LOT Old Heritage Auctions  /  2007 June Civil War Grand Format Auction #663  / 

72217

The Eyeglasses of Confederate General Albert Sid

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:2,000.00 USD Estimated At:8,000.00 - 10,000.00 USD
The Eyeglasses of Confederate General Albert Sid
<B>The Eyeglasses of Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston, a <I>Carte de Visite</B></I></B></I> <B>of Johnston and Nine Books</B></I> Albert Sidney Johnston, considered the greatest soldier the Confederacy had to offer at the time, met his death in battle on April 6, 1862 at Shiloh early in the Civil War. An 1826 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Johnston had already fought in the Black Hawk War, the Texas War of Independence after which he served as the new Republic's Secretary of War and the Mexican War. He had achieved the rank of Brevet Brigadier General in the US Army when the war broke out in 1861.<BR>These gold eyeglasses were the personal property of Johnston measuring 4 1/2" across the front at the oval lenses, still intact and having 5" arms, the glasses are in excellent condition. The eyeglasses have their original leather case bearing the optician's name W. Colfax Jones of San Francisco. Johnston was commanding the Department of the Pacific at the start of the war and most likely purchased the glasses while on duty on the west coast. The glasses and case are accompanied by a <I>carte de visite</B></I> of Johnston in his dress uniform with a backmark of "E. & H. T. Anthony" of New York. Signed in pencil on the back is "<I>A. S. Johnston C.S.A.</B></I>" in another hand.<BR>With these items kept by his family are a series of nine books related to the Civil War exploits of General Albert Sidney Johnston. The earliest, a copy of the 1872 <I>Shiloh</B></I> is a 6" x 9" 182 page volume bound in blue paper with the back cover loose. It concerns the 'Defeat of the Union Army at Shiloh'. The second is a 5"x7" paper-bound 1905 book by Elizabeth Lyle Saxon titled <I>A Southern Woman's War-Time Reminiscences</B></I> and was published for the Shiloh Battlefield Memorial Fund. Two of the remaining volumes are war period accounts of Union and Confederate correspondence of the period around the Battle of Shiloh. The remaining five volumes are reprints of letters from General William Ward, Winthrop S. G. Allen who fought at Shiloh, another account of the action Johnston saw at Fort Donelson and Shiloh and two souvenir pamphlets from the Shiloh Military Park.*****<BR><BR><b>Shipping:</b> Miscellaneous Collectibles, Larg (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.heritageauctions.com/common/shipping.php">view shipping information</a>)
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