To a future Confederate spy - photo 1

To a future Confederate spy

Lot 313
16.06.2023 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 100
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 967513
Lot 313 | To a future Confederate spy
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 5 000
HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel (1804-1864). Autograph letter signed ("Nathl Hawthorne") to George N. Sanders, "U.S. Consulate," Liverpool, 5 May 1854.

One page, 202 x 126mm, recipient's docket in upper margin (mild toning, a few mounting remnants on verso).

Hawthorne writes to his friend and London counterpart, George N. Sanders, who would later serve as a Confederate spy and be implicated by some as the driving force behind the Lincoln assassination. But at this time, Sanders (1812-1873) was a fellow political appointee serving as the United States Consul in London, appointed by Hawthorne's old college friend, President Franklin Pierce. Here, Hawthorne informs Sanders that, "The bearer, Captain J. I . Marshall, owing to unforeseen circumstances, is in want of twenty pounds. If you will be kind enough to advance it to him, your draft to that amount on me shall be duly honored at sight." He adds a short postscript offering his hope "to have the pleasure of seeing you in London in the course of this month."

Long before his work for the Confederacy, Sanders proved a controversial figure. Hawthorne himself remarked that "some men possessed a kind of magnetic influence over him which he could not resist, however it might lead him." A leading figure in the "Young America" faction that gripped Democratic politics in the 1830s and 1840s, he advocated U.S. intervention in foreign affairs as a means to promote free, republican governments througout the world. By the time Hawthorne wrote the present letter to Sanders, the Senate had failed to confirm his appointment as consul, but Sanders remained in London where he blatantly meddled in the affairs of other nations, most notably an open letter advocating the assassination of Napoleon III. (See Melinda Janye Squires, The Controversial Career of George Nicholas Sanders. Master of Arts Thesis, Western Kentucky University, August 2000). Not published in Letters, Centennial Edition.
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