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Abraham Lincoln

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:10,000.00 - 12,000.00 USD
Abraham Lincoln

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Auction Date:2015 Apr 15 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Partly-printed DS as president, one page, 14.5 x 11, September 11, 1863. President Lincoln appoints Delano F. Smith as a "Tax Commissioner for the District of Tennessee.” Crisply signed at the conclusion by President Lincoln and countersigned by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. Includes the original transmittal ALS from Chase to Smith, one page, Treasury Department letterhead, May 9, 1864, in part: “Through some inadvertence in the Internal Revenue Bureau at the Executive Mansion your nomination was not sent to the Senate as soon as it should have been. It was sent at last, however, and has been confirmed…I trust that the slaughter at Fort Pillow will not be permitted to go unpunished. In my judgment the highest officers in the rebel service now in our hands should be made to pay the penalty for this outrage.—It would do something towards the prevention of it, if the President would revoke his Amnesty Proclamation and insist upon putting colored soldiers upon the same footing with all the rest.” Professionally repaired partial separations to intersecting folds, repairs to small holes at intersections with a couple letters in the appointee’s position filled in, and light toning, otherwise fine condition; an overall appealing, clean appearance.

Chase references the recent massacre of United States Colored Troops by Nathan Bedford Forrest's Confederates at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864. Taking place in Smith's home state, the brutal incident galvanized public opinion against the Confederacy and served as a rallying cry for the Union for the remainder of the war. Delano T. Smith was a prominent political figure in the Republican party who specialized in financial matters, thus this appointment to the difficult position of collecting taxes from the rebel states. An excellent pairing of an appointment and wartime letter, both associated with federal involvement in the fractured South during the Civil War.