Back in October I came across a Discovery News item about a new Lincoln letter which was found and up for auction which showed an “angry Lincoln” writing to a Mrs. V.C.K. Neagle who wanted a pardon for her husband. Due to common conceptions of Lincoln it is easy to forget that as a human he could become irate as the rest of us do from time to time. Lincoln had a habit of venting his frustrations by writing out letters that he then never sent. An unsent letter to General George G. Meade after the Battle of Gettysburg is perhaps the most famous of these missives. The July 14, 1863, letter contains these choice words:
“Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not attack Lee last monday, how can you possibly do so South of the river, when you can take with you very few more than two thirds of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect, and I do not expect you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am innumerably distressed because of it.”
The Neagle letter, from what I can tell, is accurately transcribed here . I was not able to find any critical analyses of the content of the letter or the note Lincoln wrote to himself on the back (which was not pictured in the Discovery story). I can only assume that the presence of the note on the back of the letter means that it was not sent. How and where this letter was discovered was not discussed in the news story. Having read Lincoln’s Collected Works (CW) and the Neagle letter, it became quickly evident to me that this letter was quite a find and could draw the estimated sum of $250,000-$350,000 at a December 2008 Southeby’s auction. Consider the following:
The last line of the letter reads: “There is certainly room enough North of the Susquehanna for a great variety of honest occupations.” The key part of the sentence is the reference to the river. In consulting the Lincoln CW, I found only one instance of the Susquehanna River (which Lincoln spelled Susquehannah) in a June 30, 1863, telegram to Major General Darius N. Couch. The telegram reads: “I judge by absence of news that the enemy is not crossing, or pressing up to the Susquehannah. Please tell me what you know of his movements. A. LINCOLN.” Further, an earlier line in the Neagle letter which starts: “As I understand it…” struck me as a rare construction. Out of 16 instances of the phrase “as I understand it,” only once did it begin a sentence. In that same sentence of the Neagle letter which begins “as I understand it,” Lincoln uses the word “wilfully.” This word appears thrice in the CW. Another word, “knowingly,” which is also in the sentence, shows up only 14 times in the CW. To my knowledge, the words knowingly and willingly are together in only one Lincoln document in the CW, the Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas. In Lincoln’s Rejoinder the words knowingly and willingly are not even on the same page together. To have all of these rarities (considering the thousands of pages comprising the CW) appear in one letter seemed strange to me.
However, concerning the pardon of Mr. Neagle and the connections to Senator Harlan (on the back of the letter), the wording used in the Discovery story appears to be very similar to the Feb. 22, 1864, message to Edwin Stanton: “I propose that the husband’s parole be enlarged so that he may occasionally visit Washington.” The annotation for this entry in the Lincoln Collected Works reads: “Secretary of War, Letters Received, P 123, Register notation. Although the letter bearing Lincoln's endorsement is missing, a notation on the register quotes the above as appearing on the application of Mrs. V.C.K. Neagle”. This is the only mention of Neagle in the CW. How much more intriguing can this story get that that both the angry letter to Neagle and the letter concerning her husband’s pardon were missing from the CW?
Well, the auction in December came and went without the letter being sold, not unlike some of the other items in that auction. In exchanging e-mails with Selby Kiffer, Senior Vice President of the Books and Manuscript Division at Southeby’s and appraiser on the Antiques Roadshow, he told me that he is confident that the Neagle letter is authentic based on the letter's physical characteristics and provenance. He also graciously offered to let me take a look at the letter if I am in New York. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to the Big Apple anytime soon. I was informed by Mr. Kiffer that the letter will be included in a future auction so good luck to the so-and-sos with enough cash to bid on this interesting Neagle letter.
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