Oct 02, 2012 - Sale 2287

Sale 2287 - Lot 197

Price Realized: $ 780
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
"NO MAN COULD HAVE MET SUCH A FATE WITH MORE FORTITUDE" (CIVIL WAR--PRISON.) Group of letters and documents relating to the final days of Union spy Spencer Kellogg Brown. 5 items, various sizes and conditions, some on acidic paper but complete and otherwise sound. Vp, 28 September to October 9 1863
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Spencer Kellogg Brown (1842-1863) was a Kansan from a Free Soil family who joined the Union navy under the name Spencer Kellogg, serving aboard the ironclad gunboat Essex on the Mississippi. He soon found himself doing espionage work, spending weeks behind Confederate lines, and at least once donning a Confederate uniform to avoid suspicion. He was eventually captured and, after a long imprisonment, was executed on 26 September 1863. These documents were sent officially across the lines by the Confederate army to Union Brigadier General Solomon Meredith. Includes:
An official copy of Kellogg's 23 September court-martial in Richmond for desertion and spying, with a finding of "guilty" on all charges, and the sentence that he "be hanged by the neck untill he is dead." On verso is a transmittal note from Colonel Robert Ould, the Confederate Agent of Exchange, to his Union counterpart Meredith, 9 October 1863 Harvey, James. Autograph Letter Signed as an imprisoned chaplain of the 110th Ohio Infantry, to Meredith, offering to make a statement on Kellogg's case, and forwarding a letter to Kellogg's grandfather (below). Libby Prison, Richmond VA, 1 October 1863 Harvey, James. Autograph Letter Signed to Kellogg's grandfather Levi Cozzens, describing Kellogg on the day before his execution: "He seemed entirely resigned to his fate, and probably no man could have met such a fate with more fortitude. . . . The address on the envelope is in his own handwriting, probably the last words he ever wrote." Libby Prison, 28 September 1863 The aforementioned envelope in Kellogg's hand, addressed faintly "Mr. Levi Cozzens, Utica, N.Y." A pair of signed statements given by Kellogg's fellow prisoners: Sherman, James H. as a fellow imprisoned spy, 6 October 1863, with transmittal note by Colonel Ould Wiley, Frederick I., as a fellow prisoner who was present when the sentence was read, stating that Kellogg "regretted that he had been charged with being a Confederate deserter, which he denied. . . . He told me that he died with the conviction that he had given more important information to the U.S. Government than any other man." Notarized on 6 September [October] 1863.
These documents were not published in the exhaustive book compiled by the family, Spencer Kellogg Brown: His Life in Kansas and his Death as a Spy (New York, 1903).