2024-01 Raynors Americana Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/20/2024
Christopher Gustavus Memminger (1803-1888) was a German-born American politician and a secessionist who participated in the formation of the Confederate States government. He was the principal author of the Provisional Constitution (1861), as well as the founder of the Confederate financial system. As the first Confederate States Secretary of the Treasury. Autograph Letter Signed "C.G. Memminger" on official "State of South Carolina Executive Office, Treasury Department, Charleston" Jan. 17, 1861, written to Wm C. Bee & Co.. In full, "I am directed by His Excellency the Governor to return thanks to the "Combahee Planters" whose donation of two thousand dollars you presented; and to express his high appreciation of the generosity and patriotism which prompted the gift". William C. Bee hatched a plan for a blockade-running enterprise that would make money in exporting raw cotton and importing manufactured goods. He also sold shares in his Importing and Exporting Co. of SC, known as the Bee Company, for $1,000 a piece and raised a million dollars according to the Charleston Mercury. The money went to build ships and hire a small private navy.
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