Dec 01, 2011 - Sale 2263

Sale 2263 - Lot 112

Price Realized: $ 5,280
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
SIGNED BY LEE, DAVIS, MOSBY, LONGSTREET, HAMPTON, BEAUREGARD (CIVIL WAR--CONFEDERATE.) Smith, Austin E.; compiler. Autograph album of an imprisoned Confederate sympathizer. 83 leaves signed by various Confederate figures or with related autograph cards laid down. 4to, contemporary morocco gilt, moderate wear, one joint starting. Vp, 1861-84
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Austin E. Smith (ca. 1829-1862), son of former Virginia governor William Smith, was a lawyer who went to San Francisco in 1853 and became a naval officer there. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he headed home to fight, but was arrested in New York before he could reach the Confederate lines. He spent more than a year as a prisoner at Fort Warren in Boston and Fort Lafayette in New York, where he collected the early inscriptions in this book from his fellow prisoners, mostly non-combatants like himself. In June of 1862, he was exchanged. He promptly joined the Confederate Army as a major, only to die in his first battle, at Gaines Mill, 27 June 1862.
Inscriptions by Smith's fellow prisoners fill 43 leaves of the book, one per page, with many of them offering commentary on where and why they were imprisoned. The former Baltimore police commissioner wrote "Awakened from sleep at 3 o clock in the morning of the 1st July 1861 & arrested by a body of 400 armed troops. Imprisoned ever since." The mayor of Baltimore was "arrested 13 Sept/61 at 2 A.M. by order of W.H. Seward by four men and a military guard." Another prisoner complained of being held "in military custody, without authority of law, without a hearing, without even the formality of an accusation. God save the South!" One M.W. Barr claimed to be "arrested while acting as a telegraphic reporter of the New Orleans Associated Press at Louisville." George J. Whelan, a former mayor of San Francisco then living in Baltimore, apparently visited Smith in prison, and wrote that he was "never a prisoner, but always ready to yield all, including personal liberty, for the cause of the Confederate States."
After his death, Major Smith's heirs continued to use the book for Confederate autographs. Many of these later autographs are inscribed to his sister Mary Amelia Smith (circa 1827-1913). The volume begins with a three-page manuscript biography of Austin Smith, presumably in her hand. After the prison entries are signed inscriptions by Confederate generals and political leaders dated from about 1864 to 1884.
Robert E. Lee provided a nice war-date signature, "RE Lee, Richmond 14 Sept '64." Among the others who signed the book were Generals Joseph E. Johnston, Jubal Early, and James Longstreet, Admiral Raphael Semmes, Secretary of War John Breckinridge, and Colonel John S. Mosby ("Colonel of Partisan Rangers, Va."). One of the inscriptions was personal--General Richard S. Ewell reflects on the bravery of Norman Smith, who served under his command. Signed cards are laid down from Pierre Beauregard, Jefferson Davis (two signed cards, one reading "to Miss Mary A. Smith from her sincere friend"), Wade Hampton, John Brown Gordon, and a very shaky one from the family patriarch, "Wm Smith, Major General, C.S.A.," then the oldest general in the Confederacy.
Provenance: After the death of Mary Amelia Smith, the book apparently went to her brother Judge Thomas Smith (1836-1918). In 1919, it was given by Thomas Smith's widow Elizabeth Fairfax (Gaines) Smith to her friend Stuart (Mosby) Coleman (1866-1946), daughter of the famous Col. Mosby, and thence by descent to the consignor.
Most of the leading figures of the Confederacy signed this volume. However, this is more than just a simple autograph book. The prison inscriptions and family connections make it historically significant, and an evocative artifact of the Lost Cause.