POST-WAR LETTER WRITTEN BY CS MAJOR GENERAL LAFAYETTE McLAWS

$480.00 SOLD

Quantity Available: None

Item Code: 746-02

Very fine condition seven page letter (four 7 5/8” x 9 ¾”pages, three are front & back); in ink.  The final page with McLaws’ signature is housed in an archival safe frame which measures 19” x 23”, with a modern reproduction of a Civil War period image.  All handwriting is legible, with clear signature, “L McLaws”.

The letter is dated “Savannah Georgia / February 25 / 89”, and is directed to Isaac R. Pennypacker, and is one of a number of letters written in a shared correspondence between the two men following the Civil War.   McLaws thanks Pennypacker for arranging an invitation to serve as an aide to the Chief Marshall of President Harrison’s inauguration in March of the same year.  McLaws however, had to turn down the invitation due to the expense the trip would have required.  Discusses his election to, and subsequent removal from, the office of Clerk of the Superior and Inferior Courts of Richmond County, GA.  McLaws also discusses his friendship with General Grant and the support he offered to him amongst the partisan politics affecting McLaws’ appointment to various government positions.

Lafayette McLaws was a U.S. Army officer who resigned his commission in March 1861 to join the Confederate military. He quickly rose through the ranks and by 1862 was a Major General. Soon after his promotion to Major General, he joined Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's First Corps in the Army of Northern Virginia as a division commander and remained with Longstreet for most of the war. In December 1863, he was relieved of his command by General Longstreet after the failed attack on Fort Sanders in Tennessee for "neglect of duty." The Confederate War Department reinstated him after it was determined Longstreet did not have the authority to remove McLaws without a formal court martial. Still, the controversy still led to his reassignment to Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army in Georgia where McLaws finished out the war resisting the advance of the Union Army of the Tennessee.

Isaac R. Pennypacker (1852 – 1935) was an author, publisher and newspaper, who was the editor of the Philadelphia Weekly Press.  He became well known for the poem “Gettysburg”, which he composed and read aloud on Pennsylvania Day in Gettysburg in September 1889, upon the dedication of the state’s monuments on the battlefield.

Item is accompanied by a typewritten transcription of the letter.

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