1827 Autograph Letter Signed,To Edward Everett, With Everett's...
Lemuel Shaw Asks Edward Everett to Help a Friend Seeking a Naval Commission [Manuscript]. Shaw, Lemuel [1781-1861]. Everett, Edward [1795-1865]. [Autograph Letter, Signed, to Edward Everett with Everett's Appended, And Signed, Letter of Transmittal, Boston, October 4, 1827 and October 12, 1827]. Single leaf folded to form 9-3/4" x 7-3/4" (24.7 x 19.7 cm) bifolium with integral address leaf, franked in red on verso of second leaf. Some toning, old lines with short tears at ends, some remnants of paper from old mounting on back with no loss of legibility. $750. * This compelling manuscript unites two titans of 19th-century Massachusetts politics and law on a single piece of paper. The item features two distinct letters: October 4, 1827: Lemuel Shaw writes to then-Congressman Edward Everett, requesting his political influence to help a friend secure a commission as a purser in the U.S. Navy. -October 12, 1827: Rather than drafting a new sheet, Everett appended his own letter of endorsement directly into the remaining space of Shaw's bifolium, addressing it to Secretary of the Navy Samuel L. Southard before forwarding the entire document. When this letter was exchanged Lemuel Shaw had already served in both houses of the Massachusetts Legislature and drafted the first charter of the City of Boston. Three years after this letter, in 1830, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Over a monumental 30-year tenure, he shaped American common law, presiding over the infamous Parkman-Webster murder trial and authoring the landmark labor ruling Commonwealth v. Hunt. Edward Everett was a celebrated academic, minister, and statesman. While serving in Congress at the time of this correspondence, he is immortalized in American history as the featured orator at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863. His masterful two-hour speech was famously eclipsed by Abraham Lincoln's two-minute Gettysburg Address.
Price: $750.00
Book number 65287