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[VIRGINIA, SECESSION ORDINANCE, 1861]. An Ordinance to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under the Constitution. The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution...on [25 June 1788], having declared that the powers granted...might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression and the Federal Government having perverted said powers...to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States, Now, therefore, we the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, that the ordinance...whereby the Constitution...was ratified...[is] repealed and abrogated, that the Union between the State of Virginia and other States...is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is...a free and independent state... Richmond: Simons & Keiningham, n.d. [1861 or later, not after 1879].
Folio broadside, 104 x 69 cm. (41 x 27 in.), professionally matted. Lithographic text with elaborate calligraphic embellishments, small imprint line (beneath "An Ordinance") reading "written by William Flegenheimer, Prof. of Penmanship"; beneath the Convention's secession resolution are 6 columns of 143 facsimile signatures including Eubank, Secretary of the Convention, delegates John Tyler (former President), Jubal A. Early, Eppa Hunton, James Barbour, John Quincy Marr (first Confederate casualty, killed in Fairfax, 1 June 1861) and many others. Pencil notes of a later owner in lower margin, identifiying a few signers and recording "March 1879, three-fourths of Signers have died."
VIRGINIA'S ACT OF SECESSION, ONE OF TWO EXTANT COPIES; THE SOLE COPY IN PRIVATE HANDS
This large broadside faithfully reproduces the historic ordinance of secession and the signatures of delegates. Its date of printing remains undetermined. Originally, Swem's 1910 bibliography dated it 1861, but in 1957 Harwell deleted it from his register of Confederate imprints, with a tantalizing note that the then state archivist "has determined that this lithograph was made about 1873," although no evidence is adduced and none can be found today to confirm this. Simons & Keiningham were probably active in 1861, as both are listed in the 1860 Richmond City directory (no directories for 1861-65 were issued). The 1879 owner of this copy was a Union soldier in Virginia in 1865. In the absence of concrete evidence the broadside's precise dating remains inconclusive. The State Library of Virginia posseses the signed original parchment act (lacking two signatures which are reproduced here); also extant are 4 copies of an 1861 lithographic facsimile by Ludwig and Hoyer, and 4 copies of another, postwar facsimile issued by Ludwig alone. We can trace one other copy of this Simons & Keiningham lithograph, at the Virginia Historical Society; the copy cited in 1910 by Swem cannot now be located. Virginia was the eighth state to secede from the Union, following the fall of Fort Sumter on 14 April. The calligrapher, Flegenheimer, was employed by the Convention to engross the parchment act as well as the diplomatic credentials for James Mason (see Louis Ginsburg, "Two Streams Become One," in Virginia Cavalcade, vol.7, no.4, p.27). Swem, "Conventions and Constitutions of Virginia," in Bulletin of the Virginia State Library, vol.3 (1910), no.626; R. Harwell, More Confederate Imprints, 1957, no.857 (cancelled); Not in Parrish and Willingham, Confederate Imprints, but cf. 4365 and 4366 for two other printings of the act.
Provenance: Brevet Major L. Curtis Brackett (1841-1919), 28 Massachsetts infantry, a distinguished soldier, brevetted for "conspicuous gallantry," mustered out August 1865.
Folio broadside, 104 x 69 cm. (41 x 27 in.), professionally matted. Lithographic text with elaborate calligraphic embellishments, small imprint line (beneath "An Ordinance") reading "written by William Flegenheimer, Prof. of Penmanship"; beneath the Convention's secession resolution are 6 columns of 143 facsimile signatures including Eubank, Secretary of the Convention, delegates John Tyler (former President), Jubal A. Early, Eppa Hunton, James Barbour, John Quincy Marr (first Confederate casualty, killed in Fairfax, 1 June 1861) and many others. Pencil notes of a later owner in lower margin, identifiying a few signers and recording "March 1879, three-fourths of Signers have died."
VIRGINIA'S ACT OF SECESSION, ONE OF TWO EXTANT COPIES; THE SOLE COPY IN PRIVATE HANDS
This large broadside faithfully reproduces the historic ordinance of secession and the signatures of delegates. Its date of printing remains undetermined. Originally, Swem's 1910 bibliography dated it 1861, but in 1957 Harwell deleted it from his register of Confederate imprints, with a tantalizing note that the then state archivist "has determined that this lithograph was made about 1873," although no evidence is adduced and none can be found today to confirm this. Simons & Keiningham were probably active in 1861, as both are listed in the 1860 Richmond City directory (no directories for 1861-65 were issued). The 1879 owner of this copy was a Union soldier in Virginia in 1865. In the absence of concrete evidence the broadside's precise dating remains inconclusive. The State Library of Virginia posseses the signed original parchment act (lacking two signatures which are reproduced here); also extant are 4 copies of an 1861 lithographic facsimile by Ludwig and Hoyer, and 4 copies of another, postwar facsimile issued by Ludwig alone. We can trace one other copy of this Simons & Keiningham lithograph, at the Virginia Historical Society; the copy cited in 1910 by Swem cannot now be located. Virginia was the eighth state to secede from the Union, following the fall of Fort Sumter on 14 April. The calligrapher, Flegenheimer, was employed by the Convention to engross the parchment act as well as the diplomatic credentials for James Mason (see Louis Ginsburg, "Two Streams Become One," in Virginia Cavalcade, vol.7, no.4, p.27). Swem, "Conventions and Constitutions of Virginia," in Bulletin of the Virginia State Library, vol.3 (1910), no.626; R. Harwell, More Confederate Imprints, 1957, no.857 (cancelled); Not in Parrish and Willingham, Confederate Imprints, but cf. 4365 and 4366 for two other printings of the act.
Provenance: Brevet Major L. Curtis Brackett (1841-1919), 28 Massachsetts infantry, a distinguished soldier, brevetted for "conspicuous gallantry," mustered out August 1865.
Sale room notice
The photograph for lot 170 was inadvertently omitted from the catalogue. The image shown on page 145 corresponds with lot 107.