Nov 21 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2687 -

Sale 2687 - Lot 101

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) Group of letters to New York's anti-Lincoln governor Horatio Seymour. 6 manuscript letters addressed to Horatio Seymour as governor-elect or governor; minimal wear. Various places, 1862-1864
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Horatio Seymour was a New York Democratic politician who criticized Lincoln's prosecution of the war and the Emancipation Proclamation. He served as governor from 1863 to 1864, and bore some responsibility for the draft riots which took place under his watch. He later ran for president in 1868 as an opponent of Reconstruction, with the motto "This is a White Man's Country, Let White Men Rule." History has not regarded him kindly.

Four of these six letters were written after Seymour's November 1862 election to the governor's mansion, but before he took office. All of these four letters are from Democratic men angling for military appointments in the state militia. Most notable is one from newspaper editor Wellington Hart, who a week before the inauguration suggests that Seymour create a new position to act as the state's military agent in Washington, and then offers to fill the position. To ingratiate himself, he promises that "I have ever sustained Democratic principles & views, & am in accord with you on the present unconstitutional acts of the executive, who have even now incarcerated in the capital by suspension of habeas corpus the sons of New York" (24 December 1862).

One of the two letters to Seymour as governor warns that Lincoln planned to place the state militia under federal control: "If this is true, a crisis is at hand which must be met with decision & promptness or our . . . government under the Constitution is no more. The rights of the states will have been forever annihilated" (27 January 1863).

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