CSA Brigadier General Leroy A. Stafford, Confederate Document Possibly Signed, 1864 

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Jun 10, 2016 - Jun 11, 2016

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• Lot Description
  CSA Brigadier General Leroy A. Stafford, Confederate Document Possibly Signed, 1864 
  
  Stafford, Leroy A. (1822-1864). Brigadier General of the Confederate Army, killed at the Battle of the Wilderness. Confederate document, part printed, part manuscript, 1p, special order on Adjutant and Inspector General's Office stationery. March 26, 1864. Possibly signed in the hand of Stafford, whose autograph is listed as "extremely scarce" in Autographs of the Confederacy by Michael Reese.  
   
  Transcribed as follows: 
  
  Special Orders, No. 22 
  The leave of absence heretofore granted Captain E. Johnston of Stafford’s Brigade is extended Thirty Days. By command of the Secretary of War 
  [Signed} Jno Withers, Assistant Adjutant General 
  [Possibly signed] Br Gen Stafford Thru Gen Lee 
  
  On the reverse is written: 
  
  Sect’y of War March 26, 1864 Leave of Absence Captain E. Johnston
  
  Brigadier General Leroy Augustus Stafford (1822-1864) served in the Mexican War and with Captain Ben McCullough’s Texas Rangers. With Louisiana’s secession in 1861, Stafford formed the “Stafford Guards (Company B, 9th Louisiana Infantry Regiment). By 1862, Lieutenant Colonel Stafford commanded the regiment.
  
  After fighting at Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, Stafford was promoted to brigadier general and assigned command of the 2nd Louisiana Brigade in the Stonewall Division. Stafford was mortally wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness.
  
  Bessie E. Johnston Gresham Collection of Confederate Manuscripts, Photographs, & Relics
  
  Lots 89-115
  
  Bessie E. Johnston Gresham was born in Baltimore, MD in 1848 in a home sympathetic to the Southern cause. Union forces imprisoned one of her brothers for aiding the South, and her brother Elliott was a Confederate officer who lost a leg at the battle of Antietam. She became an ardent and unreconstructed Confederate, and, in 1887, she married Thomas Baxter Gresham, a Confederate veteran from Macon, GA. She was actively involved in the Baltimore chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and amassed a notable collection of Confederate manuscripts, photographs, and relics at the Gresham home at 815 Park Avenue in Baltimore. Most of her items were left to the Museum of the Confederacy, the Maryland Historical Society, and other institutions. This important collection of Johnston-Gresham family and Confederate-related material, was passed down through Bessie Johnston Gresham’s step-son, Leroy Gresham, before it was acquired by the consignor.
  
  The collection features over 50 CDVs accumulated by Bessie and Thomas Gresham, offered as Lots 89-100. Some are wardate, and others were apparently acquired in Baltimore soon after the war's end. Some CDVs include patriotic inscriptions and quotations written by Bessie on reverse, which showcase her deep feeling of love and devotion to the Southern Cause.
  
  In a June 1862 letter delivered through the Union blockade, Elliott Johnston, serving as aide-de-camp to CSA General Richard B. Garnett, mentioned collecting photos of CSA generals for his then 14-year-old sister Bessie.
  
  In a 1926 issue of Confederate Veteran magazine, a memorial essay described Bessie's girlhood during the war:
  
  "One of her brothers, who was on General Ewell’s staff, suffered the loss of a leg at the battle of Sharpsburg; her two other brothers were active Southern sympathizers and were under constant surveillance by Federal authorities for giving all possible aid to the Confederacy; her home was a center from which radiated help. “
  
  "Reared in this atmosphere of deep love for our ‘cause,’ she became an ardent and unreconstructed Confederate. "
  
  During her girlhood, Bessie was acquainted with many Southern generals and received from them letters, photographs, and autographs, as well as a number of gifts. 

  Condition

  Good, some typical folds and one tear at the center fold.
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