Beschreibung:

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM Partially engraved military appointment on vellum with portions accomplished in manuscript , appointing Septimus [E.] Carncross as an Asssistant Adjutant-General with the rank of Captain, effective from September 4, 1863. Signed in full by the President "Abraham Lincoln" and countersigned by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, dated March 8, 1864. 18 1/2 x 15 1/4 inches (46 x 39 cm); blue wafer seal at left (with one small chip and minor losses), and War Department docketing notations at upper left. Originally folded in sixths leaving light creases (as usual), a very fresh example, Lincoln's signature remarkably fresh and dark, very attractively matted and framed with an engraved portrait of Lincoln. Born in England in 1829, Carncross was a distinguished soldier, whose Civil War service (according to the 1873 Military Record of Civilian Appointments in the United States Army, volume I) began with him as a First Lieutenant in the 10th New-York Volunteers, in October 1861. He was, over the course of the War, on the staffs of a number of Union Generals, including Wool, Thomas, Sykes and Humphreys. In 1864, he had responsibility for raising "regiments of Colored Troops" according to the previously noted biography. He saw action in numerous major engagements with the Artillery Brigade of the Second Army Corps, including the 1865 Appomattox Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia. At the end of his Civil War service, he was brevetted First Lieutenant U.S. Army for his gallant and meritorious service at the Battle of Hatcher's Run. As an odd coda, he gave evidence during the trial of Drummer Boy Willie McGee (a Civil War hero, who at the age of fifteen had led a decisive victory in a clash with the Confederate Army), when he was tried for the murder of Chandler Braman in Louisiana. Appointments for significant Civil War figures are, unsurprisingly, quite uncommon. Provenance: With Profiles in History, 1990. C