Beschreibung:

60+ items, 17 orders and documents, and 37 documents (deeds, indentures, etc.), mostly pre-war. Charles Green came from a naval family and saw the good and bad of naval service during the mid-nineteenth century, traveling a winding path to his life's career. Born in South Windsor, Ct., on Sept. 24, 1841, and raised the son of a naval officer of the same name, Green failed to gain admittance to West Point and then failed to catch on in the real estate business. After serving briefly as his father’s clerk aboard the sloop Jamestown at the start of the Civil War, he left the service to take up the study of medicine at the University Medical College in New York when his father retired from active duty. Although his education was interrupted by emergency service as Assistant Surgeon in the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry during Gettysburg, Green received his medical degree in the spring of 1864, and returned to the Navy. Serving first under his reactivated father aboard the receiving ship Ohio, Green later saw duty aboard Admiral David Farragut’s flagship the Hartford in the Gulf Blockading Squadron, and was on board the gunboat Arizona when it was set aflame on the Mississippi River. Green made a valiant effort to douse the fire and barely escaped with his life as the ship went down. His later berths included service aboard a hospital ship off Mobile, a hospital position in New York, a European cruise in 1866-1867 aboard the Miantonomah, and service in the Caribbean (Haiti). He was serving aboard the gunboat Nipsic in Nov. 1869, when he abruptly resigned. This rich archive of materials relating to Green lays bare the reasons for his resignation from the Navy, as well as the struggle over naval discipline in the post-Civil War years. A packet of fifteen documents provides wonderful insight into Green's raging conflict with Lt. Com. Thomas O. Selfridge (Jr.), the son and namesake of a renowned Rear Admiral. Green was accused by Selfridge of using reproachable words against him aboard the Nipsic in Feb. 1869, and played the part of a spy and informer aboard this ship and had accidentally or willfully stated a falsehood. The ultimate source of the friction between the two began when Selfridge ordered Green to remove an ordinary seaman, John Simmons from the sick list, and when Green repeatedly refused to do so, Selfridge brought charges for showing contemptuous indifference to the authority of his commanding officer, refusal to obey orders, and, to make the charge complete, being drunk. For his part, Green complained that Selfridge had triced up the seaman for over an hour against regulations and had violated discipline in other ways. In an unequal test of naval powers, he was eventually brought to court martial, but resigned instead of facing trial. In addition to documenting the charges, the collection includes a letter of support from H.M. Wells, Surgeon at Naval Hospital in New York, in which Wells states that a Dr. Putnam, slated to testify for Green, says he will fight for you to the death, and rejoices in this opportunity, although now quite sick. In your questions to him before the Court, draw out all your conversation with him here at the hospital about resigning when first ordered to the Nipsic -- and all the reasons therefore -- and that several other medical Officers resigned at that time rather than sail under the command of beast & brute Tom Selfridge... A handful of documents in the collection relate to Green’s father and one document is signed by Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. The collection also includes a small, but interesting assortment of ephemera, including a partially printed Bilet in Russian conferring membership on Green Imperial Naval Club and Library at Kronstadt, 1866, and a copy of his commission as First Lieutenant and Asst. Surgeon in the Pennsylvania volunteers, 1863 (mouse chewed hole in center). Photostatic copies of Green’s journal (May 1865-Nov. 1869; 180pp) and a letterbook (May 1861-Aug. 1862);