BUCHANAN JAMES Autograph Letter Signed to later Confederate

Sale 2413 - Lot 95

Price Realized: $ 488

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

Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750

MAKING AMENDS FOR INSULTING REFERENCE TO WISE IN "DEMOCRATIC UNION" BUCHANAN, JAMES. Autograph Letter Signed, to later Confederate General Henry Alexander Wise, explaining that he was away and could not have prevented the publication of a euglogy for President Polk that contains an insulting reference to Wise, describes the author of the eulogy sympathetically, and invites Wise for a visit. 1 page, 4to, ruled paper; inlaid, faint toning at right edge, folds. (TFC) Wheatland, 1 October 1849

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

"My attention was directed . . . to your communication to the Union in reference to an expression employed by Mr. Hutter in his eulogy on the late President. Had I been at home when this was prepared or delivered, I think I may say it certainly would not have contained the justly offensive statement to which you take exception. . . . I never knew . . . that the eulogy had any reference to yourself. . . . [O]ur friendly relations . . . it is my anxious desire to preserve as long as we both shall live. . . .
"Mr. Hutter no longer resides in Lancaster. He sometime since removed to Baltimore where he conducts a Lutheran paper. He became religious in consequence of domestic affections. . . . He is an amicable man. . . ."
Henry Alexander Wise (1806-1876) was a Virginia lawyer and politician who served 6 terms in Congress, fought in the Civil War as a Confederate Major General, and who, as Governor of Virginia, signed the death warrant of John Brown.
Edwin Wilson Hutter (1813-1873) was editor of the Harrisburg Democratic Union and Lancaster Intelligencer and Journal, private secretary to James Buchanan during Polk's presidency, and became a Lutheran preacher in the last decades of his life.