A letter written by George Washington, providing rare understanding of his confidence in regular Americans to fight and win the revolutionary war, has been put up for sale on Presidents Day.
The first US president penned the document as leader of the Continental Army in 1777, shortly after British forces ransacked a vital military supply depot in Danbury, Connecticut – a devastating action that fellow general Samuel Parsons wrote him was “an event very alarming to the country”.
The handwritten reply, hidden from public view for decades in a private collection in New England, shows that Washington refused to consider the episode as a crippling blow to his military campaign. Instead, he was encouraged by the response of colonists and local militiamen in launching a hastily convened but fierce counterattack on the raiders.
“I am inclined to believe they [the British] will pursue such measures with a great degree of caution. For tho’ they afford themselves the stores at Danbury, yet it was with considerable loss and they are convinced whenever they make an impression, the Country will recur to arms,” Washington wrote.
Washington’s army, based in Morristown, New Jersey, was formed of soldiers from the 13 colonies that became the first US states the year previously, and with help from France and Spain ultimately forced a British surrender.
The revelatory letter, written from Morristown on 7 May 1777, is expected to sell for $150,000 through the Raab Collection, market experts in authentic historical documents, especially rare and noteworthy documents relating to the US presidency.
“What Washington’s saying is that Danbury revealed one of the assets against the British, the everyday citizen, these citizen militias and self-armed farmers, most of whom rose up in this case, and hadn’t in the past been a feature,” said historian Nathan Raab, the collection’s president.
“There’s recognition that the British may have gotten away with a few bags of flour, but they learned a really valuable lesson, that our country will then take up arms against them. They may not be fighting against an army of the same size and experience as the British army, but this is an asset that we have.
“You definitely get a sense of optimism and confidence in the letter. The letter is fairly long, it’s two sides, and this isn’t the only subject he deals with. He says it at the end. It’s to kind of sum up the situation as he sees it.”
Raab points to another interesting passage in which Washington refers to “invalids or [those] too weak to proceed yet from inoculation” remaining behind to guard stores and equipment while his forces advance to other engagements.
Three months before writing the letter, Washington had ordered all Continental Army recruits to receive a crude inoculation against smallpox, which was running rampant in the fledgling US, and threatening to sink his campaign.
“It is rare to see Washington talking about this first American inoculation campaign, really very shortly after it happened, and that’s one of the things I love about this letter,” Raab said.
“It’s an important moment in science and medicine, certainly from the military perspective, so in terms of that and seeing Washington talk about everyday countrymen picking up arms to fight the British, I’ve never seen anything like it on the market. To call it rare probably doesn’t go far enough.”
Interest in and sales of unusual and historically significant documents and artefacts have soared in recent years as more collectors and enthusiasts join a burgeoning market.
Many items are sold at auctions, with prominent international houses such as Sotheby’s frequently offering individual documents or collections. Among the most expensive to change hands was a copy of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation owned by the family of another assassinated president, John F Kennedy, which sold at auction at Sotheby’s in New York for $3.8m in 2010.
A signed copy of Lincoln’s 1864 election victory speech sold for $3.4m at Christie’s a year earlier, one of five documents to have achieved a selling price in excess of $3m.
Private sales, such as those facilitated by Raab, often feature never-before-seen documents or those that reveal unknown facts about their authors, such as the extent of poverty suffered by the nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, and a letter from Lincoln revealing his strategic thinking in the early years of the civil war.
Raab said that signatures of Lincoln and Washington were the most highly valued among the 45 men who have been US president, largely because of their increasing scarcity.
“I see the demand continuing to increase as it becomes harder and harder to find the truly important material,” he said.
“The challenge is not selling it, it’s buying it. When you see something special, this level of rarity that evokes such a crucial element of our shared legacy, we just jump on it.”
