(CIVIL WAR SECRET SERVICE) Lafayette C Baker To Arms To Arm

Sale 2615 - Lot 117

Price Realized: $ 812

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

Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(CIVIL WAR--SECRET SERVICE.) Lafayette C. Baker. To Arms! To Arms! 100 Dollars Bounty! Letterpress broadside, 9 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches, with engraved illustration of a cavalry soldier on horseback; folds, apparently detached from another sheet on left edge, mount remnants on verso. [Washington, DC, circa June 1863]

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

A recruiting broadside for what became the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry or "Baker's Rangers," a shadowy unit which hunted down deserters and Confederate subversives in the capital region. Prospective members were recruited for "special duty, to act in conjunction with the present National Detective Police in the execution of such Special Orders as may from time to time be issued by the Colonel commanding." The "peculiar service for which this Battalion is organized" required that the applicants be "sober, honest, intelligent, able bodied young men" and expert horsemen. Members were to be provided with "the best and fleetest horses" and Henry repeating rifles. In other words, this was not your great-grandfather's regiment. No other copies traced in OCLC or elsewhere.