2020-07 2 sessions
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/23/2020
PERCY GREG (1836-1889). English Poet and Writer who wrote about politics, but his views were violently reactionary, with his "History of the United States to the Reconstruction of the Union" (1887) said to be more of a polemic, rather than a history. His "Across the Zodiac" (1880) is an early Science Fiction novel, said to be the progenitor of the sword-and-planet genre, containing what is possibly the first instance in the English language of the word "Astronaut"! War-date Union Manuscript Poem Signed, "Percy Greg", April 9, 1865, 1pp. folio, entitled, "Ninth of April 1865," This handwritten original poem commemorates the end of the American Civil War on that date. At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee that day surrendered his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Robert E. Lee had no other option than to surrender. It reads in part: "...It is a nation's death-cry! Yes; the agony is past: The stoutest race that ever fought to-day hath fought its last. Ay: start and shudder; well thou mayst! well veil thy weeping eyes! .... Yes, shudder at that cry that speaks the South's supreme despair, ...Thou that couldst save and savedst not; that wouldst and didst not dare! ... The ashes of her sunny homes are slaked with patriot tears. ...Tears for the slain who died in vain for freedom on the field; ...Tears, tears of bitterer anguish still for those that live -- to yield. ....The cannon of his country pealed Stuart's funeral knell... Her soldiers' cheers rang in his ears as Stonewall Jackson fell. ...Onward o'er gallant Ashby's grave swept War's triumphant tide, ...And Southern hopes were living yet, when Polk and Morgan died. ... But he, the leader on whose word those captains loved to wait, ... The noblest, bravest, best of all, hath found a harder fate. ... Unscathed by shot and steel he passed through many a desperate field; .... O God, that he hath lived so long, and only lived -- to yield! .... Along the war-worn wasted ranks that loved him to the last, ...With saddened face and weary pace the vanquished chieftain passed. ...Their own hard lot the men forgot; they felt what his must be; ...What thoughts in that dark hour must wring the heart of General Lee. ...." Fine condition.
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