly, which herein named slaves I will warrant and defend to my said son George Washington Young...” Nicholas Young’s brother-in-law Peter Casanave has also signed as a witness. Persons with the same given names, and appropriate ages, as at least four of the slaves recorded on this document (Ellen, Lucy, Frank, Charity) were among those listed by Young in 1862 as freed at that time.

$2,000

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Jefferson Davis Hopes the “Oppressed South” Shall “Rise Again” While he awaits trial for treason, Davis writes a close friend lamenting the “Radical” rule of the Republicans and the state of the southland The expression “The south shall rise again” is one that everyone has heard, not only in the southern states but throughout the entire nation. It has been used as a political slogan, a regional emblem, a football battle cry, and even been the title of a 1950s song (“Save Your Confederate Money Boys, The South Shall Rise Again”). However, the expression is not a recent one; its genesis dates back to the turbulent years directly following the Civil War. In the late 1860s and early 1870s southern Democrats began to gain more political strength as former Confederates were once again given the right to vote. During this time, across the South, people known to history as the Redeemers came into prominence. The Redeemers actively promoted a return to conservative Democratic rule and opposed the Republican-led, federally-imposed local and state governments, which they saw as corrupt and a violation of true principles. They were also dedicated to white dominance and sought to deny blacks any role in the new South. Many of the Redeemers were plantation owners and other wealthy elites who had lost power and wealth during the Civil War, former Confederate soldiers and loyalists, and a wide variety of supporters. From 1868, they used violence, intimidation and even fraud to control or sabotage any election they could not influence, the goal being to reduce Republican voting and oust current officeholders. In 1868 alone, there were over 1,000 political murders in Louisiana, most of the victims being freedmen. The motto and rally cry that the Redeemers adopted was “the South shall rise again,” and this became something of a motto for the area, one that was at times used by candidates to stir up racial and regional confrontation. It has retained its currency into the 21st century.

Before the Civil War, Jefferson Davis seved as Secretary of the Navy under President Franklin Pierce. While in this position he met and befriended America’s first Assistant Secretary of State, Ambrose Dudley Mann. During the war, Confederate President Davis appointed Mann as one of the first Commissioners to Europe and Mann eventually gained the title of Confederate Commissioner for Belgium and the Vatican.

After Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Davis fled Richmond and was captured by Federal cavalry near Irwinville, Georgia on May 10, 1865. He was then held at Fort Monroe on charges of treason against the United States until May of 1867, when he was released on a $100,000 bond. The bond was posted by several prominent Americans, among them his wartime opponents Horace Greeley, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Gerrit Smith. Though a public trial was something Davis eagerly sought because it would raise the issue of whether or not seccession was actually illegal no less treasonous, it was long delayed.

Meanwhile, he refused to apologize or consider ideas of a pardon.

In 1868, after spending time in New Orleans and Canada, Davis and his wife traveled to Europe. He wanted to call on Mann, who had moved to Paris after the war, but serious illness in his family prevented it. In this important letter, Davis explains all that, mentions his own ill health (no doubt worsened by the physical and mental strain of his confinement and constant travels), and clearly describes his family’s reduced straits and meager budget. He laments the delays in and inconveniences of his upcoming trial, which were in part the result of the unavailability of Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who was presiding over the trial after impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Davis also decries the “radical rule” of the Federal government, and with the U.S. presidential election of 1868 just ahead, he doubts that New York Governor and Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour can defeat the popular Republican candidate, U.S. Grant. This leads him to regret the condition of the South, wondering if it will ever have the “life to rise again.”

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“

I cannot bear to contemplate another four years of ‘Radical’ rule.

Their crimes would probably lead to a terrible reaction and their punishment would be more full and therefore more beneficial to the oppressed South, if it were possible to wait so long and yet have life to rise again.

Autograph Letter Signed, Waterloo, England, October 9, 1868 to Mann. “My dear friend, I have long desired to write to you but having learned that you had changed your residence was at a loss how to address you, until I met our friend Senator [James A.] Bayard at London. Immediately thereafter I returned to Liverpool and learned that my son who was at school at this place was dangerously ill, and on my arrival here found him so low that for weeks we had more to fear than to hope. He is now convalescent but my wife is quite ill, probably consequent on fatigue and anxiety, and I have suffered from the disease which has afflicted this village. You will I hope excuse the delay in announcing myself to you and believe that one of our great desires in Europe was to meet you again. It was my intention to leave France before this date but all of my plans have been disturbed for the causes already stated. The U.S. Court before which I am under bond to appear meets again on the 23rd of November and unless notified that my presence is not required I shall have to be in Richmond, Va. at that time. My counsel expected to receive notice dispensing with my attendence because the case would not be tried in the absence of the circuit judge, the Chief Justice Chase, and it was well understood that he could not preside in the Circuit Court, because the term of the Supreme Court would commence in the ensuing week.

Having however been compelled on the two former occasions to go to Richmond and when it was known there would be no hearing, it may be that a like needless journey will again be necessary.

“As soon as the health of my family will permit it is our purpose to leave here, going in the first instance probably to Leamington, and after a short stay there I wish to go to France. My object is to locate my family in some healthy place where they may live at such small expense as our circumstances will permit, and where the children may have good schools accessible from their Mother’s lodgings. We have looked to you for information and advice. I need not say that the lowest rates consistent with comfort will be accepted.

“The American newspapers have not recently encouraged the hope of Seymour’s election, I cannot bear to contemplate another four years of ‘Radical’ rule. Their crimes would probably lead to a terrible reaction and their punishment would be more full and therefore more beneficial to the oppressed South, if it were possible to wait so long and yet have life to rise again. Mrs. Davis presents to you her kindest remembrance...I am your friend, Jeff ’n Davis.”

The sentiment in this letter is overwhelming, with Davis feeling persecuted, impoverished, and powerless, even as his worst adversaries maraude through the south and prepare to inaugurate Grant and his Republicans into the Execute Mansion. Moreover, considering the timing of this letter, the very language with which it ends is startlingly consistent with the rally cry of the Redeemers - “The south shall rise again” - which raises some interesting potentialities. If Davis borrowed the expression from the Redeemers in composing this letter, that would tend to indicate that he was in sympathy with them and their program. On the other hand, its use here may indicate that Davis himself had something to do with the phrase’s origin. Although its exact genesis is not known, it is possible that some unknown person within the Redeemers originated it. Another scenario is that it was adopted from an early version of a quote that Jefferson Davis used in 1873, and which he borrowed from Thomas Carlyle: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” Plus there is the intriguing possibility that the language of this very letter may have been published in southern newspapers at the time and resulted in creation of the phrase.

The Supreme Court eventually dismissed the charges against Davis, though his U.S. citizenship was only restored posthumously. $9,500

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President Andrew Johnson Pardons Judah Benjamin’s Right Hand Man in the Confederate State Department For His Serving the Confederacy in the “Rebellion” On May 29, 1865, after all of the Confederate armies in the field had surrendered, President Johnson issued an amnesty proclamation. Under this proclamation any former Confederate could receive amnesty, upon their taking an oath to defend the Constitution and the Union, and to obey all Federal laws and proclamations in reference to slavery made during the rebellion. There were, however, thirteen “Confederate profiles” that disqualified an individual from being part of that “general amnesty.” If a “rebel” fell under one of these exclusions, an application for a special pardon from the President was required.

Among the reasons for exclusion from the amnesty were service as a civil or diplomatic agent or official of the Confederacy, service as a Confederate military officer above the rank of colonel, and voluntary participation in the rebellion by someone who had property valued at more than $20,000.00, a huge sum then.

Lucius Quinton Washington, a relative of George Washington, was a Richmond journalist who resided in Washington before the Civil War broke out and provided information to Confederate commissioners coming North to try and settle disputes with the U.S. government and thereby secure recognition of the Confederacy. After Virginia seceded, he moved to Richmond and became chief clerk in the Confederate State Department, and in that capacity was the senior aide to Secretary of State Judah Benjamin.

Some sources intimate that he may have been involved in the Confederate Secret Service. This was just the type of man Johnson’s amnesty had sought to exclude, but for his part Washington accepted sooner than many the verdict of the war and his personal need to move on. He applied to the President for a presidential pardon immediately after the May 29 proclamation. Johnson was only too glad to promptly welcome back to the fold a man such as Washington, and acted to provide the pardon.

Document Signed as President, Washington, July 5, 1865, reciting that “Whereas L.Q. Washington of Richmond, Virginia by taking part in the late rebellion against the government of the United States, has made himself liable to heavy pains and penalties, and whereas the circumstances of his case render him a proper object of Executive clemency,...I, Andrew Johnson...hereby grant to the said L.Q. Washington a full pardon and amnesty for all offenses by him committed arising from participation...in the said rebellion.” Additional conditions were added in pen, predicating the pardon on Washington taking the oath of allegiance, and making it void if he ever acquires “any property whatever in slaves or make use of slave labor...” Secretary of State William Seward also signed the pardon.

After the war, Washington returned to journalism.

He was a charter member of the Gridiron Club, the oldest and most prestigious journalistic organization in Washington, D.C., where he represented The New Orleans Picayune. $4,000

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President James Buchanan Refers a Matter to His Postmaster General

Autograph Letter Signed as President, Washington, August 27, 1857, to Francis Arundel. “I have received your favor of the 24th instant & referred it to the Post Master General, with instructions to cause the subject to be carefully investigated.” The Post Master General referred to was Aaron V. Brown.

Considering the volume of negotiations with the British at the time, and the recipient’s identity, it is possible that the matter related to a postal issue between the two countries.

$1,800

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U.S. Grant Document Signed as President Document Signed as President, Washington, April 3, 1873, authorizing “the Secretary of State to affix the Seal of the United States to a warrant for the unconditional pardon of Jesse Swayne.”

$1,400

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President R.B. Hayes Wants Counsel Brought into a Diplomatic and Legal Squabble With Mexico The U.S. government sympathizes that Mexico was apparently defrauded in a “claims” scam, but will not do anything about it but call in the attorneys The French attempted to establish a Mexican empire in 1864, putting Maximilian on the throne. Benito Juárez led a gallant resistance to the French and the Mexican people rallied to him. The empire fell, Juarez took power, and he instituted a program of reform. In this he was opposed by the church, wealthy landowners, army officers, and conservatives, who led insurrections against him. Mexico was plagued by instability all through that era. During that time, American individuals and companies trying to do business south of the border sometimes found their products seized and their operations suspended, situations they later blamed on the Mexican government. They demanded recompense and exerted pressure on the U.S. government to intervene and lean on the distracted Mexicans, which it did.

On July 4, 1868, a convention between the U.S. and Mexico was signed providing for the adjustment of such claims. Benjamin Weil and the La Abra Silver Mining Company, among other American interests, presented specific claims against Mexico. These were referred to commissioners and in 1875 resulted in very large awards against money-starved Mexico. The Mexican government began making payments to the U.S., but soon placed in the possession of the U.S. Secretary of State certain books, papers, and documents that it alleged had been recently discovered and which showed that some of the claims (including those of Weil and La Abra) were not only fictitious and fraudulent, but had been supported by false and perjured testimony.

Mexico demanded that the cases be reopened. In 1878, Congress resolved that “whereas the government of Mexico has called the attention of the government of the United States to the claims hereinafter named, with a view to a rehearing; therefore be it enacted that the President of the United States be...requested to investigate any charges of fraud presented by the Mexican government...and if he shall be of the opinion that...the principles of public law, or considerations of justice and equity require that the awards...should be opened and the cases retried, it shall be lawful for him to withhold payment of said awards...”

During the first part of 1879, President Hayes ordered William M. Evarts, his Secretary of State, to investigate the charges of fraud presented by Mexico. Evarts had previously acted as an attorney for a mining company that was one of the claimants against Mexico, but he did not recuse himself. On August 13, 1879, Evarts issued his report in the form of a letter to President Hayes, finding “that neither the principles of public law nor considerations of justice or equity require or permit... that the awards in these cases should be opened.” He continued by saying the evidence presented by the Mexicans did “bring into grave doubt the substantial integrity of the claim of Benjamin Weil and the sincerity of the evidence as to the measure of damages insisted upon and accorded in the case of the La Abra Silver Mining Company,” but advised Hayes that the President could not redress the matter, but rather that Congress should. He also advised that the money Mexico had already paid on the claims, which the U.S. government was holding, should be paid

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to the claimants despite his own belief that there was impropriety involved. So he was giving sympathy to Mexico while giving the Mexicans’ money to the claimants. Mexico was furious and made that known. The matter now lay on the desk of President Hayes.

Hayes knew he was in the midst of a legal as well as diplomatic tempest, so he asked Evarts to get government attorneys involved. Autograph Letter Signed on Executive Mansion letterhead, Washington, August 15, 1879, to Secretary of State Evarts, then at his home in Windsor, Vermont. “It seems to me desirable that the decision in Mexican Award Cases be given to Counsel immediately. Can’t you dispatch me a syllabus?”

After reading Evarts’s letter, Hayes publicly stated that he had “grave doubts as to the substantial integrity of the Weil Claim”, but he passed the buck right to Congress, saying it had to provide a means of investigation, as he could not. This means was not provided promptly and Hayes approved Evarts’s recommendations. The installments of the award received from Mexico on account of the claims were in fact paid out. As for the legal aspects, a string of cases on these claims were filed and made their way all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A few months later, in his first State of the Union message on December 1, 1879, Hayes offered a carrot to an angry Mexico, praising relations between the countries and promising increased trade in reward for its troubles. “The third installment of the award against Mexico under the claims commission of July 4, 1868, was duly paid, and has been put in course of distribution in pursuance of the act of Congress providing for the same. This satisfactory situation between the two countries leads me to anticipate an expansion of our trade with Mexico and an increased contribution of capital and industry by our people to the development of the great resources of that country.” $3,800

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A Visionary Susan B. Anthony Recognizes the Connection Between Disenfranchisement and Evils Such As Moral and Social Stigma and Discrimination in the Workplace More than any other woman of her generation, Susan B. Anthony saw that all of the legal disabilities faced by American women owed their existence to the simple fact that women lacked the vote. When Anthony, at age 32, attended her first woman’s rights convention in Syracuse in 1852, she declared “that the right which woman needed above every other, the one indeed which would secure to her all the others, was the right of suffrage.” Anthony spent the next fifty-plus years of her life fighting for the right to vote.

In 1872 Anthony and fifteen supporters from Rochester decided to test laws precluding women from voting, and actually showed up at the polling place and cast ballots, becoming the first women ever to vote in a presidential election. They were promptly arrested for their boldness, but Anthony saw the arrest as an opportunity to test women’s legal right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment by taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Free on bail of one thousand dollars, she campaigned throughout the country with a carefully prepared legal argument: “Is It a Crime for a U.S. Citizen to Vote?” She lost her case in 1873 in Rochester following some questionable rulings by the judge and was barred from appealing the result to the Supreme Court.

Anthony’s insight was not only that lack of voting rights underlay political disabilities, but moral and social ones, and the unequal treatment of women in the workplace. Autograph Quotation Signed, Lake Linden, Michigan, December 17, 1879. “Disenfranchisement is not only political degradation, but ever and always moral, social and industrial degradation as well. Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N.Y.” Anthony worked tirelessly for the cause the rest of her life, heading organizations, giving speeches, petitioning Congress and state legislatures, and publishing books and a feminist newspaper. That cause would ultimately succeed with ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. $2,500

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President Grover Cleveland Appoints Former Confederate Congressman Jabez L.M. Curry as U.S. Representative to Spain, As Conflicts With That Nation Begin to Take Shape In this position he helped resolve claims of Americans against Spain Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry was a Georgian who served in the Mexican War and held a seat in the House of Representatives from 1857 until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. He was an early secessionist, was elected to the Confederate Congress, and also served as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army. In this position he was staff aide to both Generals Joseph Johnston and Joseph Wheeler. He was such a southerner at heart that he personally urged Confederate President Jefferson Davis to take the field with his men.

After the end of the Civil War, Curry studied for the ministry and became a preacher, but eventually returned to public service. He did so most notably as a U.S. diplomat, with President Grover Cleveland appointing him Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Spain in 1885. At that time it, this position gave Curry all of the power and responsibility of an official Ambassador. Document Signed as President, Washington, October 5, 1885, authorizing “the Secretary of State to cause the Seal of the United States to be affixed to the envelope of my letter accrediting Jabez L.M. Curry as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Spain.”

Due to Spain’s presence as a colonial power in the Western hemisphere, especially in Cuba, there had long been tension between her and the United States. Over time, Americans grew sympathetic towards Cuba’s unsuccessful attempts to overthrow Spanish rule.

In the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878) within Cuba between Spain and Cuban rebels, Spanish troops were responsible for the destruction of American property and Americans made claims for reimbursement for such destruction. Curry had to deal with this issue as Envoy by resolving the claims against Spain, and in this he was successful. In “Destroying the Republic: Jabez Curry and the Re-education of the Old South,” John J. Chodes wrote how Curry commented prophetically on the Cuba/Spain relationship: “Cuba seems lost to Spain; I do not see how her authority can be regained, whatever course we take in the matter...” Curry also suggested creation of new trade agreements whereunder both the U.S. and Spain would lower their protectionist barriers on Cuban goods, but tariffs were a major issue and President Cleveland could not agree to this. Curry served in this particular position from 1885-1888.

In 1895 another Cuban revolt occurred and this resulted in a particularly harsh response from Spain. Cuban rebels were thrown into overcrowded camps where many thousands died. In America, William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal printed sensational stories of Spanish brutality and Cuban victories, stirring up pro-Cuban and anti-Spanish sentiment. In February of 1898, the U.S. battleship Maine was sunk in Havana harbor. Although there was no proof the Spanish had a hand in it, on April 25, 1898, Congress declared war on Spain.

In a few months the war was over and the U.S. acquired a number of Spain’s colonies; it was now an international power. $1,200

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The Spanish-American War Ends: A Rare Signed Photograph of Execution of the Protocol that Ended Hostilities The U.S. declared war on Spain in April, 1898, two months after the USS Maine exploded in Havana’s harbor. The war went well from the start. Opening the battle with the famous quote, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” on May 1, U.S. Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish squadron in Manila Bay, thus taking the Philippine Islands.

Guam soon followed. Closer to home, U.S. and Cuban troops took El Viso Fort and the town of El Caney. San Juan Hill was taken with the help of the Rough Riders under Teddy Roosevelt and Santiago de Cuba fell as well. By mid-July, Spanish control of Cuba was at an end. On July 18, the Spanish government, through the French Ambassador to the U.S., Jules Cambon, initiated a message to President McKinley to suspend the hostilities and to start the negotiations to end the war. McKinley called for a preliminary protocol from Spain before suspension, and on August 9 Spain accepted the U.S. conditions. Three days later the protocol was signed that ended the hostilities.

This is a very rare, oversized signed photograph of all the major participants in the signing of the Protocol of Peace, showing the Cabinet Room (today the Treaty Room) of the White House, where President McKinley stands beside seated French Ambassador Jules Cambon and Secretary of State William R Day. These men have all signed on the mat below the image. Also portrayed and signing are Assistant Secretary of State and later Secretary of the Treasury George B. Cortelyou, Asst. Secretary of State Alvey A. Adee, General Henry C. Corbin, Asst. Secretary to the President Oscar L. Pruden, John Bassett Moore, noted jurist and author of essays on international law, Charles Loeffler, Union officer and head doorkeeper of the White House, and Asst. Sec. of State Thomas W. Cridler, White House aide Benjamin Montgomery, and French diplomat Eugene Thiebaut. Frances B. Johnston, the earliest major American female photographer and photojournalist, took the photograph. It is approximately 12.5 x 15.5 inches, with the entire piece measuring 16.5 x 20.5 inches overall.

In the Treaty of Peace in, Spain renounced all rights to Cuba and allowed an independent Cuba, ceded Puerto Rico and the island of Guam to the Americans, gave up its possessions in the West Indies, and sold the Philippine Islands to the victor for $20 million. The U.S. was now a world power. $9,000

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The Progressive Valedictory of Theodore Roosevelt

“

In such a fight it is equally necessary to cleave steadfastly to lofty idealism and also to show hard-headed common sense in trying to remove this idealizm from the domain of words into the doman of deeds...

The 1912 election was one of the great campaigns in American history. It was the decisive battle of the Progressive era, which witnessed the first comprehensive efforts to come to terms with the fundamental problems and conflicts raised by the industrial revolution. The breakthroughs in science and technology, the frenzied search for new markets and sources of capital, and the unprecedented economic growth of the previous decades had resulted in the creation of “big business” - the giants then called trusts - that exerted enormous economic control and constituted unfettered bastions of power. These combinations of wealth were anything but public minded; the pursuit of their agendas left poverty in its wake and exposed small business to predatory practices of the worst kind. And with many politicians corruptly influenced or in their pockets, they vigorously opposed any oversight on their conduct. TR declared that “the enslavement of the people by the great corporations” was a real risk that could “only be held in check through the expansion of government power.”

This epochal election had been four years in the making. In 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt, who had pursued a reform agenda, declined to run for another term. With his support, William H. Taft was elected president, but the conservative Taft turned out to be a disappointment to Roosevelt and the nation’s progressives, as he opposed the programs and ideas that TR had labored to put into place. So Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912, and although he won the battle in the primaries, he was denied the nomination by party regulars who stuck with Taft. After losing the nomination, Roosevelt left the Republicans and gained the nomination of the Progressive Party.

Roosevelt conducted a vigorous national campaign for the Progressive Party, making the election a passionate contest for the soul of the American people. Promoting an ambitious program of economic, social, and political reforms, TR and his Progressive supporters provoked an extraordinary debate about the future of the country. They dominated the election and left an enduring legacy that set in motion the rise of mass democracy and the expansion of national administrative power. The party’s platform called for direct democracy, social justice, regulation of business and of the workplace, safety and health standards, conservation, women’s suffrage, and a balance between rights and civic duties; and that was just the beginning.

Roosevelt scored a second-place finish, but he trailed so far behind Woodrow Wilson that everyone realized his party would never win the White House. So rather than being called to lead a growing and prospering party, TR returned to personal pursuits, and in late 1913 he left for a perilous trip to explore an unmapped river in Brazil, the River of Doubt, which flowed from the interior to the Amazon. The expedition members faced insects, floods, hostile natives and capsizing canoes. Several people were lost, including one member who went insane and killed another before running off into the jungle. TR’s son Kermit nearly died when he was swept over a falls, and TR himself lost 57 pounds during the journey and nearly died from malaria and dysentery. He returned in May 1914, his health permanently broken, just as the congressional campaign of that year was

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getting under way. Despite his condition, he determined to make the trip to Pittsburgh to speak to a conference of Pennsylvania Progressives on June 30, 1914; this would be his first major political address post-1912. The day before his scheduled speech, newspapers carried the word that on June 28, a Serb nationalist had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, setting in motion events that would almost immediately snowbll and absorb the world’s attention - the leadup, onset and battles of World War I. With the diversion of American attention by the war and foreign policy issues, domestic concerns like the progressive agenda would quickly fade from the front pages. The Progressive Party showing in 1914 would be very poor and the party disintegrated at the national level; by 1916 TR was back supporting the Republicans. So although Theodore Roosevelt would make statements in the future, both because of limitations resulting from his health and his own sharp focus on foreign policy, our research indicates that the June 30 address was likely the last truly great live progressive address he would ever deliver.

The Pittsburgh address lasted for over an hour, and in it TR summarized the essentials of his progressive philosophy, and issued a heart-felt and inspirational call for idealism, justice and public spirit. It is a virtual valedictory, one that has as great a relevance and immediacy today as it did when issued in 1914. We offer two lengthy pages (pages 2 and 3) of his first draft, completely in his hand - from his mind to the pen. They are the only manuscript pages from the address that we have seen.

“In such a fight it is equally necessary both to cleave steadfastly to a lofty idealism and also to show hard-headed common sense in trying to remove this idealism from the domain of words into the domain of deeds. We realize that mere material well being is never enough in itself, and yet we realize also that material well being is absolutely essential because without it as a foundation there will be nothing whatever on which to build the lofty superstructure of a higher life. We stand for social and industrial justice for all, and therefore we feel bound to work with heart and brain for that material prosperity the lack of which will prevent our doing social and industrial justice to anyone. We do not intend to let the business man of brains use those brains to the detriment either of the men who work with or under him, of the men who are his rivals, or of the general public; but we wish to shape conditions so that if he acts squarely he will succeed, and this not only as a matter of justice to him, but because his success is a matter of prime importance to the success of wage worker and farmer alike. We wish to pass prosperity round; and for that very reason we desire that there may be in evidence prosperity sufficient to pass around.

“Now the present national administration is pursuing a course that prevents the existence of prosperity, and that does not offer a single serious or intelligible plan for passing it around should it, in spite of their efforts, at some future time return to our people. This is true both as regards the Trust question and the tariff question. As regards both the only wise course to follow is that set forth in the National Progressive platform. The nation should deal with both by continuing executive action through administrative commissions of ample power. One commission would shape our foreign policy so as with their knowledge, disinterestedly to give proper encouragement to our merchants while also giving proper protection to our wage workers, our farmers, and our businessmen. The other commission would exercise strict supervision and control over big business, treating it with entire justice and drawing the line not on size, but on misconduct; that is safeguarding and encouraging the big business man who does well, and who regards his great abilities as a trust to be exercised in the interest of the public as in his own interest, but checking him effectually and promptly when he exercises them to the detriment either of the smaller business man with whom he competes, of the wage workers who should share with the benefits of his and their common efforts, or of the general public whom he serves.

“As regards the tariff, I wish especially to call your attention to the promise made by President Wilson and his supporters two years ago. They asserted that their method of treating the tariff reduction would reduce the cost of living and would solve the Trust question because, as they said, the Trusts were the creatures of the tariff. We then answered that their promises were false, that no such results as they stated could or would follow from the course they advocated, and that only by the methods we proposed could either the Trust or the tariff question be dealt with so as to abate the existing evils and at the same time increase the general well being. Two short years

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have proved us right. Their promises have not been kept. Their performance has brought disaster upon the nation. The cost of living has not been reduced. But the ability of the average man to earn a living has been greatly reduced. Not the slightest progress has been made towards solving the Trust question. But the business community has been harmed and harried to no purpose; and the prosperity of the business man has been checked, exactly as the prosperity of the farmer and the wage worker has been checked. As for the farmer, the present tariff, the administration’s tariff, was deliberately framed so as to sacrifice his interest. He had no friend in high quarters and his welfare was comtempuously sacrificed. At every point where his interest was covered he was made to suffer. As for the wage worker, the cuts in the tariff were so arranged that he suffered even more than his employer; for he was thrown out of employment, and lost the means to earn his livlihood; for the employer, sometimes he has been able to struggle on with the loss of profits, sometimes he has had to close his shop. In business in which any of the big Trusts were covered, it was the small competitors of the Trusts who were injured, and in many cases ruined.

Tariff reduction as put into practice by the present administration has benefitted no one except a few foreign rivals and competitors. It has done grave injury to the business community and the farming community, and has caused suffering to the wage workers, and the whole policy of the administration has been to cause our people in business, our people on the farms, our people with dinner pails to look towards the future with grave concern and apprehension.”

Journalist William Allen White said of Theodore Roosevelt, “He poured into my heart such visions, such ideals, such hopes, such a new attitude toward life and patriotism and the meaning of things, as I had never dreamed men had.” This speech shows how. And importantly, although the Progressive Party did not succeed, many of its programs did.

Later in 1914, President Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act to regulate some business practices and the Clayton Act to expand Antitrust protections. In 1920, women received the right to vote. The New Deal enacted social security and some other ideas. And President Truman created the National Security Council to advise on foreign policy matters. However, the wide-ranging regulatory scheme of which TR dreamed has never been put in to place. $19,000

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Theodore Roosevelt’s Widow Writes Old Family Friend Thomas Newkirk Phillips

Edith Roosevelt was a widow only two months when she corresponded with friend Thomas Newkirk Phillips. She had also become a grandmother when her son Archie, himself just 26 years old, had a son in 1918.

Autograph Letter Signed on her letterhead, Oyster Bay, February 28, 1920, to Phillips, then working at national headquarters of the Red Cross in Washington. “Use the card in the Junior Red Cross and keep the original. I must ask for another photograph as the one you sent arrived in bad condition. Think of Archie the head of a family. With all good wishes...” Comes with an unsigned holograph on her personal card and the two free franked envelopes in which the items were contained in. $450

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President Theodore Roosevelt Helps a Deserving Friend Typed Letter Signed on White House letterhead, Oyster Bay, August 5, 1903, to White House pharmicist Thomas Newkirk Phillips. “I am delighted to hear of your promotion. It was the greatest pleasure to help you, for you thoroughly deserved it.” $1,200

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Agreeing With Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison States That He Follows Physics and Has Rejected the Ether Theory Charles Kassel was an attorney in Fort Worth, Texas and an author on matters of science, religion, spiritualism and philosophy. He was particularly interested in establishing that there is life after death and wrote an article for The North American Review on the subject in 1922. In it, he opined that until recently, the principles of conservation of mass and inertia had led many people to doubt that there was ever any element that was ever anything but what it is today. “The leading obstacle until now in the way of any scientific thought of a future life has been the difficulty of conceiving a state of being such as it is necessary to assume -- a state of being which demands a yielding of all our notions of matter...The leading obstacle until now in the way of any scientific thought of a future life has been the difficulty of conceiving a state of being such as it is necessary to assume -- a state of being which demands a yielding of all our notions of matter...The discovery of radioactivity, he maintained, changed all that and constituted an “opening up of these new vistas of the constitution of things.” Most 19th century scientists believed that light waves had to move through some sort of substance that filled space, just as ocean waves move through water and sound waves move through air. They called this invisible and weightless substance “luminiferous ether, “ though no instrument could detect its existence. Kassel believed strongly in the ether. Matter, he wrote in the article, is transitory rather than stable, and “it is the ether, that unseen, all-permeating thing...” that is fixed and lasting. He then quotes a scientist as saying that the ether is real but is not ordinary matter. His conclusion is that the in-dwelling intelligence (or perhaps soul) of a person is composed of the substance of the ether, and when the body dies, the essence of the person-as-ether remains. This tangibly explained the afterlife in concrete terms. He also found that the new scientific discoveries in radiation and atoms showed that they were interacting and thus possibly linking with another world.

In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed an experiment that provided strong evidence against the theory of an ether. Still there were many who could not give up the ether theory and set about trying to make revisions to make it fit. At this time, questions concerning the nature of the universe were mainly tackled by mathematical equations, as they had been since Isaac Newton. In 1895, physicist Hendrik Lorentz concluded that the “null” result obtained by Michelson and Morley was caused by a effect of contraction made by the ether on their apparatus and introduced a length contraction equation as a potential answer. Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity in 1905 supported the Michelson/Morley conclusion and could generate the same mathematics as Lorentz without referring to an ether at all. To most scientists, the whole concept of ether was abandoned after Einstein, being replaced by the vacuum of empty space.

“

I cannot think by the use of mathematics hence am compelled to use other instrumentalities and capacities of the brain.

Kassel sent Edison a copy of his article, and Edison responded. Typed Letter Signed on his laboratory letterhead, Orange, N.J., December 14, 1923, to Kassel, informing him that he closely follows physics, and denying both the existence of the ether and the need to determine questions of physics through mathematics. “I thank you for the reprint from the

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North American Review which was enclosed with your kind letter of December 7th. The article is very interesting. Someday somebody will get the right theory and open up a new conception of space, matter, motion and ourselves. For years I have read and collected everything I could find time to read relating to the ether of space as created by the mathematical mind to explain physics. The more I read the more I reject their conceptions and theories. I cannot think by the use of mathematics hence am compelled to use other instrumentalities and capacities of the brain.

The result is that I do not believe there is any ether with the extraordinary properties ascribed to it. To me it is entirely unnecessary to explain things generally but it is absolutely necessary to explain the theories of the mathematical brain. Someday I hope to get enough courage to print a few observations in that line.”

So Edison rejects the idea that knowledge of physics must come through application of mathematics, feeling that sole reliance on mathematics is in fact unnecessary. It is also interesting that Edison says that his mind is not a mathematical one, indicating that his inventions were developed through other modalities (such as concepting, engineering and experimentation). And it is somewhat strange to read his statement that “Someday somebody will get the right theory and open up a new conception of space, matter, motion,” as although he agrees with Einstein’s conclusions, one wonders whether he was familiar with Einstein’s work. $3,800

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Thomas Edison Believes That Even Questions of Religion Must Be Consistent With Science Kassel contined his search for proof of the afterlife.

In 1926, he again wrote Edison with an article on the subject. Edison responded with a clear statement that the central tenet of most religious belief - the question of immortality - must be determined purely by evidence from natural science.

Typed Letter Signed on his laboratory letterhead, Orange, N.J., November 10, 1926, to Kassel. “Your letter of November 5, and the copy of your article on the ‘Mystery of Life’ have been received and read with a great deal of interest. Let me thank you for both your letter and the article. In my opinion, all that we can do at present is to marshal all the facts for and against immortality, taking our facts entirely from nature, and then see which side preponderates. These facts and analogies are very interesting. I am collecting a few.”

$5,000

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Thomas Edison, Whose Mind Was a Fountain of Visions, Praises an Author For Having a “wonderful imagination” The Norge was a semi-rigid Italian-built airship that carried out what many consider the first verified overflight of the North Pole on May 12, 1926. It was also the first aircraft to fly over the polar ice cap between Europe and America. To people at the time, this exploit seemed like something out of Jules Verne, and reminded Kassel of a science fiction work he had read years before.

In 1927, he wrote an article “Anticipating The Norge: A Forgotten Jules Verne.”

Kassel had a correspondence with Edison and sent him a copy of the article. Typed Letter Signed on his laboratory letterhead, Orange, N.J., October 18, 1927, to Kassel. “Allow me to express my appreciation of your thoughtful courtesy in sending me a copy of your paper “Anticipating the Norge” with which you have kindly complimented me. I have read it with a great deal of interest, and think a worthy act has been accomplished in resurrecting it from its obscurity. Fuller certainly had a wonderful imagination.” The Fuller referred to may have been early female science fiction write Alice W. Fuller.

It is interesting to see Edison, whose mind was a fountain of visions, praise this quality in others, saying that the author had “a wonderful imagination.” $1,300

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Herbert Hoover Thanks the Red Cross For Providing Important Medical Assistance to His American Relief Administration After World War I ended in late 1918, Herbert Hoover became head of the American Relief Administration, which organized shipments of food for millions of starving people in Europe. He did such a fine job in that capacity, saving millions of lives, that it made his reputation and led to his political career. In 1921, President Harding named him Secretary of Commerce. From there he would go on to the presidency. As for the American Relief Administration, it wound down its activities in early 1923 and concluded its efforts in June of that year.

Thomas Newkirk Phillips was a former White House pharmicist who went on to work for the Red Cross at its national headquarters in Washington. When World War I broke out, he was instrumental in coordinating Red Cross supplies being sent to Europe. After the war, he coordinated Red Cross medical assistence to Herbert Hoover and his American Relief Administration.

Typed Letter Signed on Commerce Department letterhead, Washington, February 3, 1923, to Phillips, thanking him as Red Cross representative for helping make the American Relief Administration’s work a success. “Now that the final reports have been sent to the President and to Congress on the disposal of the army surplus medical stocks, which by Congressional Act were turned over to the American Relief Administration, I want to express to you my warm personal appreciation for your very fine services in connection with the selection and handling of these stocks. Without your expert help it would have been a great test for us to build up a machine competent to take care of this intricate and highly technical problem. The way in which you handled the whole thing was more than satisfactory to us, and we are deeply in your debt.”

$1,000

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Taft Claims That in Firing Theodore Roosevelt’s Protege and Friend, Conservationist Gifford Pinchot, He Was Defending the Presidency Itself His action helped lead to the founding of the Progressive Party Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the United States Forest Service (a post to which he was named

by President McKinley), was a progressive who coined the term “conservation” as applied to natural resources. He rose to national prominence under the patronage of President Roosevelt, with whose concurrence he completely altered public land policy from one that dispersed resources to private corporations to one that maintained federal ownership and management of public land for the public good. These moves were opposed by more conservative forces in the Republican Party, and in 1907, Congress forbade the creation of more forest reserves in the Western states. TR responded by designating millions of acres of new National Forests before the ban took effect.

Pinchot’s authority was undermined by the inauguration of President Taft in 1909. Taft’s newly-installed Secretary of the Interior, Richard Ballinger, was unsympathetic to Pinchot’s views and favored private development of lands over withdrawing sites for public use. Pinchot brought his concerns to Taft, accusing Ballinger of abandoning the nation’s conservation policies. Taft supported Ballinger. Then Ballinger was alleged to have collaborated with coal interests to plunder federal reserves in Alaska. After a series of magazine exposes that roused the conservationists, and spurred by Pinchot’s demand, Congress launched an investigation. A committee dominated by conservative Republicans exonerated Ballinger, but the questioning of committee counsel Louis D. Brandeis made Ballinger ’s anti-conservationism clear. Pinchot now sought to pressure Taft to force Ballinger from office, and in the first week of January 1910 had a congressional ally, Senator Dolliver of Iowa, read to Congress (and thus make public) a defense of the Forest Service that contained thinly veiled attacks on Ballinger and the President. Instead of causing Ballinger ’s exit, Pinchot caused his own, as Taft again stood by Ballinger, and on January 7 discharged Pinchot for insubordination.

Typed Letter Signed on White House letterhead, Washington, January 10, 1910, just three days after the fact, to Wall Street attorney and former judge Reuben D. Silliman, who had written him January 8 saying he found the feeling that Ballinger had been indiscrete was “a pretty persistent affirmative opinion,” and that he regretted the necessity of Taft having to fire Pinchot. The President, seeing a supporter express some ambivalence, responded by explaining that in removing Pinchot, he was defending the authority of the presidency rather than just making a partisan move. “I have your letter of January 8th. I share with you the regret that I had to remove Mr. Pinchot, but as he persisted in putting himself in a place where there was no alternative, consistent with the dignity of the office of President, the action had to come.” A copy of Silliman’s letter to Taft is included, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

In the ensuing public relations battle, Pinchot skillfully manipulated public opinion to taint Ballinger (and thus Taft) with suspicions of corruption. Meanwhile, Pinchot (and by implication his patron, Roosevelt) was heralded as the defender of the public good. By the end of the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, Taft had removed almost all of Roosevelt’s supporters from the Interior Department. The controversy finally ended the alreadystrained friendship between Taft and Roosevelt, and revealed the deep fault lines in the

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Republican Party between the conservatives and progressives. The furor that Pinchot raised about the conservation policies of Ballinger and Taft encouraged insurgent Republicans to oppose Taft’s renomination as the Republican presidential standard-bearer in 1912. This split the GOP and led to the formation of the Progressive Party in 1912, with TR as its standard bearer. $3,500

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Signed Photograph of the Taft/Holmes/Brandeis U.S. Supreme Court That Hung in the Chambers of the First Jewish federal Judge, Jacob Trieber Jacob Trieber was the first Jew to become a federal judge in the United States, serving from 1900 to 1927 as judge for the U.S. Circuit Court, Eastern District of Arkansas. In that position, he issued nationally important rulings on controversies that included antitrust cases, railroad litigation, prohibition cases, and mail fraud; some of his rulings, such as those promoting civil rights and wildlife conservation, have implications today. His broad interpretation of the constitutional guarantees of the Thirteenth Amendment, originally overturned by the post-Reconstruction U.S. Supreme Court, was validated sixtyfive years later in a landmark 1968 equal opportunity case. Chief Justice William H. Taft admired Trieber ’s work and was often in contact with him.

A 13 1/2 by 16 inch black and white Harris & Ewing photograph of the U.S. Supreme Court circa 1923, signed by all of the justices: William H. Taft, Louis D. Brandeis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Willis Van Devanter, Pierce Butler, Joseph McKenna, George Sutherland, Edward Sanford and James C. McReynolds. This is the very picture that hung in Judge Trieber ’s chambers, and is still in the original frame. We obtained this from the Trieber descendants and it has never before been offered for sale. $9,000

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During The First American Combat of World War I, British Commander Haig Tries to Maneuver American General Pershing Into Sending Divisions to Augment His Own Depleted Forces Following the U.S. declaration of war against Germany in 1917, John J. Pershing was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). At the time of his appointment such an expeditionary force did not exist, as the army comprised 25,000 men at most. Pershing needed to recruit an organized army and get it into the field.

He did so, creating an army of nearly 3 million men, but it would take time. The war would be more than a year old before American troops in any significant numbers began arriving in Europe in the spring of 1918.

Pershing’s first major fight was not with the Germans, but with his Allies, the British and French.

Their armies were exhausted from four years of devastating war, and they were desperately anxious to get Americans into combat. This need became vital when on March 21, 1918, the Germans launched a major offensive to try and win the war before the Americans could make their weight felt in any numbers. Neither the British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig nor his French counterpart Marshal Foch wanted a separate, American army. They argued such a force would take longer to train and reach the field, needlessly duplicate logistics chains, and implicitly, that raw American troops and commanders lacked experience and would require guidance from those with real battle savvy. Both Allies demanded that the AEF be broken up and its units assigned to provide replacements for their own depleted formations. In effect, Haig and Foch wanted to reduce Pershing to the command of a replacement depot - feeding American soldiers to Allied commanders who (in the view of Wilson, Baker and Pershing) had already wasted the lives of millions of their own countrymen in fruitless attacks since 1914. Pershing refused the Allied plan, saying that the AEF would fight in France and would do so under American command.

But the Allied need was urgent, so the pressure was unrelenting. On May 2, 1918, a compromise was reached and an agreement signed. It provided that “...as far as consistent with the necessity of building up an American Army,” some American troops would receive “training and service with French and British Armies; with the understanding that such infantry and machine-gun units are to be withdrawn...at the direction of the American Commander in Chief.” Thus, the Allies agreed in principle that there would be one unitary American force in Europe, but Pershing agreed that until one was fully formed and “over there,” some American units would indeed be assigned to British and French forces for “training and service.” The 27th and 30th Divisions were assigned to the British, along with a few other units, and in time the Frech received some also, but all were quickly withdrawn by Pershing except for the 27th and 30th, which continued on to serve under Haig’s leadership. In June 1918 these divisions underwent extensive combat training under British supervision, and exchanged their American equipment and firearms for

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British equivalents. They were teamed with Australian units, making this the first major interaction of Americans and Australians.

Meanwhile, Americans had their first experience of combat. Chateau-Thierry formed the tip of the German advance towards Paris and it was defended by the U.S. 2nd and 3rd Divisions. Led by Pershing, the Americans launched a counter-attack on June 3-4, 1918, and they succeeded in pushing the Germans back across the Marne. Then the Americans were given the difficult task of capturing Belleau Wood. Stubbornly defended by the Germans, the wood was taken by U.S. forces after a total of six attacks and counterattacks, with the battle ending June 26.

Until July 1918, Haig continued to hope to use the May agreement as a wedge to have more and more American divisions detached and placed under his command. He tried every angle he could think of. Here, in the very midst of the Battle of Belleau Wood, when Pershing asked him for some horses (almost surely to haul supplies), Haig responded by saying that he could help Pershing out with his onerous responsibilities by maybe taking on some more American divisions for training.

Autograph Letter Signed, General Headquarters British Armies in France, Saturday, 22 June 1918, to Pershing. ”Your letter of 19th instant reached me this morning. I will examine the horse question, and will let you know later whether it is possible for me to help to any important extent. I find that my resources will admit of my receiving two more Americans divisions, and equipping them with regimental transport etc. & help in their training on the same conditions as we are now doing for those divisions which are in the British area - 27th, 30th, 33rd etc. This will help you to a small extent, I hope. Kindly let me know if you decide to send me two more divisions, so that billets etc. may be prepared to receive them.” He ends with, apparently referring to the ongoing battle, “All of luck to you...” At top left of page one, Pershing has requested in pencil that an aide prepare an answer, and signed with his initials. That answer was no. This is our first letter between the commanders of the great armies during World War I. Public sale records reveal no comparable piece. $3,000

“

I find that my resources will admit of my receiving two more Americans divisions

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The Original of One of W.C. Fields Best-Known Vaudeville Sketches “10,000 People Killed”, in 19 pages of handwritten and typed text Fields created one of the great American comic personas of the 20th century. This characterization was so strong that it was generally identified with Fields himself as well as the characters he portrayed, and made his celebrity so enduring that his name and voice are still widely recognized 7 decades after he left the public stage. Though now remembered for the films he made in Hollywood, Fields had been a star in vaudeville, where by age 21 he was a headliner in North America and Europe, traveling as a comedy juggling act.

In 1906 he made his Broadway debut, and soon signing with renowned impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, became a principal Follies attraction from 1915 to 1925. When the 1930’s dawned, he switched the focus of his work to films, making all told over forty.

The original Autograph Manuscript Signed, 11 separate pages, 1922, for Fields’ noted vaudeville sketch “10,000 People Killed”. Here is just a very small sampling of the sketch, which is about a family at the dinner table listening to the radio and hearing of an earthquake in San Francisco where the wife’s mother lives. It is full of Fieldsian wit.

Radio (called the “wireless” back then) was in its very infancy. The broadcast band was

adopted in 1922, marking that year the first in which widespread broadcasting occurred.

Obtaining a radio became a hot subject, so a skit about it was extremely topical. Early radios had multiple components and getting one hooked up required a lot of wires. Fields jokes about this, wondering why the invention is called the wireless when there are wires everywhere. The family in the sketch consists of Mr. and Mrs. Shugg and their baby daughter, and the scene takes place in an apartment filled with wires leading to the radio.

Mrs. Shugg starts the action telling the baby to keep away from the radio, tripping over a wire and saying “Damn.” The baby replies “Oh. You said a bad word.” Mrs. Shugg says she meant to say “dash,” then after tripping over another wire is about to swear again but changes whatever it was she was going to say to “Oh - Pussy Willow,” a very typical Fields’ form of profanity which was suggestive but could pass the censor. Then the radio announces “10,000 people killed,” and starts to buzz, losing the signal. Mrs.

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Shugg is convinced that the announcement is of an earthquake in San Francisco where her mother lives, and thinking that what she heard on the radio must be authoritative, screams that her poor mother is killed. Mr. Shugg tries to re-assure her, “How do you know it’s an earthquake. It may only be a tidal wave.” Finally the radio indeed confirms that the 10,000 killed were in San Francisco, setting off further screams from Mrs. Shugg.

The sketch ends with Mr. Shugg saying “My poor mother in law in Frisco. She must be killed,” while the stage directions note that he is dancing for joy in back of Mrs. Shugg.

There is also a subsequent typescript of five pages, with over 200 words in Field’s hand, and many crossouts. There are also two later, uncorrected typescripts, and a copy of the final version of this sketch as printed in the book W.C. Fields by Himself.

A very rare and significant piece of American stage and comic history, sufficiently significant for the final version to be included in Fields’ biography. The manuscripts are housed in a clothbound folder, which in turn is in a slipcase, with “10,000 People Killed * W. C. Fields’ Manuscripts” printed in gold on the leather spine. $12,000

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Exquisite Signed Photograph of Judy Garland Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years, Garland attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist, and on the concert stage.

She achieved immortality as Dorothy in the great classic, “The Wizard of Oz,” where the image of her, and the sound of her voice singing “Over the Rainbow”, constitute one of the high points of film.

A superb 8 by 10 inch black and white glossy photograph of her, circa late 1940s, inscribed and signed “To Arlene, with my best wishes, Judy Garland.” Her authentic signed photographs, always scarce, have become quite rare. $1,850

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Signed Photograph of The Inauguration of Harry S. Truman At the outset of the presidential election of 1948, Harry Truman’s popularity hovered below 40 percent. He was given very little chance of overcoming such a large deficit and the presumptive winner was Republican Thomas Dewey. The campaign of 1948 was a study in contrasts. Dewey, as befitted a clear frontrunner, staged a very subdued campaign, hoping to assure victory by avoiding discussion of troublesome issues. Truman did the opposite, figuring that he had little to lose. He embarked on a 31,000-mile train trip across the nation and delivered hundreds of off-the-cuff speeches to crowds that often greeted the president with cries of “Give ‘em Hell, Harry!” And Truman did.

He lambasted the “do-nothing, good-for-nothing” 80th Congress for its inaction and hoped that his opponent would be tarnished in the process. Truman raised the stakes by summoning a special session of Congress in July, proclaiming that he was offering the legislators an opportunity to enact some of the liberal planks they had proposed in the Republican platform. The results were meager, reinforcing the allegation that Congress did nothing. At his whistle-stop rallies, Truman spoke out on behalf of civil rights legislation, for repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and in support of farm aid programs. By stressing these issues, the president helped to revive the old New Deal coalition of Southern blacks, labor unionists and farmers. In November, the electorate responded to Truman’s appeals and provided him with the greatest political comeback victory in U.S. presidential history. An enduring image was provided the day after the election when a smiling Truman held aloft an early edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune that proclaimed, “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” An 11 by 14 inch black and white photograph of the Inauguration on January 20, 1949, picturing Truman on the Inaugural stand in front of the Capitol, taking the oath of office being administered by Chief Justice Fred Vinson, with Truman’s signature and inscription reading, “To Phil Regan with kindest regards Harry Truman.”

This photograph has been signed by other dignitaries flanking Truman on both sides: Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Justice William O. Douglas, Military Aide Harry H. Vaughan, Chief Justice Fred Vinson, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, Justice Stanley Reed, Senator Carl Hayden, and House Majority Leader John W. McCormack.

Signed inaugural photographs are uncommon, this being the earliest we’ve carried.

$5,500

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Harry Truman Letter and Memorabilia Relating to the Launch of the U.S.S. Missouri, the Site of the Surrender of Japan With original invitations and program from the battleship’s launch and commissioning, sent to Drucie, the daughter of future Treasury Secretary John Snyder At the dawn of World War II, the battleship was the dominant sea force, one that would play a role in many of the decisive battles in the Pacific. Competition with the Japanese would require an able and strong naval force. The USS Missouri was one of the Iowa-class or “fast battleship” designs planned in 1938 to bolster the war effort under Franklin Roosevelt. Amid great fanfare, it launched on January 29, 1944 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and was commissioned on June 11, 1944 with Captain William Callaghan in command. The ship was christened at her launching by Margarent Truman, daughter of Harry Truman, then a Senator from Missouri and the ship’s sponsor.

In November 1944 the Missouri joined the Pacific fleet. On February 16, 1945 she launched the first air strikes against Japan since the famed Doolittle raid in April 1942. She then steamed to Iwo Jima where she provided support to the invasion landings. In March of 1945 she took part in the bombarding of Okinawa and subsequently in raids up and down the Japanese mainland.

On August 29, 1945, the Missouri entered Tokyo Bay to prepare for the surrender ceremony, which would occur onboard its decks on September 2.

High-ranking military officials of all the Allied powers were present that day. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (Supreme Commander for the Allies), and the Japanese representatives, headed by Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, were all on board by 9am. At 9:02 General MacArthur stepped before a battery of microphones and the 23-minute surrender ceremony was broadcast to the waiting world. By 9:30am the Japanese emissaries had departed. With one of the great events of history behind her, the Missouri then headed for home, with a brief stop at Pearl Harbor. She reached New York City on October 23 and October 27 boomed out a 21-gun salute as President Truman boarded for Navy Day ceremonies. In his address the President stated that “control of our sea approaches and of the skies above them is still the key to our freedom and to our ability to help enforce the peace of the world.”

John W. Snyder was a close personal friend of then Senator Harry Truman; the men had met while serving in World War I. In 1936, Snyder began working for the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Reconstruction Finance Administration (RFA).

During the 1940s, while with the RFA, Snyder and Truman worked closely together. After Truman became President in 1945, Snyder was first appointed Director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, and in June 1946, Secretary of the Treasury, a post Snyder held until the end of the Truman administration. He became one of Truman’s closest advisors in both domestic as well as foreign policy. Drucie, his daughter, was active in Washington’s social scene and was present with her father for the launching and commissioning of the battleship in 1944, on the eve of its greatest contributions to the war.

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Typed Letter Signed, Washington, February 10, 1944. “Dear Drucie, Here are the official pictures of the launching of the battleship Missouri. There is an excellent picture of Miss Snyder among them. Sincerely Yours, Harry Truman.“ With a autograph post-script, “My best to your mother and dad [John W. Snyder] when you write.” Included with this group are: 1) An original program for the commissioning ceremonies; 2) Various invitations to Drucie from Captain Callaghan and Margaret Truman to the launching in January and the commissioning in June, 1944.

The Missouri saw subsequent service in the Korean War and, after some refurbishment, in the first Gulf War. It now sits as a memorial and museum in Pearl Harbor. $2,200

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President Harry Truman Appoints Eleanor Roosevelt a Special U.S. Ambassador to Chile On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, making Harry Truman president. Offering his consolation to the widowed Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?” Mrs. Roosevelt responded, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

The relationship between the new President and the former First Lady entered a new phase. What was once a formal, often wary, political relationship developed into a strong friendship. Ultimately, Truman designated Eleanor Roosevelt as his representative to the United Nations and “First Lady of the World.” He appreciated her work, writing on October 10, 1952, “I know I am speaking not only for myself but for the millions of Americans who revere you for the wonderful work you are doing at the United Nations to promote better understanding among peoples and a greater respect for human rights. Your continued health and happiness is my wish and my prayer.” For her part, in a letter of November 6, 1952, she thanked Truman “for the many opportunities you have given me for service during your administration.”

One of her assignments came in October of 1952, when Chile was preparing to inaugurate a new president, Gen. Carlos Ibanez, who had been critical of the United States. At Truman’s request, Mrs. Roosevelt led the U.S. delegation to his inauguration, and his stance changed in the wake of her visit.

Letter of State Signed, Washington, October 20, 1952, to the President of Chile, informing him “I have made choice of Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt as my Representative with the rank of Special Ambassador to attend the ceremonies incident to the inauguration of His Excellency General Carlos Ibanez del Campo as President of the Republic of Chile. I have entire confidence that Mrs. Roosevelt will render herself acceptable to Your Excellency...” This is the first presidential document naming Eleanor Roosevelt to a post that we can recall seeing.

On November 3, 1952, the inauguration took place with Mrs. Roosevelt in attendance. A week later, after she returned, President Truman wrote her, “I will be most happy to see you whenever it is convenient for you to come down. I am anxious to hear what happened in Chile while you were there.” $2,600

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Albert Einstein Worries That Mankind Will Not Survive the Nuclear Age He Helped Create Scientists in the 1930s, using machines that could break apart the nuclear cores of atoms, confirmed Einstein’s formula E=mc². They found that the release of energy in a nuclear transformation was so great that it could cause a detectable change in the mass of the nucleus. In August 1939, nuclear physicists came to Einstein, not for scientific but for political help. The fission of the uranium nucleus had recently been discovered. A longtime friend, Leo Szilard, and other physicists realized that uranium might be used for enormously devastating bombs, and they had reason to fear that Nazi Germany might construct such weapons. Einstein, reacting to the danger posed by Hitlerism, had already abandoned his strict pacifism and now signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning him to take action. The U.S. initiated a nuclear program called the Manhattan Project, and over the course of six years, from 1939 to 1945, more than $2 billion was spent on it. Atomic bombs were built, and one was tested successfully on July 16, 1945.

In August 1945, bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing extraordinary damage and loss of life.

But that destruction was just part of the horrors of nuclear weapons, as the fallout and radiation from a bomb had even more wide-spread and long-term consequences. People realized that in the event of a nuclear war, for the first time, the earth could be made largely uninhabitable and its population virtually wiped out. Many of the bomb’s creators regretted their work. Isidor Rabi felt that the equilibrium in nature had been upset as if humankind had become a threat to the world. Robert Oppenheimer quoted a fragment from the Bhagavad Gita. “I am become Death,” he said, “the destroyer of worlds.”

Einstein considered the writing of his letter to Roosevelt the one great mistake of his life.

In May 1946 he became chairman of the newly formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, joining its drive for international and civilian control of nuclear energy. He recorded fund-raising radio messages for the group, sent letters on its behalf, and wrote a widely read article on its work.

“

I have tried repeatedly to preach reason. I think the people will have to learn the hard way; I mean those of them who will survive.

Meanwhile, in the wake of World War II, the Cold War developed into a continuing state of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Soviet Union and the powers of the Western world, particularly the United States. The Soviets remained in occupation of much of Eastern Europe, contrary to Western expectations, and in 1948 the confrontation escalated when the Soviets added Czechoslovakia to their orbit of satellite states and instituted the Berlin Blockade. In 1949 the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear bomb, making it a nuclear power as well. Then in June 1950, the Korean War broke out. The United States fell into a frenzy of anti-communism, anger and paranoia, and that same year Senator Joseph Carthy emerged as the most visible public face of widespread fears of Communist subversion at home. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. People like Einstein who counseled peace and disarmament were subject to accusations, and countless other innocent parties were denounced and ruined by McCarthyism. Einstein was horrified and discouraged at the turn the U.S. had taken.

In 1950, Walter Bishop created a “Connecticut Plan” proposal for peace and sent it to 150 world leaders. Most did not respond, but Einstein did. Typed Letter Signed on his blindembossed Princeton letterhead, Princeton, N.J. September 13, 1950, to Bishop, decrying the fever pitch of the moment and wondering whether mankind could saved. “I have read your article and I agree fully with your opinions. What I do not know is the way how to convince enough influential people and to induce them to act conformingly. I have tried repeatedly to preach reason as long as the passions were not so hot as they are now. I think the people will have to learn the hard way; I mean those of them who will survive. You should visit people who must be

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convinced or who are able enough to find means to change this state of madness which holds the nation in its grip.� This letter appears to be unpublished and unknown as no copy could be located in the Einstein Archives at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

That Albert Einstein, the most widely recognized and respected scientist in the country, could not figure out how to reach the nation’s leaders, tells everything about conditions prevailing at that time. $12,000

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Significant Wartime Letters of Dwight D. Eisenhower to His Brother Edgar Eisenhower ’s wartime rise in the military was meteoric. He started World War II as Chief of War Plans and became Assistant Chief of Staff in charge of Operations for General George Marshall in April 1942. In that post, he conducted a mission to London to increase co-operation among World War II allies. On June 25, 1942, he was designated commanding general of all U.S. troops in the European Theater and was directly involved with planning and executing U.S. military strategy. In early November 1942, he was then given command of Operation Torch - the Allied landings in North Africa. These took place from November 8-11 and were successful. By mid-November the Allies were able to begin advancing into Tunisia to take on the Germans, but the Africa campaign did not swing into full force until early 1943. That summer Eisenhower led the invasions of Sicily and Italy, and in December 1943, after success in Italy, he was appointed Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces. In this role he planned and commanded Operation Overlord - the invasion of Normandy - that took place on June 6, 1944 - D-Day. Edgar Eisenhower was a lawyer and Ike’s older brother. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1914, a year before his brother finished at West Point, and began practicing law in 1915 in Tacoma, Washington. His relationship with his brother was both close and strained at the same time. On a personal level, Edgar was an older brother who was both opinionated and thought he knew best. He seldom hesitated to tell Ike what to do, even while his younger brother was President. On a political level, Edgar was known as an ultraconservative, while Ike was a moderate. They were thus often in disagreement and would have heated discussions about history and politics around the kitchen table when they got together.

As busy as Ike was planning, executing and leading Operation Torch, the first American invasion of the war in the European Theater, and as burdened as he was with the responsibilities of that task (while the world waited with baited breath), Edgar was irritated that he hadn’t written him more often. He complained about Ike to their brother Arthur, who passed on word to Ike. This was “the bridge too far” for Ike, and as even-tempered as he was, he just could not remain silent. He sent Edgar the most negative letter he ever addressed to him, one so scathing that Edgar ’s wife hid it away so that nobody else would see it.

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As Operation Torch Concludes, Ike Says He Is Well and “Going Strong” Amidst his welter of responsibilities, he insists he is putting in as much time corresponding to his family as he possibly can Typed Letter signed on his Office of the Commander-in-Chief letterhead, North Africa, November 21, 1942, to Edgar, fighting back and saying he is doing well under the weight of responsibilities. “Today I received a copy of the letter you wrote on November 6 to Arthur. As usual, you are yelping about something and giving us all hell for no reason except that you seem to have a bad disposition and a day at home in which to indulge your proclivities toward sarcasm. Legal training must be a terrible thing for souring a man’s outlook on life. I have no idea about the nature of the ‘Life’ story of which you speak. Whatever it says, it

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probably flatters you to beat the devil, because I can’t imagine the paper doing anything else and escaping suit for libel. As a matter of fact, your allegations about the frequency of my writing to you are close to perjury - at least to a layman’s definition of the term. My records are all in order and I can go to the files this minute and prove that I have written two letters to your one.

Actually, as your letter states, you had a full day at home to pamper yourself in a case of flu or bad cold and, so far as I can see, your complete output for the day was one typewritten letter to Arthur. Of course, you didn’t have the gigantic problem of instructing your secretary to make several additional copies. After all, that sounds like a full day’s work for a lawyer! How Bernice stands you, I’ll be darned if I know -- but it speaks worlds for her good disposition. One satisfaction out of telling you where to get off is the fact that you cannot get an answer to me for at least a month, during all of which time I will have the enjoyable feeling of picturing you put in your proper place, at least momentarily. Now if you want to go do something really brotherly, sit down and write the rest of the gang, tell them that I am well, going strong, and have just written you a very sweet and affectionate letter...What the devil is all the argument about reactionary, conservative and liberal?” $4,500

With D-Day Just Two Weeks Away, Ike Writes Edgar, “God knows I am busy...”

By May 1944, 2,876,000 Allied troops were amassed in southern England waiting to invade France. Artificial harbors were being built, dispositions of troops determined, preliminary bombing undertaken, supply questions resolved, dates for launch set, and in general final planning was taking place for one of the great enterprises of history. Ike took a moment to write his brother. Typed Letter signed on his Office of the Supreme Commander letterhead, England, May 22, 1944, two short weeks before D-Day, to Edgar.

“Thank you for your letter of May 13. I was particularly delighted to have such a fine account of mother and her doings. By coincidence I received a letter in the same mail from Frances Curry, who had seen you outside some grocery store and had a long talk with you. I have heard that a man named Kenneth Davis is writing a biography. I wish that all such things could wait until a man really had leisure to think up some really good tales to tell about his boyhood. If they gave me time and did not check up too closely on fact I could make you and me look like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Which one would you rather be? God knows I am busy and you must forgive both the brevity and the infrequency of my letters. Someday I will come to see you and bore you for a week.” $6,000

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Reagan Is Frustrated By the Lack of Resources With Which to Educate Against Communism By the late 1950’s, as Reagan became increasingly happy with his move into television as host for General Electric Theater, he took on a different role - producer and equity stake owner in the TV show itself. He also appeared in many live television plays, so quite naturally the wide reach of the new medium of TV became of ever greater interest and importance to him. Reagan’s opposition to Communism was deep and long-standing, going back to the 1940s. He hated its tyranny and oppression and was struck by the fact that it ruled by fear. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s these two aspects of Reagan’s life, anti-Communism and television, flowed together as he sought a way to use TV to deliver his anti-Communist message. Finding vehicles for this was by no means easy, as this letter manifests.

Autograph Letter Signed on his personal letterhead, Pacific Palisades, September 9, 1961, to Virginia Kobs. “I wish I could help you but one act anti-communist plays are in truth unknown to me. It’s so strange that modern literature and TV & screen plays number in the hundreds anti-Nazi material but no anti-communist. There must be some but I don’t know them. We are doing a couple of anti-communist shows on G.E. Theater this coming season and we are having an impossible time finding material. We managed one by re-writing De Maupassant’s story of Germany and France in 1870 - Madamoiselle Fiffi”. We made it Russia & Hungary modern day and call it ‘The Iron Silence.’ Maybe I should say - if you find some let us know.”

This letter provides an interesting insight into the difficulties Reagan had to surmount in the early years to educate the American people about the danger and reality of Communism. It was obtained from the recipient’s family; the envelope in Reagan’s hand is included. $5,500

“

It’s so strange to me that modern literature and TV & screen plays number in the hundreds anti-Naza material but no anti-Communist.