(CIVIL WAR NEW YORK) Sprague Light Cavalry The Finest and M

Sale 2533 - Lot 92

Price Realized: $ 11,875

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500

(CIVIL WAR--NEW YORK.) Sprague Light Cavalry! The Finest and Most Dashing Arm of the Service. Color-printed illustrated broadside, 41 1/2 x 29 1/2 inches; worn and wrinkled with moderate loss along folds, laid down on linen. Not examined out of double-sided plexiglass frame. New York, [1863]

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Probably the most eye-catching recruitment poster we have handled, more than 3 feet in height, with a dramatic wood engraving of Union cavalry charging into the Confederate artillery and bold lettering in blue and red. The Sprague Light Artillery began recruiting in the Plattsburgh region of northern New York in January 1863 under Colonel Spencer Olmstead; they were soon merged into the 16th New York Cavalry before taking the field. This poster advertises "Largest Bounties Paid! Relief Tickets for Families. Splendid Horses and Equipments; Handsome Uniforms" and a warm, cozy training barracks in Plattsburgh. Recruits are urged to "take the bounty and don't wait to be drafted," and an appeal to patriotism is made: "The Union must and shall be preserved."
A part of the 16th Cavalry would fight at Gettysburg, and a detachment under Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty found and killed the assassin John Wilkes Booth in 1865.