Beschreibung:

3pp.+ stampless address leaf with Totten’s signed free frank. Manuscript Document Signed twice by Totten. (Army) Engineer Department, To Lt. John G. Foster, Corps of Engineers, Nashua, New Hampshire. Orders for transfer of a dozen officers of the Corps of Engineers, including Lt. J.F.Gilmer and Capt. J.G.Barnard, to report to Capt. R. E.Lee, Chief Engineer with the Army, at “the city of Mexico (or wherever the Head Quarters of Genl. Scott’s army may be)”. Two of these were particularly fateful for the future: Gilmer was to become Chief Engineer of the Confederate Army during the Civil War, serving again under Confederate commander Robert E. Lee. Barnard, their colleague at General Scott’s Headquarters, would become Chief Engineer of the Union Army at the end of the Civil War. Totten himself had been General Scott’s Chief Engineer at the start of the Mexican War and would remain Chief Engineer of the US Army in the first years of the Civil War, until his death in 1864. A rare association item relating to Lee’s early career.