GENERAL GEORGE E. SPENCER - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 11/13/1869 - HFSID 174745

GEORGE E. SPENCER
As US Senator, he writes US Attorney General Hoar, urging removal of an Alabama district attorney, "unfit for office" because he is "a zealous partisan Democrat".
Autograph Letter signed: "Geo. E. Spencer", 8x10 folded, 15¾x10 open flat. Mobile, Alabama, 1869 November 13. To E. R. Hoar, Attorney General, Washington, D.C. Docketed on verso. In full: "I respectfully recommend that J. P. Southworth be appointed US Dist. Attorney for the Middle & Northern Districts of Alabama in the place of Francis Bugbee present inclubment. Mr. Southworth is the present Dist. Attorney of the Southern Dist., & is a competent and efficient officer. Mr. Bugbee is unfit for the office he now holds on the account of his great age which is over seventy as well as being a zealous partisan democrat. I believe that this change will be greatly to the advantage of the Government. I am very respectfully yours". George Eliphaz Spencer (1836-1893), a lawyer and Iowa state legislator, served in the Union army during the Civil War, being brevetted to Brigadier General for gallantry in the field. From 1863 to 1865, Spencer led an unusual unit, a cavalry regiment of Alabama Unionists! (General Sherman chose this unit as his personal escort during his march through Georgia to the sea.) Moving to Alabama as a bankruptcy judge, he became a US Senator when Alabama was re-admitted to the Union in 1868. A Republican, he served in the Senate until 1879. As the Republican Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Andrew Johnson as President, there were efforts everywhere to replace Johnson appointees with more partisan Republicans, especially in the South, where Democrats were usually more reluctant to strictly impliment Reconstruction policies. Ebenezer Hoar was President Grant's first Attorney General (1869-1870). 2 vertical 2 horizontal fold creases. Lightly toned and creased. Paper clip stain at upper left and right corners. Otherwise fine condition.