Maine Antique Digest, April 2017

107 / 221

Maine Antique Digest, April 2017 27-B
- AUCTION -
27-B
message to Congress sold to Kaller for $62,500
(est. $15,000/25,000). Kiffer points out in
the catalog that this slip of paper written in
Philadelphia in 1791 is evidence that Washington
was still dependent on the pen of his wartime aide.
Kaller said the best political letter in the sale
was a draft of a letter, possibly to Jeremiah
Wadsworth, about the presidential election of 1796
that spells out Hamilton’s opposition to Jefferson.
The text had been expunged from a 19th-century
publication of the letter. Kaller paid $56,250
(est. $25,000/35,000) for it. A group of nine
letters containing some things about Hamilton’s
reputation as a soldier, including one letter that
informed Hamilton that someone had impugned
his reputation inaPhiladelphiacoffeehouse, nearly
provoking a duel, sold to Kaller for $100,000
(est. $100,000/150,000).
Many of the letters show how Hamilton
sacrificed his private life to serve his country. A
group of 34 letters from Philip Schuyler to his
daughter Elizabeth “Eliza” Schuyler Hamilton,
which sold on the phone for $125,000 (est.
$35,000/50,000), gives a glimpse of a father
concerned about his family’s health during a
yellow fever epidemic and implores Eliza to leave
the city and come to Albany. In 1799 Eliza finally
did send her children to Albany.
Alexander Hamilton’s earliest love letter to his
future wife (March 1780) sold online to a private
collector for $118,750. Within a few months
of their meeting, Hamilton wrote to Miss Eliza
Schuyler, “You give me too many proofs of your
love to allow me to doubt it.” Later, in Hamilton’s
letter to his wife announcing that the army was
preparing to engage Cornwallis in Virginia and
telling her it would not be prudent for her to
join the expedition to Yorktown, he declares, “A
miser is greedy of his gold, but the comparison
would be cold and poor to say I am more greedy
of your love. It is the food of my hopes....” In a
postscript he tells her not to mention that he is
going to Virginia. That letter sold on the phone
for $106,250 (est. $30,000/50,000), even though
Alexander Hamilton’s signature is cut away. In
the 19th century, there was a brisk trade in clipped
signatures to paste into autograph books.
Letters by Eliza’s sister Angelica Schuyler
Church brought well over estimates. A letter
to her brother Rensselaer Schuyler reporting
the death of Philip Hamilton, Alexander and
Elizabeth Hamilton’s eldest child, at age 19 in
a duel in November 1801 sold on the phone for
$50,000 (est. $3000/5000). Philip objected to
attacks that George Eacker leveled at his father in
a Fourth of July oration. Insults were exchanged,
not withdrawn, and a challenge for a duel was
issued and accepted. Philip Hamilton, perhaps
advised by his father, refused to fire the first shot,
and Eacker shot Hamilton in his right hip. He was
taken to the home of his aunt and uncle, where
he died the next morning, attended by his mother
and father.
The only known letter to his father in
Philip Hamilton’s hand sold for $40,000 (est.
$8000/12,000). In it 15-year-old Philip, a student
at Columbia College, writes to his father to
complain about the college president’s critique
of an oration that young Hamilton wrote and
planned to orate. This previously published letter
had been lost from view for more than a century.
Now it will be preserved in the Gilder Lehrman
Collection on deposit at the New-York Historical
Society.
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American
History and the Rockefeller Foundation are
sponsoring the Hamilton Education Program.
Title I schools in New York City, Chicago, and
other selected cities are being invited to see the
musical and to integrate Alexander Hamilton into
their classroom studies.
Kiffer said, “We have been thrilled to be part
of the cultural movement that has reestablished
this Founding Father’s rightful place in history.
The results of the sale are an indicator not only
of the tremendous public interest in Alexander
Hamilton, but also of the appetite among both
new and established collectors to own historical
documents.”
Formore information, see ).
This autograph letter signed “AH” to Elizabeth
Schuyler, “My Dearest girl…,” is the earliest
surviving love letter fromAlexander Hamilton
to his future wife. The five pages (7⅞ " x 6⅜")
were written in Amboy, New Jersey, “Thursday
Forenoon” (March 17, 1780). There is an
autograph address (“Miss Eliza Schuyler”); the
letter is stained, has fold separations, was repaired,
and has an expected seal tear, and the address leaf
is detached. “You give me too many proofs of your
love to allow me to doubt it and in the conviction
that I possess that—I possess everything the world
can give.” The letter was written within a month
or two of Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler’s
first meeting, while Hamilton was serving as a
commissioner to arrange a cartel for the exchange
of prisoners. Elizabeth Schuyler was at the time
staying with Mrs. John Cochran, her aunt, near
Washington’s headquarters in Morristown.
The letter sold on the phone for $118,750
(est. $40,000/60,000).
“In the midst of my letter, I was interrupted by a scene that shocked me
more than anything I have met with—the discovery of a treason of the
deepest dye. The object was to sacrifice West Point. General Arnold had
sold himself to André for this purpose.” Alexander Hamilton wrote this
to Elizabeth Schuyler on September 25, 1780, announcing the treason
of Benedict Arnold. The three pages, 8⅞ " x 7⅜", were written from
Robinson’s House, Highlands (present-day Garrison, New York, opposite
West Point). A half-inch strip was torn from the foot of the second leaf,
costing Hamilton’s signature and perhaps a final line of text. Other
minor early repairs were made to fold separations; it has some stains, is
tipped to a larger sheet, and is missing a signature. It sold for $81,250 (est.
$35,000/50,000). Hamilton tells Elizabeth he went to see Peggy Shippen
Arnold, and “Her sufferings were so eloquent that I wished myself her
brother, to have a right to become her defender. As it is, I have entreated
her to enable me to give her proofs of my friendship.”
Hamilton misjudged Peggy Arnold; as the catalog notes, she “supported
and assisted her husband’s espionage.” General Washington allowed her
to return to her father’s house in Philadelphia, and early in 1781 she was
reunited with her husband in Loyalist New York. In December of that year
they sailed to England, where they lived together until Arnold’s death in
June 1801. Major John André was hanged.
Autograph letter signed “A Hamilton” to
Elizabeth Hamilton, written from Haverstraw,
New York, August 22, 1781, announcing that
the army is preparing to engage Cornwallis in
Virginia but saying “dont mention [I am] going
to Virgin[ia].” He tells his wife, “I am wretched
at the idea of flying so far from you without a
single hour’s interview to tell you all my pains
and all my love.” Consisting of four pages, 7¾"
x 6", addressed to Mrs. Hamilton at General
Schuyler’s, Albany, it sold on the phone for
$106,250 (est. $30,000/50,000).
“Every hour in the day I feel a severe pang on
this account and half my nights are sleepless—
Come my charmer and relieve me. Bring
my darling boy to my bosom. Adieu Heaven
bless you & speedily restore you to yr. fond
husband,” writes Hamilton in Philadelphia
in 1783 while serving as a delegate to the
Congress of the Confederation. Hamilton
urged his wife to bring their baby, who was
about to mark his first birthday, and join him
there. It is two pages written on January 8,
1783. There is a small hole costing about six
words. Lightly browned, a little spotted, upper
margin restored, and tipped to a larger sheet,
it sold for $10,625 (est. $6000/8000).
A group of 34 autograph letters by Philip Schuyler, signed (“Ph.
Schuyler”), various sizes, many with integral address leaves, 69
total pages, Albany, 1790-1804, to his daughter Elizabeth Schuyler
Hamilton, some seal tears occasionally affecting text, fold separations
(some repaired with cellophane tape), sold for $125,000 on the phone,
underbid by New Jersey dealer Joseph J. Felcone in the salesroom. The
letters show the concern of the patriarch of the Schuyler family for the
Hamiltons during the outbreak of yellow fever in Philadelphia, where
they lived when Hamilton was secretary of the treasury, and in New York.
where he resumed his law practice in 1795. Both Eliza and Alexander did
get yellow fever in the summer of 1793 and were attended by Dr. Edward
Stevens, Hamilton’s boyhood friend from St. Croix, and they recovered.