2024-01 Raynors Americana Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/20/2024
Confederate Imprint, "President's Message", Richmond. Dec. 7, 1863, 29pp. gathered signatures, stitched. Browned. Old stamp on first page and several others. Good. PARRISH & WILLINGHAM 925. CRANDALL 627. Davis tries to put the best light on a year that had seen the Confederate Army defeated at Gettysburg and the Union triumphant on the Mississippi with the fall of Vicksburg. As an example, President Davis addresses Gettysburg, "The able commander who conducted the campaign in Virginia determined to meet the threatened advance on Richmond, for which the enemy had made long and costly preparations, by forcing their armies to cross the Potomac and fight in defense of their own capital and homes. Transferring the battlefield to their own soil, he succeeded in compelling their rapid retreat from Virginia, and in the hard-fought battle of Gettysburg inflicted such severity of punishment as disabled them from early renewal of the campaign as originally projected. Unfortunately the communications on which our general relied for receiving his supplies of munitions were interrupted by extraordinary floods, which so swelled the Potomac as to render impassable the fords by which his advance had been made, and he was thus forced to a withdrawal, which was conducted with deliberation after securing large trains of captured supplies, and with a constant and unaccepted tender of battle. On more than one occasion the enemy has since made demonstrations of a purpose to advance, invariably followed by a precipitate retreat to entrenched lines on the approach of our forces."
Click on a thumbnail above to display a larger image below
Hold down the mouse button and slide side to side to see more thumbnails(if available).
Click above for larger image.