Important, Abner Doubleday Framed Signature Fort Sumter S.C. April 14, 1865 ( Day Lincoln Was Shot!)

Abner Doubleday Framed Signature from Fort Sumter, rare, signed 'A. Doubleday Major General Fort Sumter S.C. April 14, 1865' on heavy cream paper, paper 1 1/4 in. x 4 7/8 in., ink bold and signature very clear, framed together with a printed miniature of Doubleday, matted and framed, frame size 17 3/4 in. x 14 3/4 in.

This signature signifies what was considered by many the end of the Civil War. Signed by Abner Doubleday as Major General Fort Sumter S.C. April 14, 1865. This is the same day of the celebration at Fort Sumpter for the regaining Charlestown and sadly the same day that later Lincoln was shot in Ford’s Theater! This is the only signed piece from Abner Doubleday for Fort Sumpter we have seen and the fact that it represents an important moment in time in the history of the Civil War. Lincoln was invited to the event but decided instead to stay in town and on the same fateful night of April 14^th, went to see the play at Ford’s Theater.

Fort Sumter had capitulated on February 22, 1865, and three weeks after at Fort Sumter on April 14^th, 1865 an elaborate ceremony in Charleston Harbor took place, in the early afternoon. The more than 5000 spectators saw the raising of the United States national flag over its defenses almost four years to the day that it was hauled down at the start of the war.  Raising it on the flagpole was Major (now General) Robert Anderson, and next to him was Abner Doubleday who was second in command in 1861 and considered to have fired the first shot of the Civil War.  Thousands attended, including scores of military, civilian, and religious dignitaries. Henry Ward Beecher was the main speaker. Union soldiers and civilians listen to speeches delivered during the Fort Sumter ceremonies.

On the morning of Friday, April 14, 1865, more than 5,000 people assembled on Charleston’s docks awaiting ferries to take them to Fort Sumter. Two months earlier, Confederate flags had flown proudly over the city. Major General William T. Sherman’s approach had prompted General P.G.T. Beauregard, who had presided over Sumter’s bombardment and had accepted Anderson’s surrender, to evacuate the city on February 15. Three days after Beauregard’s departure, Charleston’s mayor surrendered the city unceremoniously to one of Sherman’s subordinates. Robert Anderson, now promoted to general for his heroism during Sumter’s shelling, had returned to hoist the flag he had lowered during the fort’s surrender. General Anderson and Doubleday had traveled aboard the steamship Arago to Charleston from New York with other dignitaries handpicked by Lincoln to participate in the ceremony. Their number included the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who would give the keynote address; Liberator editor William Lloyd Garrison; and British abolitionist George Thompson, who shared a stateroom with Garrison during the voyage. Each of their lives, a New York Times reporter wryly noted, would not have been worth ‘the price of the rope which would have served to hang him, if he had simply ‘put in an appearance’’ in Charleston a few months earlier. Joining them on board were approximately 60 others, including politicians, judges, military officials (including several of the soldiers who had surrendered with Anderson at Sumter), and reporters from the major New York and Chicago newspapers. While some of the others on board saw the planned ceremony as a symbolic end to the war—the eventual defeat of the Confederacy a fait accompli—for Beecher, Garrison, and Thompson, the return of the Union flag to Fort Sumter was the final nail in slavery’s coffin.”

Abner Doubleday (NY/NJ, 1819 -1893) was a United States Army officer and Union major general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in the opening battle of the war at Fort Sumter and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg.

With One of a Kind Collectibles LOA.

Auction Notepad