1901 AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, GEN. MARCUS J. WRIGHT, C.S.A., TO GEN. JAMES LONGSTREET - SEEKING MILITARY APPOINTMENT FOR HIS SON

1901 AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, GEN. MARCUS J. WRIGHT, C.S.A., TO GEN. JAMES LONGSTREET - SEEKING MILITARY APPOINTMENT FOR HIS SON

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One page, plus integral second leaf, 8vo, on War Department letterhead, Washington, D.C., February 4, 1901. Signed "Marcus J. Wright."

TRANSCRIPTION:

War Department

Washington Feb 4, 1901

 

General James Longstreet

Dear General,

I write to ask if you will kindly send me a letter, in recommendation of my son Howard P. Wright, of the District of Columbia, for second lieutenant in the Army. If you are asking appointment of any other person for like place, you can say in your letter, that it is not to prejudice your former recommendation.

My son has fine physique, is fairly well educated, and has most excellent habits. He is the direct lineal descendant of John Wright a Captain in the Georgia Line in the revolutionary war, who served with distinction during the whole war, and of Benjamin Wright an officer of the Army who served in 1812-16 and in the Creek War, and subsequently in Mexico.

Very truly & respectfully

Yours

Marcus J. Wright

 

Marcus Joseph Wright (1831-1922) was commissioned as a Confederate brigadier general in December 1862. He fought at Belmont and was wounded at Shiloh, served on Gen. Benjamin Cheatham's staff during Bragg's Kentucky invasion and at Perryville, and led a brigade at Chickamauga and through the Chattanooga campaign. After the war, Wright became the government's agent for the collection of Confederate military records, making a substantial contribution to the compilation of the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1922 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Writing from the War Department in 1901, Wright petitions his old Confederate comrade James Longstreet - by then himself a federal appointee - for a letter of recommendation on behalf of his son, Howard P. Wright, a second lieutenant candidate. In pressing his son's case, Wright invokes four generations of family military service reaching back to the Revolutionary War: an ancestor who captained a Georgia Continental Line company, and a forebear who served in the War of 1812, the Creek War, and the Mexican War. A nice window into postwar patronage networks among former Confederate officers and their continued pull in Washington circles at the turn of the century.

Excellent condition; bold, legible handwriting. Exhibits fold lines.  [ss][ph:L]

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