Baltimore: June 15, 1858.
Price: $150.00
Unbound. Autograph Letter Signed. [4]pp. Single bifolium, measuring 6¼" by 7¾" folded. Removed from an album with a bit of residue on the final page, old folds, else just about fine.
Albert was a prominent Maryland Union leader and worked to prevent the state's secession during the Civil War. He was one of the founders and directors of the First National Bank of Maryland, and a Congressman for the state. After the war, he worked to found a "Soldier's Home" and an Asylum for orphans. According to *Baltimore: Past and Present* (1871), Albert also worked to educate Freemen as the President of a foundation that, by 1871 had founded at least 100 rural schools, educating at least 4,000 African American children, as well as helping found the Baltimore Normal School, a teacher's college for African Americans.
This letter is regarding a business matter that had turned personal. "Regard for my feelings which were very much hurt, will not permit me to pass over our interview of yesterday without some remarks." Albert and the unfortunately unnamed recipient apparently had a disagreement on how much Albert owed the man for services rendered. Albert "felt sure that [the recipient] had fallen into an error [about] the amt. of commissions to which you were entitled, if entitled to any." The man, according to our narrator, "lost [his] temper, took the most offensive way of paying the difference, and reproached me with endeavoring to cut down [his] fees, besides referring in rather a contemptuous manner to the 500$ fee paid [him]... ." Albert ends the note in a more conciliatory tone. "I have penned these lines 'more in sorrow than in anger,' and whatever may be the result, I hope always to be found bearing testimony to the able, upright and faithful manner if which you have attended to all business confided to your care by me either in my private or fiduciary capacity."
One Civil War-era point of note. According to the book mentioned above, Albert was the president of the Maryland State Fair for 1863, which was opened by President Abraham Lincoln, and the President was Mr. Albert's guest. Not being Lincoln scholars, we cannot corroborate the following claim, but according to the book: "This is believed to be the only occasion on which Mr. Lincoln during his Presidency partook of private hospitality, or entered a private residence as a guest."
Item #454515
