Autograph letter signed by Albion Tourgée. Mayville, New York, 25 February 1888. 8 pages, 8vo. 

An interesting autograph letter by Civil War veteran, Reconstruction judge, novelist, and reformer, Albion Winegar Tourgée (1838–1905). Written to an unidentified correspondent, the letter reveals Tourgée’s candid reflections on literature, law, war, slavery, and politics.

Tourgée begins with advice for a prospective contributor to his literary journal, The Continental Weekly. He cautions against relying on familiar perspectives, noting that the client’s view of a lawyer has long been a tired theme in fiction, while the lawyer’s own perspective on his profession and his clients remains largely unexplored.

The letter shifts to recollections of the Civil War, where Tourgée recalls General William S. Rosecrans’s attempt to create a “Legion of Honor.” According to Tourgée, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton quickly suppressed the plan, and Rosecrans himself remained unwilling to revisit the subject, which he considered a painful reminder of his own thwarted ambitions. Tourgée recalled that perhaps twenty decorations were conferred within the Army of the Cumberland, yet he knew of none that had survived.

He also touches upon an anecdote that later found its way into his fiction, concerning the defense of a fugitive slave. Tourgée notes that the incident was drawn from the real experience of Chester A. Arthur, who attributed much of his later success to this formative act of advocacy.

Tourgée’s own life combined service and sacrifice. Born in Ohio, he enlisted with the 27th New York Infantry, where he suffered a serious spinal wound at Bull Run. Though discharged, he rejoined the Union cause with the 105th Ohio Infantry, only to be captured near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. After the war, he settled in North Carolina, where he became a Republican newspaper editor and a superior court judge, confronting the violence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early years of Reconstruction.

By the 1880s, Tourgée had relocated to New York, where he established himself as a writer and public intellectual. His career remained marked by a deep commitment to racial justice, most famously through his unpaid role as lead counsel in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, where he argued against legalized segregation.

This letter, with its mixture of literary counsel, wartime reminiscence, and reflections on American law and politics, provides a vivid glimpse into the mind of one of the most important reformers of the nineteenth century.

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