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Stanton Gives Wartime Pass to Wife & Daughter to Reach Wounded Colonel; By the End of the Month, Both the Colonel and His Wife Were Dead
Stanton Gives Wartime Pass to Wife & Daughter to Reach Wounded Colonel; By the End of the Month, Both the Colonel and His Wife Were Dead
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Edwin Stanton
Washington, DC, June 9, 1862
Stanton Gives Wartime Pass to Wife & Daughter to Reach Wounded Colonel; By the End of the Month, Both the Colonel and His Wife Were Dead
ADS

EDWIN M. STANTON, Autograph Document Signed, Pass for Mrs. Colonel Charles Ellet Jr. and daughter, June 9, 1862, Washington, DC. 1 p., 5" x 8". On War Department stationery; expected folds; some ink offset from folding; some ink corrosion or burning around letters from iron gall ink.

Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton wrote this pass for the wife and daughter of Colonel Charles Ellet Jr., who had recently been wounded in the First Battle of Memphis, a stunning Union victory that demonstrated the utility of Ellet's rams. The daughter was probably Cornelia Daniel Ellet (1849-1874), who would have been twelve years old at the time. This document allowed them to pass through Union lines to any point at which Colonel Ellet was stationed and committed the War Department to providing transportation and subsistence on their journeys.

When the Civil War erupted and the Confederate navy began building ram ships, Ellet wrote directly to President Abraham Lincoln to advocate for increased funding for the Army Corps of Engineers and the development of ram ships. After Confederate forces captured the USS Merrimack at the Norfolk Navy Yard, converted it to the ram CSS Virginia, and sank two Union ships at Hampton Roads, Union forces became more convinced of Ellet's ideas, though the Navy still ignored him.

In March 1862, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton appointed Ellet as colonel of engineers and authorized him to form the United States Ram Fleet on the Mississippi River. This fleet existed outside the navy's direct chain of command and reported directly to Stanton. Ellet purchased nine steamboats on the Ohio River and converted them to rams. He made several relatives captains of the ships, including his brother Alfred W. Ellet, his son Charles Rivers Ellet, and his nephew John A. Ellet. On May 25, the ram fleet joined the Mississippi River Squadron near Fort Pillow, Tennessee. On June 6, Ellet led the rams in the First Battle of Memphis as captain of the USS Queen of the West. His ship rammed and sank the Confederate flagship, and his brother's ship disabled and captured another Confederate ship. His son commanded another ram, but it was not engaged. In the broader battle, the Confederates lost seven of their eight ships. A Confederate sharpshooter shot Charles Ellet Jr. in the knee, but he was the only serious Union casualty of the battle.

Learning from official reports that her husband was wounded, Elvira Ellet obtained this pass from Secretary of War Stanton to proceed to Cairo to be with him. He refused to consider amputation for his injury, and he died from a combination of an infection in his wound and measles on June 21 in Cairo, Illinois, with his wife and daughter by his side. In more tragic news for the family, Elvira Ellet died "from grief and prostration" on June 29, 1862, in Philadelphia, two days after her husband was buried there. Her son Charles Rivers Ellet was promoted to Colonel of Engineers on November 5, 1862, making him at age 19 the youngest Union colonel. He commanded the USS Queen of the West in operations around Vicksburg in February 1863, and as second in command of the Mississippi Marine Brigade, fought as infantry in the Battle of Milliken's Bend in Louisiana in March 1863. He contracted typhoid fever, died in September 1863, and was buried beside his parents in Philadelphia.

Complete Transcript
War Department
Washington City, D.C.
June 9 1862.
Mrs Colonel Ellett and her daughter have permission to pass within the lines of the US forces to Cairo on the Mississippi and wherever else Colonel Ellett may be. All officers and persons in the service of the United States will afford them courtesy assistance and protection.
All Quarter Masters & Commissaries will furnish them transportation & subsistence on any government transports
All railroad Companies will afford them free passage at the Charge of the War Department.
Edwin M Stanton
Secretary of War

Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869) was born in Steubenville, Ohio, and graduated from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1834. In 1836, he married Mary Ann Lamson (1813-1844), and they had a son and a daughter, though their daughter died as a toddler. Stanton commenced his political life as an Ohio lawyer and antislavery Democrat. In 1856, he married Ellen Hutchinson (1830-1873), and they had four children over the next seven years. Stanton served as U.S. Attorney General under President James Buchanan in the winter of 1860-1861, during which time he strengthened the Administration's resolve against secession. Appointed as Lincoln's Secretary of War in early 1862, Stanton brought civilian-style order to the Army and War Department, improving the efficiency of the armed forces. His earlier success as a Pittsburgh lawyer honed his skills in negotiation and communication, allowing him to work with Congress and the president to ensure appropriate involvement in the conduct of the war by each branch of government, as specified by the Constitution. Continuing in the cabinet of President Andrew Johnson, Stanton clearly articulated the Army's role as a major agent in the implementation of Reconstruction policies. Disagreements over Johnson's position on Reconstruction led to Stanton's ouster and eventually to Johnson's 1868 impeachment. In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Stanton to the Supreme Court, but Stanton died before he could take the oath of office.

Charles Ellet Jr. (1810-1862) was born in Pennsylvania. Both of his grandfathers served in the Revolutionary War, one from a Jewish family of diamond cutters from Holland and the other from a Quaker family. After studying at the Bristol school, Charles Ellet Jr. worked as a rodman on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, measuring and making drawings. In 1830, he resigned to study civil engineering in Paris, France. After returning to the United States, he worked for two New York railroads. In 1837, he married Elvira Augusta Stuart Daniel (1816-1862), whose family was from the First Families of Virginia and slaveowners, in Lynchburg, Virginia. They had four children, including Charles Rivers Ellet (1843-1863), who served as a colonel in the Union Army, and Mary Virginia Ellet Cabell (1839-1930), one of the founding members and first Vice President Presiding of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1890. In 1842, Charles Ellet Jr. supervised the construction of the first major suspension bridge in the United States, over the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. He also supervised the construction of the James River and Kanawha Canal in Virginia. In 1848, he built the Wheeling suspension bridge over the Ohio River at Wheeling, [West] Virginia, and the Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge, the first railway suspension bridge, over the Niagara Gorge in New York. During the mid-1850s, he became convinced that ramming by steam-propelled ships could be an effective form of naval combat. Unable to convince the U.S. Navy of the idea, he published Coast and Harbor Defenses, or the Substitution of Steam Battering Rams for Ships of War (1855). During the Civil War, he served as a colonel of engineers in the U.S. Army, in charge of the Mississippi Ram Fleet. He led his ships in a victorious attack on the Confederate fleet at the Battle of Memphis on June 6, 1862. Shot in the knee during the battle, he refused to consider amputation and died of an infection two weeks later.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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