Nov 18, 2008 - Sale 2163

Sale 2163 - Lot 103

Price Realized: $ 1,440
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
ON THE DAY OF SECESSION, A FINAL EFFORT TO RECONCILE SOUTH CAROLINA (CIVIL WAR--SOUTH CAROLINA.) Humphreys, Frederick C. Autograph Letter Signed concerning muskets collected from Fort Sumter. One page, 10 x 8 inches, with integral docketing leaf; vertical line of slight browning across letter. Charleston, SC, 20 December 1860
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In full: "I have the honor to report for the information of his Excellency Gov. Pickens that the 40 muskets & accoutrements issued by me on the 17th inst. to the Engineer Office in command of Fort Sumter, have this day been returned, and now stand at this Arsenal." This sounds like a routine military supply order on its surface, but the subtext is much richer.
Capt. Frederick Clinton Humphreys (1822-1899) was the commanding officer of the United States Arsenal at Charleston, SC just as the secession debate was reaching its head. The governor of South Carolina had posted an armed militia guard around the arsenal to monitor the federal troops. Humphreys was a Massachusetts native and Florida resident with mixed loyalties, but scrupulous about following the letter of the law while under federal employ. On December 17, faced with an order to supply 40 muskets to the U.S. forces at Fort Sumter, he complied. However, this apparent act of aggression raised a protest from the people of South Carolina, and the Secretary of War quickly ordered the muskets returned to the arsenal. This triggered Humphreys's letter to the South Carolina governor's aide-de-camp, notifying him that the muskets had been returned.
This small gesture of good will was not nearly enough to stem the tide of rebellion. The same day Humphreys wrote his letter, South Carolina voted to secede from the United States, effectively launching the Civil War. Humphreys soon resigned from the United States Army, and spent most of the war commanding arsenals for the Confederate States of America.
The letter was addressed to Col. J. Johnston Pettigrew as aide-de-camp to Gov. Pickens. After the war it was apparently obtained by Samuel Wylie Crawford, who had been a Union general and published an 1887 history, The Genesis of the Civil War: The Story of Sumter 1860-1861. It was sold as part of Crawford's collection by the American Art Association in 1915.