?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
"THEY HAD A CERTAIN DREAD OF THE MONITORS BEFORE, THEY WOULD LAUGH AT US NOW" (CIVIL WAR.) DU PONT, SAMUEL F. Two Autograph Letters Signed, "S F Du Pont," as Rear Admiral, to his friend Sarah Lydia Gilpin ("My Dear Miss Sarah"), concerning the doomed effort to capture Charleston by sea or, in a 4-page postscript, reflecting on the intelligence and refinement of the captains serving under him and noting that "[t]here is no probability of any second attack on Charleston. No order to this effect has been given & I think no second folly will be attempted. . . . . They had a certain dread of the Monitors before, they would laugh at us now." Together 28 pages, 8vo, on 7 folded sheets; horizontal folds. With two later envelopes addressed to S[ophie] Du Pont or [Betty Herndon?] Maury in unknown hand. Aboard the U.S.S. Wabash off Port Royal, SC, 20 January; 20 May 1863
20 January 1863: ". . . There is blood & carnage over the land. The nucleus of a decent army would have garrisoned our forts, half a nucleus of a decent navy would have supplied them, and the rebellion would have been crushed as easily as Mr. Calhoun was put down. . . . ". . . It has always been a satisfaction to me that I had no part in choosing my profession. I was so young that my parents decided for me. . . . ". . . The ironclads are in on me, & betoken work. I hope all will be sent that are ready. Twenty long months of labor with scientific direction have been expended on Charleston. . . . The Br[itish] officers who go in & out smile at its being taken, & say it is stronger than Sebastopol. It looks like a Balaclava charge of cavalry, but God will cover our heads perhaps. . . . The army can give us scarcely any assistance. . . . ". . . We took a schooner with 99 bales of cotton yesterday off Charleston, & the Huntress, now Tropic, steamer, was burnt with 360 bales." 20 May 1863 [in the wake of Du Pont's failed assault in the April 7th Battle of Charleston Harbor]: ". . . My position at this moment with the Navy Dept is officially most critical. . . . I have received two communications which are far from pleasant. . . . I told them, to renew the attack would be to convert failure into disaster. I told them, moreover, that Charleston could not be taken by a purely naval attack. . . . ". . . [He suspects that the goal is to] set me aside to prosecute more freely the Monitor insanity. . . . The President is very friendly to me, & also Mr. Welles, the Sec'y, but poor man, he is not the Sec'y. . . ." After taking the blame for the failed Battle of Charleston Harbor assault, Du Pont was recalled from his post soon after writing this letter, bringing his otherwise distinguished career at sea to a close. Charleston did not fall until General Sherman's army took it by land in February, 1865. Provenance: Gilpin family papers (see Swann sale 2687, lot 129). Sarah Lydia Gilpin (1802-1894) was an old friend of Du Pont's wife, Sophie.
