General
Williams C. Wickham Signed Document/ 4th VA Cavalry/ Confederate
Up for auction is a rare post war railroad
document signed by General Williams C. Wickham of the famous 4th Virginia
Cavalry. General Wickham served under JEB Stuart in
the 4th Virginia Cavalry Regiment in 1861-63, fighting in several
major engagements such as the 1862 Peninsula Campaign and Gettysburg and the
1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1863
and was given brigade command. In 1865 he became the president of the Virginia
Central Railroad which merged with the Covington and Ohio Railroad to
form the new Chesapeake and Ohio in 1868. Wickham was first their president and
then their vice-president. This four-page letter to William S. Wills is on
Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad letter and is dated April 3, 1875. Wills was
corporal in Carrington’s light artillery (Confederate), during the war. The
letter is written in the hand of and signed by Vice President and former
General Williams C. Wickham. It’s a big, beautiful and bold and rare signature.
General Williams Carter Wickham
Biography
(September 21, 1820 – July 23, 1888) was a
lawyer, judge, politician, and an important Confederate cavalry general who
fought in the Virginia campaigns during the American Civil War. After the war,
he held various political posts and was the President of the Chesapeake and
Ohio Railway company.
Early life and career
Wickham was the son of William Fanning
Wickham and Anne Butler (née Carter) Wickham. His paternal grandfather was John
Wickham, the constitutional lawyer. On his mother's side, he descended from
historic roots, as the Nelson and Carter families were each First Families of
Virginia, prominent in the Virginia Colony.
Wickham's great-grandfather, Gen.
Thomas Nelson, Jr., was one of the signatories of the Declaration of
Independence and a Governor of Virginia during the American Revolutionary War.
Other ancestors include Thomas "Scotch Tom" Nelson who was one of the
founders of Yorktown in the late 17th century. He was also a descendant of
Robert "King" Carter (1663–1732), who served as an acting royal
governor of Virginia and was one of its wealthiest landowners in the late 17th
and early 18th centuries. His mother was a first cousin of Robert E. Lee, whose
mother Anne Hill (née Carter) Lee, was born at Shirley Plantation.
Wickham was born in Richmond,
Virginia, but spent much of his youth on his father's 3,200-acre (13 km2)
plantation, Hickory Hill, which is located about 20 miles (32 km) north of
Richmond and 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Ashland in Hanover County. Hickory Hill
was long an outlying appendage to Shirley Plantation, much of it having come
into possession of the Carter family by a deed dated March 2, 1734.
Wickham was graduated from the
University of Virginia and was admitted to the bar in 1842. He was married to
Lucy Penn Taylor and had several children. He became a justice and was elected
to the Virginia House of Delegates in 1849.
In 1858 he was commissioned captain of
Virginia volunteer militia cavalry, and in 1861 he was elected by the people of
Henrico County to the state convention as a Unionist, where he voted against
the articles of secession.
Civil War
Following the secession of Virginia,
Wickham took his company, the Hanover Dragoons, into the service of the
Confederate States Army. After participating in the First Battle of Manassas,
Wickham was commissioned by Governor John Letcher as lieutenant colonel of the
Fourth Virginia Cavalry in September 1861. On May 4, 1862, he incurred a severe
saber wound during a cavalry charge at the Battle of Williamsburg. In this
state of injury, he was captured, but quickly paroled. In August 1862, he was
commissioned Colonel of the Fourth Virginia Cavalry. At the Battle of
Sharpsburg, he was wounded again, this time in the neck by a shell fragment.
Recovering, he participated in the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.
Wickham was commissioned brigadier
general on September 9, 1863, and put in command of Wickham's brigade of
Fitzhugh Lee's division. On May 11, 1864, he fought at the Battle of Yellow
Tavern. Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart was mortally wounded during this engagement,
with his final order being: "Order Wickham to dismount his brigade and
attack." In September 1864, after the Confederate defeat at the Battle of
Fisher's Hill, Wickham blocked at Milford an attempt by Maj. Gen. Philip
Sheridan to encircle and destroy the Confederate forces of Maj. Gen. Jubal
Anderson Early. He then attacked the Federal cavalry at Waynesboro and forced
them to retreat to Bridgewater.
Wickham resigned his commission on
October 5, 1864, and took his seat in the Second Confederate Congress, to which
he had been elected while in the field. Recognizing that the days of the
Confederacy were over, he participated in the Hampton Roads Conference in an
attempt to bring an early end to the war.
Postbellum activities
After the surrender of the
Confederacy, Wickham was active in improving harmony between the states and
reorganizing Virginia's economy, which had been ruined by the war. He became a
Republican and voted in 1872 for General Ulysses S. Grant as a member of the
Electoral College of Virginia.
In November 1865, at the conclusion of
the War, he was elected president of the Virginia Central Railroad, which had
been one of the most heavily damaged during the War. In 1868, when the Virginia Central merged with the Covington and
Ohio Railroad to form the new Chesapeake and Ohio, Wickham was retained as
the new company's president. In the new capacity, he was anxious to complete a
railroad line to the Ohio River, long a dream of Virginians. However, unlike
fellow Confederate officer and railroad leader William Mahone had done, he was
unable to secure capital or financing in Virginia, or from Europeans. Turning
to New York City, he was successful in attracting an investment group headed by
Collis P. Huntington. Fresh from recent completion of the western portion of
the U.S. transcontinental railroad as a member of the so called "Big
Four", Huntington joined the effort, became the C&O's new president.
His contacts and reputation helped obtain $15 million of funding from New York
financiers for the project, which eventually cost $23 million to complete. The
final spike ceremony for the 428-mile (689 km) long line from Richmond to the
Ohio River was held on January 29, 1873 at Hawk's Nest railroad bridge in the
New River Valley, near the town of Ansted in Fayette County, West Virginia.[6]
After Huntington assumed the presidency, Wickham served as vice-president of
the C&O from 1869 to 1878, when the company went into foreclosure, with
Wickham as receiver. In 1878 the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad was sold under
foreclosure and reorganized as the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company, with
Collis P. Huntington assuming the office of President of the reorganized road;
Wickham was named second vice-president. Under their leadership, an additional
line was extended east from Richmond through the new Church Hill Tunnel and
down the Virginia Peninsula through Williamsburg to reach coal piers located on
the harbor Hampton Roads, the East Coast of the United States’ largest ice-free
port at the small unincorporated town of Newport News in Warwick County. During
the ten years from 1878 to 1888, C&O's coal resources began to be developed
and shipped eastward. Coal became a staple of C&O's business at that time
and still was over 125 years later under successor CSX Transportation. The man
Wickham brought to Virginia, Collis P. Huntington, went on to develop his
holdings in Newport News, where he began the Newport News Shipbuilding and
Drydock Company and helped the small community become one of only two in
Virginia to become an independent city without first having been an
incorporated town. In modern times, Newport News, which merged with the former
Warwick County in 1958, has grown to become one of the major cities of Hampton
Roads.
Throughout the years after the Civil
War, while developing railroads, Wickham also maintained an active political
life. He maintained his offices in Richmond and his residence in Hanover
County. He was elected chairman of the Hanover County, Virginia Board of
Supervisors in 1871 and as a Senator in the upper house of the Virginia General
Assembly in 1883. He was an officer of the C&O and held all of these other
positions at the time of his death on July 23, 1888 at his office in Richmond.
Death, legacy
Wickham was interred in Hickory Hill
Cemetery near Ashland, Virginia. A statue of Williams Carter Wickham was given
to the City of Richmond by the general's comrades and employees of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in 1891 and was placed in Monroe Park.
This is an opportunity to own a piece of history and
rare autograph of a well-renowned Confederate general and commander of the 4th
Virginia Cavalry which makes it a must have for any Confederate or civil war
collector. A copy of General Williams C. Wickham’s photo will be included in
this sale.
See photos for condition.
Thanks for looking and good luck
bidding.