united states navy letters from the civil war

His efforts to build a bigger and better Civil Engineers Corps were, however, successful.

Ellet served in the United States Ram Fleet during the Civil War, and less than a year after he received this letter from Lincoln, he died from wounds sustained in battle. When the Confederacy’s ironclad Merrimack virtually destroyed a fleet of Union boats in 1862, the generals would come to realize that Ellet had been right. Ellet, as depicted in a contemporary political cartoon. As for Ellet, he then published a rebuke of McClellan, which caused newspapers to caricature his efforts. This letter is documentary evidence of McClellan’s mistreatment of Lincoln. The letter was then carried to the home of McClellan, who snubbed the President by refusing to see Ellet or consider the matter. In this letter, Lincoln directs Ellet to seek opinions from his top three generals: Winfred Scott, George B. With the Civil War underway, the need was even more imperative. (1810-1862), considered the greatest civil engineer in the United States during the antebellum era, had for some time been lobbying the president to better fund and equip the Army’s Corp of Engineers, which could use science and its knowledge of Virginia’s terrain and infrastructure to cut off Confederate supply lines and build steam-powered ram ships to protect northern ports. Part of an ongoing correspondence, some of which resides at the Library of Congress, regarding the need for a corps of civilian engineers to survey terrain, disrupt Confederate supply chains, and defend the city of Washington, this letter fills in a part of the historical record that had been missing the content has never been published.Ĭharles Ellet, Jr.

“Discovering unpublished, unknown letters of Abraham Lincoln is increasingly rare,” said Nathan Raab, author of The Hunt for History (Scribner, 2020) and principal at The Raab Collection. It has never before been offered for sale, and is valued at $85,000. It has been in a private collection for at least a century before Raab acquired it earlier this year. The Raab Collection announced today the discovery of an unpublished, early Civil War letter of President Abraham Lincoln.Īddressed to American civil engineer and Union Army Colonel Charles Ellet, Jr., the letter documents Lincoln’s wartime strategizing, shows the use of the science of the day to protect Washington, and sheds light on political tensions.

United states navy letters from the civil war