Beschreibung:

CUSTER, GEORGE ARMSTRONG, General. Autograph letter signed ("Custer") to Colonel Colburn, n.p., [near Antietam, Maryland], "ll l/2 o'clock" [l8 September 1862]. 2 pages, 12mo, in pencil on notepad paper with imprinted heading: "Head Quarters, Army of the Potomac," and a line of smaller type at bottom: "By Command of Major General McClellan," a small piece at extreme upper corner lost. THE BIRTH OF THE CUSTER LEGEND, AT ANTIETAM (SHARPSBURG) An exceptional survival, documenting the young commander's independent actions in the closing phases of what has been termed "the bloodiest single day of the war." It relates to one of Custer's bold, aggressive initiatives, which, while accomplishing little of lasting military significance, helped to establish the aura of invincibility which came to surround the "boy general." This letter, scrawled in the heat of the fighting on note-paper of his Commanding Officer, constitutes the only battlefield note of Custer's to be offered at auction in over a decade (the last was sold in l974). While Custer's letters are generally uncommon, a battlefield communique such as this is of the highest rarity. "Col Colburn We have just captured one three inch caisson on the road from the Hagerstown Pike to Sharpstown [sic, for Sharpsburg!]. Col. [Henry Jackson] Hunt had better send out for it. We cannot take it with us. Custer." MacClellan's armies had pushed north to repel Lee's army's aggressive move into Maryland, and headed them off about l0 miles south of Sharpsburg, along Antietam Creek. Beginning on the morning of the 17th, the Union forces launched piecemeal, uncoordinated attacks against the rebel lines; after some encouraging Union advances, and a late-afternoon Confederate counterattack, by nightfall the lines had hardly changed in spite of some 25,000 casualties. Custer had been assigned as aide-de-camp to General Pleasanton in command of the 2nd (Cavalry) Division. On the afternoon of the l7th, Custer had been watching the battle from a hill with MacClellan and his staff. Overstepping his authority, he is reputed to have urged an all-out assault at the center of Lee's line, an idea summarily rejected by MacClellan, although it was enthusiastically championed by other officers senior to Custer. The next morning, without authorization, Custer told a subordinate officer, "I'm off on a scout," and led a company of the 8th Illinois Cavalry through the Confederate lines at a weak point. He and his small force swept almost a mile westward through the Confederate lines, across the Hagerstown Pike, and along the flanks of D.H. Hill's fresh troops through to the very outskirts of Sharpsburg, where Lee had established his headquarters. Along the way, as reported in this letter, a cannon or two were captured. Whirling about, his small party raced back safely to the Union lines. The incident is recounted in several sources, including D.A. Kinsley, Custer: Favor the Bold, (New York, l988), pp.88-96. Provenance : Preserved among the papers of Union General Henry Jackson Hunt (l8l9-89), an aide-de-camp of MacClellan at Antietam and later the Army of the Potomac's Chief of Artillery, to whom the present note was handed, by Col. Colburn; Hunt's descendants; the present owner.