LINCOLN SIGNED COMMISSION TO A HERO OF GETTYSBURG
Partly printed officer’s commission signed by President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Issued to Charles R. Coster, appointing him Captain in the 12th U.S. Infantry. Washington, D.C., 8 June 1863. One page, on vellum, with original seal.
A historic presidential commission signed by Abraham Lincoln and Edwin M. Stanton, issued on the eve of Gettysburg to Charles Robert Coster, the gallant young officer who, less than a month later, would win enduring distinction for his conduct in one of the battle’s most desperate episodes.
Coster, a member of a prominent New York mercantile family, chose a soldier’s life at the outbreak of civil war. He answered the first call to arms with remarkable speed, enlisting as a private in the 7th New York Militia only days after the firing on Fort Sumter, among the earliest Northern troops sent to the defense of Washington. He later entered the regular service as a First Lieutenant in the 12th U.S. Infantry, thereby exchanging the brief enthusiasm of the opening war months for the harsher and more enduring discipline of active field command.
His rise was rapid and earned. The 12th U.S. Infantry saw hard service in the Peninsula Campaign, where Coster distinguished himself at Gaines’ Mill and was commended for bravery and conduct under fire. By October 1862 he had been advanced to Colonel of the 134th New York Volunteer Infantry, a newly organized regiment that soon entered the Army of the Potomac’s great eastern campaigns. At Chancellorsville, his command served in Major General Adolph von Steinwehr’s division of the XI Corps; at Gettysburg, Coster would face the ordeal by which he is chiefly remembered.
On 1 July 1863, as the Union right collapsed under violent Confederate pressure, Howard ordered von Steinwehr’s reserve division into action from Cemetery Hill. Coster’s brigade was sent forward in a near-hopeless effort to cover the retreat of broken Federal troops streaming back toward the town. It was a sacrifice mission in all but name. Struck by a superior force under Jubal Early, the brigade was badly mauled, sustaining 497 casualties in a brutal and unequal contest. Yet its stand helped buy the precious moments needed for the Union army to reform on Cemetery Hill, where the battle would ultimately be won. During the remainder of the engagement, Coster’s men supported the batteries holding that vital ground, and Coster himself was warmly praised by General Howard and other senior officers for courage, devotion, and the steadiness with which he met an overwhelming attack.
The present commission was issued on 8 June 1863, at precisely the moment when the Army of the Potomac was entering the climactic phase of the campaign that would culminate at Gettysburg. That date lends the document unusual historical electricity. Signed by Lincoln just weeks before the great battle, it appoints an officer who would almost immediately be tested in one of its fiercest and most consequential actions. In that sense, this is far more than a routine military commission. It is a presidentially signed appointment bound, by timing and by recipient, to the central drama of the Civil War’s turning point.
Coster resigned his regimental command not long after Gettysburg and, in the spring of 1864, was appointed provost marshal for the State of New York. But it is for Gettysburg that his name endures, and for the stubborn valor with which he led his brigade into the storm on the battle’s first day.
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[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs] [Abraham Lincoln, Politics, Mary Todd Lincoln, 1860 Election, Election of 1860, 1864 Election, Election of 1864, Lincoln Assassination, John Wilkes Booth]
