A remarkable three-page folio manuscript agreement, "Made in London this seventh day of October 1857," between Robert C. Brinkley, Esqr., of Memphis, Tennessee, acting for the Memphis & Charleston Rail Road Company, and George Peabody of London — the celebrated American merchant-banker and philanthropist whose firm would pass to Junius Morgan and ultimately become J. P. Morgan & Co.

This document is the contractual record of one of the defining events in the building of the Memphis & Charleston: with the road unfinished for want of iron, Brinkley traveled to London to raise capital and purchase rails, and there secured terms with George Peabody himself. The agreement covers the sale of 8,500 tons of railroad iron, to be rolled in Wales to a pattern marked "A" at roughly 58 pounds per yard — nine-tenths in twenty-foot rails, the balance in fifteen- and seventeen-and-a-half-foot lengths, notched and undercut to a second pattern marked "B."

The iron itself was to be supplied by William Crawshay, the Welsh "Iron King" of the great Cyfarthfa works at Merthyr Tydfil, the contract specifying it be "equal in both quality and manufacture to any heretofore supplied by him to the American market," perfectly welded and free from warp or defect, with one-fourth twice-heated (No. 2) and the remainder once-heated (No. 1) iron. Detailed terms govern shipment to New Orleans and Lafayette (no less than two-thirds to the latter), a delivery schedule of 2,000, 2,000, 3,000 and a final 1,500 tons between October 1857 and February 1858, and payment at $31.50 per ton of 2,240 pounds, settled on each bill of lading through the prominent New Orleans banker James Robb, acting as Peabody's agent — with a clause refunding monies at five percent interest should any vessel be lost in passage.

The agreement closes with the witnessed signatures of Charles C. Gooch and Henry West and is executed "Signed R C Brinkley, Agent of the Memphis & Charleston Rail Road Company" and "Signed George Peabody." (Note: the principals' names are entered in the scribal hand, identifying this as a contemporary retained counterpart of the agreement rather than the autograph original.) The first leaf bears an embossed paper-maker's blindstamp at the upper left.

Completed in 1857, the Memphis & Charleston was the first railroad to link the Atlantic seaboard with the Mississippi River, and the only east-west trunk line running across what would become the Confederacy. Its strategic value was understood from the war's first days — famously called "the vertebrae of the Confederacy" that "must be defended at all hazards" — and the line saw heavy fighting around Corinth and Shiloh before falling into Union hands early in the conflict. Few surviving documents tie together so neatly the threads of transatlantic finance, Welsh industrial might, and a railroad that would become one of the most fought-over assets of the Civil War.

Condition: Three pages of fine period script on a folded folio bifolium, fully legible throughout. Usual old folds with light toning and scattered foxing, a small fold-related chip; overall very good. An exceptional research and display piece uniting George Peabody, Robert Brinkley, William Crawshay, and the Memphis & Charleston Railroad.  [ss][ph:L]

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