The Grey Ghost
"Soldiers: I have summoned you together for the last time," he writes. "The visions we [have] cherished of a free and independent country have vanished, and that country is now the spoil of a conqueror."
"Mosby is one of the most romantic figures to come out of the Civil War," said Sandra Palomino, Director of Historical Manuscripts & Autographs at Heritage Auctions. "Part scamp, all hero, his tactics disrupted Union lines causing General Grant to order that all of Mosby’s men be hanged without trial upon capture."
The remarkable letter was
found, in quite a well-preserved state, at the country home of Jonathan
Sturges, well-known as J. P. Morgan's father-in-law and - in an ironic
twist - as an ardent Union supporter.
"How did this
rare piece of Confederate history find its way into the hands of the
Sturges family?" said Palomino. "They not only sent two sons off to
fight for the Union, but also associated with Union leaders like
William T. Sherman, Ambrose Burnside, and George McClellan. The
contents of the battered old scrapbook enfolding the letter unlocked
the mystery."
In 2009, Dr. Christine I. Oaklander was
researching Jonathan Sturges - a prominent New York merchant well-known
as a patron and friend to Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand and other
prominent Hudson River School painters - at the family's home when she
came across the old scrapbook in a secretary once belonging to Jonathan
Sturges' son, Henry Cady Sturges, along with a hodgepodge of other
documents ranging from an 1857 Tiffany, Ellis, and Young invoice and an
account book for Henry's yacht, to cancelled checks from the 1940s and
1950s. The present occupants of the house were unaware of the scrapbook
and did not know anything about Mosby. The album had probably not been
opened in decades.
With a scholars' patience, Oaklander
discovered that Sturges' youngest son, Henry, the owner of the
secretary, had married one Sarah Adams McWhorter in 1883.
McWhorter
came from a prominent Augusta, GA family; several clippings in the
scrapbook are from Georgia newspapers, supplemented with handwritten
notes and poetry. Oaklander compared the writing to letters from
Sarah's mother, Mrs. George Gray McWhorter, determining that she
assembled the scrapbook during and shortly after the Civil War.
"The
elder Sarah lost two younger brothers in the war, though neither served
near Mosby's theatre of operation," said Palomino, "so there is no
obvious connection to the Rangers. One of Sarah's brothers-in-law,
however, one Joseph Ganahl, served as a surgeon in the Confederate Army
under general Lafayette McClaws in Virginia, and may well have come
into contact with Mosby at some point, the most likely instance of when
the letter made its way into the chain that would see it found in the
house of an ardent Yankee."
More than likely McWhorter
gave the scrapbook directly to her daughter Sarah at some point after
their marriage. Henry died in 1922 and Sarah used the house until her
death. Her daughter, Ann Sturges Bullard, inherited the house and, in
turn, left it to her children in 1988. One of the children, the
great-granddaughter of Jonathan Sturges, currently still lives in the
house.
Mosby's Farewell stands as one of the landmark
documents of the Civil War. This is a singular opportunity to own the
only extant war date edition of this speech known to remain in private
hands, and written by the hand of "The Grey Ghost" himself.
Heritage
Auctions, headed by Steve Ivy, Jim Halperin and Greg Rohan, is the
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photos of each lot, please visit www.HA.com.