DRAFT COPY OF GENERAL ORDER NO. 171, REGARDING HORSES FOR TRANSPORTATION, JUNE 9, 1863.
[G.O. 171, W.D., A.G.O. June 9, 1863]. Single sheet of lined paper, 9.5 x 7.5 in., 2 pp., approx. 220 words. A manuscript copy, in a clerical hand, signed [secretarial] by E.D. Townsend. Blind embossed stamp of the Capitol building and "Congress P & P" in upper left corner, docketed on the second page. Old fold lines, short separation along one fold. General Order No. 171 consisted of five parts, regulating the care and disposition of officer's horses. The first section requires that a departing officer turn in his horse for remuneration for not more than he paid for it. The second section states that he cannot sell a horse provided for him and the third and fourth refer to orders to transport horses at the public expense. Finally, officers who apply for transfers can not transport their horse from one department to another. The published versions of the General Orders were nearly all issued by Assistant A.G. Townsend, Adjutant Generals Office of the War Dept. in Washington, DC. Item #65277
Edward Davis Townsend (1817-1893) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and graduated from West Point in 1837. He served in the artillery during the Seminole War, and then on the northern frontier. Townsend joined the Adjutant General's Department in 1852, serving first on the Pacific coast, then in Washington DC during the Civil War. Townsend was charged with gathering and organizing many of the government documents into an official record of the war, a project that lasted well beyond his lifetime, taking some forty years to complete. [see his obituary in the New York Times, May 12, 1893, and Alan & Barbara Aimone's book "A User's Guide to the Official Records of the American Civil War," (Shippensburg, PA: 1993)].
Price: $350.00