Beschreibung:

GRANT, ULYSSES S., Lt. General . Autograph letter signed ("U.S. Grant Lt. Gen."), TO SECRETARY OF THE NAVY GUSTAVUS VASA FOX, City Point, Virginia, 24 January 1865. 1/2 page, 4to, on stationery with imprinted heading, "Head Quarters Armies of the United States," marked "(Cipher)" at top in Grant's hand, indicating it was intended for transmission by the military telegraphic system . The Commander of the Army of the Potomac arranges to visit recently captured Fort Fisher. "I would like to leave Fortress Monroe to-morrow morning or next day morning for Fort Fisher. Can you not go? I would also be pleased to go on a naval vessel if it is convenient to spare one. Ocean transportation is now all employed carrying troops...." On January 15, Fort Fisher, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, near Wilmington, South Carolina, had been captured by a combined Union army and navy assault. (A previous attempt had been so bungled that Grant relieved its commander, General Benjamin Franklin Butler.) Wilmington, as Grant explained, "was of immense importance to the Confederates, as it formed their principal inlet for blockade runners" ( Personal Memoirs , p. 662). Grant himself wished to plan the attack on Wilmington. He sailed from City Point on the 27th and returned on the 31st. It was in Wilmington that Grant planned and ordered Sherman's march north from Savannah through the Carolinas. Provenance Elsie O. and Philip D. Sang Foundation (sale, Sotheby's, 4 December 1981, lot 463)