Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - November - 2006 Issue
Signed Documents by the Famed and Their Families from Joe Rubinfine
General Custer shoots a grizzly, Winfield Scott stiffly relaxes in retirement.
Here is one more presidential spouse: the beloved Dolley Madison. She is noted for saving many state treasures, including a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington, before the British burned the While House during the War of 1812. Those days were long gone when Dolley wrote this letter, almost two decades after James Madison's presidency ended. On January 23, 1835, she writes to a friend about her health and that of her husband. She is just overcoming a severe case of influenza, but her husband is not doing so well. "Mr. Madison's health is nearly as it was in the summer," she writes, "he is still feeble and confined to his rooms, and if we are so happy as to see him safe through the present extraordinary Winter, we shall hope much benefit from the mild weather and exercise in his Carriage..." The former President would make it through that winter and one more. Even Dolley outlived nine of poor Anna Harrison's ten children, though she became First Lady 32 years earlier than Mrs. Harrison. Item 50. $3,000.
William Tecumseh Sherman liked politics about as much as Georgians liked him. He is best remembered, in terms of politics, for his 1884 "Shermanesque pledge," that if nominated for president, he would not run, if elected, he would not serve. Even years earlier, he felt the same. In an 1868 letter to H.W. Slocum, an officer who served under him, Sherman writes, "As to politics it is impossible for language to convey my distaste of them." He goes on to add, "I have seen Fear, Cowardice, treachery, villainy in all its shapes contort & twist mens judgment & actions, but none of them like Politics." Item 37. $4,000.
Here are a couple of notable signed photographs. Item 36 shows General George Armstrong Custer with a Grizzly Bear he just shot. Next to Custer is his Indian scout, Bloody Knife, along with two others from the military. Bloody Knife, like Custer, would die at Little Big Horn, and undoubtedly the Grizzly would have felt little sympathy for them. $22,000. Item 41 is a photo of a stern but dignified looking, aged "Old Fuss and Feathers," General Winfield Scott. Scott was involved in all of the nation's major military campaigns from the War of 1812 through the Civil War, though he resigned early in that conflict. A southerner loyal to the Union, he devised a plan of surrounding the South through the use of a naval blockade and control of the Mississippi River. It was ridiculed by many who thought there would be a quick war, but it would be implemented in time as the war dragged on and Union victory became less clear. Scott was also the Whig Party presidential nominee of 1852, when the party dumped its incumbent, Millard Fillmore. However, Scott lost to Franklin Pierce as the Whigs disintegrated, northern and southern factions turning on each other. This photo shows Scott in the corpulence of his later years. It also must be among the last signed documents of a long career, as he dated it 1866, and he died on May 29 of that year. $1,000.
You may reach Joe Rubinfine at 561-659-7077, or Joerubinfine@mindspring.com.
