RUTHERFORD B. HAYES | A presentation copy, with autograph letter, of a scarce Civil War pamphlet sponsored by Rutherford B. Hayes

Property from the Collection of Elsie and Philip Sang

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

THE LOYAL GIRL OF WINCHESTER, SEPTEMBER 1864. [FREMONT, OHIO(?), 1888]

8vo (8 3/8 x 5 3/8 in.; 211 x 137 mm). Frontispiece portrait of the Loyal Girl (Rebecca M. Wright); title-page lightly discolored from wrapper. Original blue wrappers with a vignette of a fanciful Civil War guidon front upper fore-edge corner lost.

Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes fought at the Third Battle of Winchester under the command of General Philip Sheridan. Part of the lore of the battle, a Union victory, was commemorated in a privately printed pamphlet describing how a loyal citizen of the Shenandoah Valley informed Sheridan of the position of Confederate Jubal Early's troops. 

After leaving the presidency, Hayes had the pamphlet reprinted "with the addition of three letters—one by Col. Theodore W. Bean …; one by Gen. George Crook; and one by Major H. Kyd Douglas, an ex-Confederate on Gen Early's staff." Hayes considered the incident "too interesting not to be preserved in permanent form."

This copy is inscribed on the title-page, "Hon Cha C Hooley with the regards of Rutherford B. Hayes." Tipped to the title is an autograph letter signed by Hayes to Hooley (one page, Fremont, Ohio, 24 March 1889) about the gift of the pamphlet."