?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CIVIL WAR.) Wilder, Wilber F. Triumphal March of Sherman's Army into Atlanta. Illustrated broadside, 14 1/2 x 9 1/4 inches to sight, with related manuscript letter on verso; separations at folds, minor dampstaining, mounted in a double-sided frame. Not examined outside of frame. [Savannah, GA?, circa early January 1865]
This heroic 25-verse ballad recounts Sherman's Atlanta campaign and subsequent march to the sea from May to December 1864. It is illustrated with an American flag. The author was a private in the 18th Wisconsin, which participated in the campaign. Only one copy in OCLC. On verso is a letter from another campaign participant, Sergeant John Foster of the 111th Illinois Infantry, Company I. His regiment was the first to enter the fort. He writes from Savannah to his wife Sarah in Carlyle, IL, 10 January 1865: "You will see on the other side something about our charge on Fort McAlister. I have marked with my pencil where it commences. I think it is vary nice. It looks nicer to me now than it did a few minutes before we started on the charge. . . . When we got orders to start we gave the yell and it was not long untill we was into the fort. They killed several of our men after we got into the fort." True to his word, Foster had marked the 17th verse with a small pencil "x": "Our fleet was waiting in the stream with full and fresh supplies / But Fort McAllister's score of guns like breakers met their eyes." with--a cased ambrotype portrait of a Civil War sergeant found with the broadside, presumed to be Sergeant Foster.
