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Lot 29: Nathaniel P. Banks Signed Letter

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:180.00 USD Estimated At:300.00 - 400.00 USD
Lot   29: Nathaniel P. Banks Signed Letter
<b>Autographs</b><hr><b>War-Date ALS Regarding A “Holy Cause” - The Chicago Sanitary Fair!</b>

<b>NATHANIEL PRENTICE BANKS. Union General. </b>
Autograph Letter Signed (“N.P. Banks”), 2 pages, 5” x 8” laid into a 6” x 9” linen sheet, no place (New Orleans), no date (circa October 1863), to the wife of Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull, Julia Jayne Trumbull. Excellent. “My Dear Mrs. Trumbull. My absence from New Orleans for six weeks has prevented an earlier acknowledgment of your note of last month. It grieves me that I should by any mischance fail to render so slight a service to a cause so holy as that you represent. Nevertheless if my compliance comes too late please throw aside the enclosed scraps, as one of the many things of this life that are well intended but tardily executed. I thank you for remembering my name in connection with the Fair of the Sanitary Commission at Chicago, the more that the recognition comes from one, who has always been regarded with admiration and respect by yours, etc.:”

Banks wasn’t the only Civil War leader solicited to donate something to be auctioned at the Northwest Branch of the Sanitary Commission’s Chicago Fair, that the good ladies of Chicago might raise, hopefully, as much as $50,000 to send boxes of hospital stores to the troops in the field. Abraham Lincoln was also asked to contribute something: his original draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln replied that he “had some desire to retain the paper, but if it shall contribute to the relief and comfort of the soldiers, that will be better.” It sold , not incidentally, for $3,000 - and the Fair raised $78,682.89,. after expenses.