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Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
"MCCLELLAN WOULD NEITHER TAKE RICHMOND NOR LET OTHERS TAKE IT." (CIVIL WAR.) Wool, John Ellis. Autograph Letter Signed to Benson John Lossing. 8vo, one page, glued in back of a 6-page contemporary manuscript letter transcript from Wool to Lossing dated 10 December 1865; minor staining. Troy, NY, 15 December 1865
Written to Lossing for use in his classic 3-volume Pictorial History of the Civil War in the United States of America. General Wool had apparently sent a preliminary letter on 10 December. Here, he sends a new version of that letter in an unidentified hand, along with his personal cover letter.
Wool, a War of 1812 veteran and the oldest general on either side in the Civil War, offers bitter criticism of the Union leadership in the transcript letter: "Major General McClellan without possessing the first qualification of a General ruled for the hour the destinies of a great people." He insists that "I could at any time have taken Norfolk . . . and with the addition of 25,000 men could as easily have taken Richmond . . . McClellan would neither take Richmond nor let others take it." He also complains that "I notified those who ruled at Washington, again and again, when the Iron Clad Steamer, the Merrimac, would be completed and leave the dry dock, and asked permission to destroy her, but no response." In the autograph cover letter, Wool asks, "Have I not done as much as some, if not many, to preserve the Union, who have been lauded, nay rewarded and promoted, and this too in some cases, who were any thing but loyal men." Wool's letters were not quoted in Lossing's work, but Lossing did emphasize Wool's repeated offers to capture Norfolk (p. 387).
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