Apr 17, 2012 - Sale 2276

Sale 2276 - Lot 118

Price Realized: $ 6,240
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
REVERSING HIS COURSE BACK TO YORKTOWN STEUBEN, FRIEDRICH WILHELM VON. Letter Signed, "Steuben Maj: Genl," to Brigadier General Jethro Sumner in North Carolina, announcing plans to reverse his march through southern Virginia, and hoping Sumner can bring a substantial North Carolina militia force northward. 3 pages, folio, on a single folded sheet; 2 small seal holes affecting 3 words of text. "Camp Coles Ferry" [Halifax County, VA], 12 June 1781
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Written from rural south-central Virginia while Steuben's force was en route from the Yorktown campaign to assist Nathanael Greene in North Carolina. He had stopped his march briefly, anticipating that he would be needed more back at Yorktown, so he was glad to hear confirmation from Sumner: "I was extremely happy in receiving your letter of the 10th inst. I had been extremely distressed at having received no letters from General Greene since one of the 1st May. In that he positively orders me to join him with all possible dispatch with all the levies I could collect. A change of circumstances had, however, determined me to halt here 'till I could hear further from him or receive orders from the Marquis."
Steuben had attempted to gather a militia force from the southern Virginia counties, but "I much fear that all the armed force they can assemble will be much inadequate to the purpose . . . . So difficult it is to keep a large militia any time in the field." He nonetheless urged Sumner to raise as many North Carolina militia as possible during his march north: "Can we but form such a body on this side James River as is able to oppose the enemy, it will be a great matter."
Provenance: Bangs sale, 12 November 1897, lot 337; American Art Galleries, Edwin Babcock Holden sale, 21 April 1910, lot 2624; Parke-Bernet sale, 6 December 1938, lot 232.