?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
(CIVIL WAR.) John A. McClernand. Printed report to General Grant on the Battle of Belmont--the first under Grant's command. 5 field-printed pages, 12 1/4 x 7 1/2 inches, on 5 sheets, bound at top edge, signed in type as Brigadier General; horizontal fold, minor wear, manuscript note on final page. Camp Cairo, IL, 12 November 1861
On 2 November 1861, President Lincoln removed John Frémont as commander of the Department of the West, leaving the Missouri campaign in the hands of little-known Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant, a West Point graduate. Reporting to Grant although bearing the same rank was Brigadier General John McClernand, a political appointee and old friend of Lincoln's from Illinois. Five days later, Grant led his two brigades on a surprise attack on a small Confederate base in Belmont, MO, across the river from a larger base in Columbus, KY. The Confederate camp was routed and destroyed, but reinforcements soon arrived to rout Grant's forces in turn; Grant himself barely made it back aboard the transport ship.
Offered here is McClernand's official report to Grant on the battle, written five days later. The two generals barely knew each other at this point, but grew to be bitter enemies as the war progressed. Here, McClernand does his best to ingratiate himself with Grant. Describing the bravery of his troops early in the battle, McClernand notes that "this gallant conduct was stimulated by your presence and inspired by your example. Here your horse was shot under you." McClernand also describes the death of his Polish-American aide-de-camp, Captain Alexander Bielaski.
Below the printed text on the final page, an unknown reader pokes fun at McClernand's self-promotion and egotism through a simple word count in manuscript: "Principal characters. The personal pronoun I, 34 times; the possessive My, 27 times . . . Me, 6 times."
One other copy of this report traced in OCLC, at the Chicago History Center; none found at auction.
