Sep 28, 2023 - Sale 2646

Sale 2646 - Lot 145

Price Realized: $ 1,300
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
(CIVIL WAR--PRISON.) Autograph book kept by a Confederate inmate at Fort Warren, signed by dozens of fellow prisoners. 41 inscriptions on 21 manuscript pages. 8vo, 7 3/4 x 5 inches, disbound; some leaves apparently removed, two 1899 clippings on the death of Myers at the rear. Fort Warren, MA, compiled December 1861 to January 1862
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Additional Details

This album was compiled by Julian Myers (1825-1899), who served as a United States naval lieutenant before the war. He was arrested in December 1861 after a 30-month tour in the Far East because of Confederate sympathies. He used this album to gather signatures from his fellow prisoners at Fort Warren at the mouth of Boston Harbor. Some of the inscriptions are simple autographs, but many of the prisoners have added a note explaining their positions and how they came to be imprisoned.

Naval officer Austin E. Smith (whose own Fort Warren autograph book was sold by Swann in 2011), wrote simply "Arrested Aug. 2d 1861, suspected of being suspicious." A naval officer complained that he was arrested early in the war "for refusing to serve against the Confederate States of America." Infamous con artist Parker Hardin French, "The Kentucky Barracuda," who had been arrested as a Confederate spy, added his own signature.

Confederate sympathizers from border Maryland are well represented. Charles Howard, formerly president of the Board of Commissioners of the Baltimore police, wrote on Christmas Eve with the date of his arrest and the names of the three locations where he had been incarcerated. A fellow commissioner, William H. Gatchell, noted that he had been "arrested on the 1 July 1861 at 3 o'clock in the morning by 400 armed men." Several signers were among the 31 members of the Maryland House of Delegates who had been arrested to prevent that state's secession, including Speaker of the House E.G. Kilbourn.

Myers notes that he was paroled the following month, and then exchanged in April for future Union general Zenas Bliss. After his release, he was later commander of the CSS Huntsville.

Provenance: collection of Arthur G. "Gil" Barrett.