Beschreibung:

CODY, WILLIAM FREDERICK ("BUFFALO BILL"). Autograph letter signed ("W.F. Cody") to George Marshall Everhart, Brooklyn, N.Y., 29 April 1898. 1 page, 4to, on stationery with bold heading "Buffalo Bill's Wild West" [ With ]: Photograph inscribed and signed. N.p, dated 16 June 1913, 1 page, 202 x 58 mm. (8 1/16 x 6¼ in.) , a fine standing pose of the western scout and entrepreneur, inscribed in ink in lower right: "To J.G. Butler Jr. Youngstown, Ohio from W.F. Cody."; Together two items, enclosed in protective binder, quarter red morocco gilt slipcase. BUFFALO BILL VOLUNTEERS FOR SERVICE IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR: "AMERICA IS IN FOR IT" "I enclose you a check for $1000 to take up my note... Let me know the amount of interest and I will send it to you. Am ever so much obliged. I will have a hard time to get away from the show, but if I don't go, I will be forever damned by all. I must go, or loose [ sic ]. And General [Nelson] Miles offers me the position I want. George, America is in for it, and although my heart is not in this war, I must stand by America..." In the wake of the destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor on 15 February 1898, war feeling in America intensified rapidly and culminated in a Declaration of War passed by Congress on 25 April. Mobilization was swift. General Nelson A. Miles, General in Chief, directed recruitment, and Cody knew Miles from his stint as a scout, in the 1870s with the 5th U.S.Cavalry during the Sioux Wars.