A Bound Collection of Manuscript Letters of the Civil War Period, inscribed "Letters / John Hickman / to / Gen. J. W. Phelps / 1861-64", 105 letters on 114 folded sheets of bond paper (mostly from Philip & Solomons, Washington, D. C., with some from Mt. Holly Paper Co., Delarue & Co. London, P. & P., and a few other makers), in brown and blue inks, neatly numbered in pencil 130-243, all (save one) autograph letters signed by Congressman John Hickman of Pennsylvania (1810-1875), 6 January 1861 to 28 December 1864, and almost all inscribed by Brigadier General John Wolcott Phelps of Vermont (1813-1885) with the name of the sender and month of receipt, professionally bound in half leather with flowers, black panels, and gold stamping on spine, marbleized covers and endpapers, no title, all edges gilt, 8 1/2 in. x 6 1/2 in., octavo, each sheet opening to 8 in. x 9 3/4 in. Note: The writer, John Hickman, was privately educated in Classics and English; he was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1833, practiced in West Chester, and was the Chester County District Attorney in 1845-46 He was elected as a Democrat to the 34th, 35th, and 36th Congresses (U.S. House of Representatives, 6th District of Pennsylvania), then as a Republican to the 37th Congress; he was an active abolitionist, and in the third of his four terms belonged to the anti-slavery branch of the Democratic party. He was present for the third session of the 36th Congress in January and February 1861, when this compilation opens; he went to his district during the special session of the House in March, but attended the first session in the summer, and the second session in the first half of 1862 He returned to Washington for three months in the winter of 1862-63, and retired on 4 March 1863, to West Chester. The recipient, John W. Phelps ("Wolcott"), attended West Point in 1832-36, and rose rapidly from Second (1836) to First Lieutenant (1838) and Captain (1850) in the Seminole and Mexican Wars. He resigned from the Army (largely as a resut of his extreme disappointment during the Mormon Expedition) in 1859, but in April of 1861 he enlisted as a colonel in the Vermont militia (and is duly congratulated by Hickman). He was reappointed to the U.S. Army as a Brigadier General in May ("How does the generalship sit upon you?"), and was stationed at Newport News. During the following winter he was transferred to the Department of the Gulf under General B. F. Butler: after a few months of precarious mail deliveries at Ship Island, he supported Commodore Farragut in forcing the mouth of the Mississippi and winning New Orleans (April 1862), whereupon Phelps became military governor of Louisiana until June. These letters, however (in addition to light-hearted queries asking "Do you get Yankee ice?" "in the vicinity of the Creole City," where Phelps was headquartered at Carrollton) also record "a want of harmony between Genl. Butler and yourself" over the question of arming Black troops; he submitted his final letter of resignation in August, and Hickma n delivered it officially to Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War. For the duration of this correspondence, from September 1862-the month of Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation-Phelps lived in bachelor retirement in Brattleboro. Because the first volume of this compilation is missing (its 129 folded leaves would have occupied a book almost exactly comparable to the 114 leaves in this one, since here several leaves are marked "½"), and the existing letters are silent on potentially helpful points, it is difficult to reconstruct what the basis for Hickman's evidently intimate relationship with Phelps may have been. Both men were a few years on either side of 50 when these letters were written; Phelps was a soldier, and Hickman was married with "half a dozen daughters." There was clearly a family connection: Wolcott's elder sisters Helen (1805-1862) and Stella Phelps (1806-1862) lived in Alabama (Hickman asks after them on 24 February 1862), and one of his own daughters was even named after Stella; a pair of cousins (Col. Charles E. Phelps of Baltimore and his wife Lucy, named apparently after Wolcott's mother, 1782-1830, or late sister, 1816-1833), were frequent visitors at West Chester, as for example at Christmas dinner in 1864 Both men were certainly proud of each other: virtually every letter in this group refers to Phelps' military and scholarly prowess; and he himself was a frequent visitor to the Hickmans, where the considerable standing of a four-term Member of Congress could be counted upon to accomplish many small legal and publishing favors for the often-absent soldier (such as Hickman's successful negotiation of a Federal warrant for 160 acres in Omaha, that Phelps had despaired of securing). Above all, though, this wonderfully warm and detailed correspondence is a tribute to two souls who were absolutely as one on the question of slavery, and the need for its speedy abolition. This book contains the raw materials for at least several graduate studies, into one of the most intricate and fascinati ng periods of American history. A typical selection follows: "Seward is the bane of the nation, and should be borne from Washington on the back of a spavin'd mule to his rural retreat in New York. As a man he is a coward-through and through; as a politician he is a humbug-a demagogue; and as a statesman he is an ass-a cursed ass. If Lincoln were not controlled by his wife, or if he had a thimble-full of brains, he would dispose of him before the set of to-morrows sun. Thank God he can never be the Ruler of the nation. His history has been written, and his doom is fixed. He rules the President, is in the keeping of a woman, is an essayist, a prig, a poltroon, and a cretin. If our liberties shall be lost, he will be the cause, and Lincoln the wretched instrument." (30 May 1893, fol. 210 B, r. & v.)