[Boston, Massachusetts: 1861-62].
Price: $8,500.00
Hardcover. Autograph Album. Octavo. Contains 125 autographs and signed inscriptions written in ink two per page on the rectos only. Contemporary owner name (“Miss Helen Shaw”) written in ink in large calligraphic letters on front fly leaf; with a later owner name (“Jeanette E. Whitehurst”) in pencil on the back free endpaper. In the original decorative black morocco over boards, stamped in blind and gold on front cover and in blind only on back cover, yellow cream endpapers, all edges gilt. Spine and both hinges mended with cloth tape, lacking the front free endpaper, two autographs have been torn away from the bottom half of two leaves, else good or better overall.
An important autograph record of mostly Confederate military officers and pro-Confederate politicians and civilians who were captured or arrested during the first year of the Civil War and held at the federal prison at Fort Warren, located on an island in Boston Harbor. Most of the autographs were compiled in December 1861 through January 1862, the bulk of which consist of:
1). Confederate State Army commanders and officers captured at the Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batteries, August 28-29, 1861 (The first combined operation of the Union Army and Navy that resulted in Union domination of the strategically important North Carolina Sounds), and at the Battle of Santa Rosa Island, October 9, 1861 (An unsuccessful Confederate attempt to take the Union-held Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, Florida).
2). Southern US Navy and USMC officers who resigned when their ships returned from foreign duty
3). Sympathetic or pro-Confederate Maryland legislators and Baltimore officials arrested following the Baltimore Riot of 1861, (Between Maryland Pro-Southern/Confederate sympathizers and members of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania state militia regiments en route to Washington D.C. who had been called up for federal service).
Also included are at least one spy, a few newspaper editors and business men, President James Buchanan’s minister to France, Charles J. Faulkner, and the Confederate diplomats James Mason and John Slidell (whose capture from the British mail steamer Trent by a Union warship led to a near-war crisis between Great Britain and the United States). In addition to the prisoners, the album contains the autographs of Colonel Justin E. Dimick, the commanding officer of Fort Warren, and of his Post Adjutant James S. Casey (who received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Indian Wars).
The two ownership signatures of Shaw and Jeanette Whitehurst indicate that the album must have been compiled by the Fort Warren prisoner Lieutenant James J. Whitehurst (1837-1909), and that he presented it to his fiancée Helen Shaw. Born in Carteret County, North Carolina, he was appointed by Governor John Willis Ellis as lieutenant in the 7th NC Infantry in April 1861, and transferred within a month to Battery K, 1st NC Artillery. He was captured on August 29, 1861 at Fort Hatteras and paroled from Fort Warren January 21, 1862. Whitehurst returned to his unit as first lieutenant, and later served as captain in the 66th NC Infantry from August 1863. He settled in Beaufort after the war and married Helen Shaw (1837-1880) in 1866. They later moved to Tarboro in North Carolina, where Jeanette Elizabeth Williams (1870-1953) married James and Helen’s son Matthew Shaw Whitehurst in 1902.
An important primary source album from this relatively civilized prison with an unusually large number of autograph inscriptions. A complete list of all 125 autographs is available.
Item #606945
