September 22, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/22/2011
Autograph Letter Signed, "Thomas Fayette" 4pp. quarto, Frederic County, Maryland, June 3, 1870, with excellent content it reads in part: "...I'm in the woods, all alone, two miles from Frederic City...waiting for the 'great days' (not of de Land) to come when all of 'Manhood' & 'Progress' and the 'Spirit of the Age' (!!) shall gather themselves together in a representative capacity & duly celebrate the privileges & equal rights, they are made to enjoy & also to grow grandiloquently 'majestic' over the dirty 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S.! 'Then why am I here?' Just to 'take in', 'gobble up', 'secure' & 'get' a few dollars in greenbacks out of the motley throng of 'trooly loil' that is here to congregate on Whit-Monday. I will have three days holidays here in this sylvan retreat & with the waters of the peace & war famed Monocacy Creek sounding in my ears & the lovely valley of the same beautiful stream spread out for miles before my vision...I came here, ten miles, & 'stationed' myself in the 'way' to 'catch the Hamites or the 'freedmen' & some of their 'greenies'. I may go from Frederic City to Harpers Ferry at one of these two places, & want to put my car or 'gallery' on the cars & take it westward of the great Appalachian or Alleghany range of mountains...I may 'close out' this summer, return south & die there when my time comes. I have just a little touch of the Texas fever...Georgia is the place where my thoughts do the most often go...South-western Texas, would, I think, be still better for me...this life is unsatisfying, that his world is not our home, not our continuing city, not our 'abiding place'..." Fine...plus; Two other ALsS, with newsy content. VG. (3 items) The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) of the United States Constitution provides that no government in the United States may prevent a citizen from voting based on that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude (i.e. slavery). It was ratified on February 3, 1870. Maryland rejected the amendment on February 26, 1870 and did not ratify it until May 7,1973, over a hundred years from its first proposal.
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