Beschreibung:

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President . Engraved document signed in full as President, countersigned by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, Washington, D.C., 30 July 1862. One page, large folio, ON FINE PARCHMENT, elaborately engraved with bold heading "The President of the United States," beneath which an American Eagle and the "E Pluribus Unum" motto, large vignette of crossed flags, cannons and other military paraphenalia at bottom, with small legend "Engraved by J. V. N. and C. H. Throop, Washn. City," accomplished in manuscript, in very good condition, appointing James B. McPherson "an Additional Aide de Camp with the Rank of Colonel," at top left the note "Recorded...Adjutant General's Office, July 30, 1862," signed by Lorenzo Thomas, Adjutant General. LINCOLN APPOINTS JAMES BIRDSEYE MCPHERSON, ONE OF THE HIGHEST RANKING UNION OFFICERS KILLED IN BATTLE James Birdseye McPherson (1828-1864), raised in poverty in a village in Ohio, attended a local school through the generosity of a neighbor and eventually enrolled at West Point, where he graduated in 1853 ranked first in his class (among his classmates were John Bell Hood and Philip D. Sheridan). McPherson served in the Engineer Corps, and, among other assignments, supervised the construction of fortifications on Alcatraz Island. After war broke out, "no Union officer had a more meteoric rise than McPherson" (E.J. Warner Generals in Blue , 1964, 307). In August 1861 he was a lowly first lieutenant of engineers, but less than a year later ranked as a major general of volunteers and commanded a division. He served as U.S. Grant's Chief Engineer at Forts Henry and Donelson, at Shiloh, and during the siege of Corinth, then was promoted (by the present appointment) an Additional Aide de Camp, and shortly therafter, Brigadier General of Volunteers (in May 1862) and then Major General, U.S.V. (appointed October 1862, although his appointment, signed by Lincoln, was not executed until 16 March 1863. In January 1863 McPherson commanded the XVII Corps, one of the three which fought under Grant throughout the subsequent Vicksburg campaign (W.T. Sherman commanded the XVth, John McClernand the XIIIth). McPherson served under Sherman during the hard-fought Georgia campaigns. Sherman refers to McPherson and his role in that campaign at many places in his Memoirs , and describes his final conference with his young commander during the Battle of Atlanta on 22 July 1864. Both were alarmed by intensifying musketry and shelling in the distance. McPherson "hastily gathered his papers...and jumped on his horse, saying he would hurry down his line and send me back word what these sounds meant." Unknown to them, the Confederate commander, John Bell Hood (McPherson's former classmate) had launched a massive counterattack. MacPherson, accompanied by a single orderly, was challenged be rebel skirmishers in a wooded area. When he tried to evade capture he was killed by a single shot. (See Sherman's account, in his Memoirs , Library of America edition, pp.549-552). Grant recorded that with McPherson's death "the army lost one of its ablest, purest and best generals" ( Memoirs , Library of America edition, p. 506). McPherson's appointment as Major General was sold in these rooms on 9 June 1993, lot 237.