WOODFORD WILLIAM Autograph Letter Signed Wm Woodford as newl

Sale 2276 - Lot 143

Price Realized: $ 16,800

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

Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800

WOODFORD, WILLIAM. Autograph Letter Signed, "Wm Woodford," as newly appointed Brigadier General, to Brigadier General George Weedon, discussing his promotion and a recent court-martial. 2 pages, 4to, with integral address leaf; large areas of address leaf filled with paper at an early date, wear at folds with slight loss, silked on second and third pages. Windsor [Caroline County, VA], 17 March 1777

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Woodford and Weedon were rivals within the Virginian officer corps; Woodford's later promotion ahead of Weedon would lead to Weedon's temporary resignation from the army the next year. For the moment, though, Weedon held rank, and Woodford wrote deferentially: 'I have heard within these few days of the late promotions. Let me, with much sincerity, give you joy, & assure you that I shall serve with pleasure under my old friend. I am sir determined to disappoint my enemys in their aim, & if they had appointed me a corpl I would have acted.'
Woodford also discusses Colonel Mordecai Buckner, whose flight from a minor skirmish had recently led to his court-martial. This was regarded as an embarrassment to all of his fellow Virginians: 'Buckners affair was horid. He is arrived at home. I'm told he had an entertainment at his house & seems not to feel what has happen'd.'
Woodford died on a British prison ship in 1780, and his signature is one of the more difficult American generals to obtain; none have been offered at auction since 1961 per American Book Prices Current.