American history 1860s to 1880s in a nutshell
Autographs of Distinguished People.
Oblong 8vo (165 x 102 mm). (57) ff. with 26 mounted autographed cards (45 x 86 to 57 x 102 mm). Contemporary card boards with giltstamped title and stitched floral decoration to front cover, using white, green and ochre threads. All edges gilt. Moiré pastedowns.
€ 4,500.00
Remarkable collection of autographs from the post-Civil War era, including generals and politicians from both the Union and the Confederacy, as well as writers, artists, and activists. Highlights include Rutherford B. Hayes (19th President of the United States, 1877-81), Jefferson Davis, W. T. Sherman, Mark Twain, Hannibal Hamlin (Vice President during Lincoln's first term), Phineas Taylor Barnum, and Harriet Beecher Stowe - the only woman in the collection. A unique panorama of American history, compiled by a collector with good access in 1880s American political and literary society.
Further contributors in order of appearance: J. E. Johnston (Confederate General and former US Army Brigadier General), David D. Porter (Union Naval Admiral), John L. Worden, who commanded the USS Monitor vs. the USS Merrimac in the famous battle of the ironclads), John C. Fremont (Western explorer, General in the Mexican and Civil wars, briefly military Governor of California and later Senator of California), J. A. Early (Jubal Early Confederate General), James Longstreet (Confederate Lt. General), Fitz John Porter (Union General who fought Longstreet at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862 and was court-martialled in 1863 for the loss of that battle, at which he was vastly outnumbered, and later reinstated in 1878 when it was judged that his action prevented a worse loss), Benjamin F. Butler (Union Major General from Massachusetts), Don Carlo Buell (Union Major General at the Battle of Shiloh and Perryville), G. T. Beauregard (Confederate General who started the Civil War by attacking Fort Sumter), Simon Cameron (Lincoln's Secretary of War), R. J. Oglesly (US Major General, Governor and Senator for Illinois), John A. Roche (mayor of Chicago 1888-89), S. Corning Judd (postmaster of Chicago 1887-88), Oliver Wendell Holmes (member of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, later Supreme Court Justice), George William Curtis (writer, active in the Brooks Farm Transcendentalist group, an abolitionist and part of the Underground Railroad), Edward E. Hale (abolitionist and author of "A Man Without a Country"), George H. Smillie (American artist), and Charles Dudley Warner (writer and co-author with Mark Twain of "The Gilded Age").
Edges rubbed. Tears to front cover, causing some loss to giltstamped title. Hinges damaged. Occasional marginal tears to paper; traces of glue around several autograph cards. 8 leaves with small cuts for mounting autograph cards which may have been removed.
