PRESIDENT RUTHERFORD B. HAYES - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 03/10/1880 - HFSID 16428

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES
The President of the United States signed this handwritten letter dated in 1880 requesting all information on an army personnel matter
Autograph Letter Signed: "Sincerely/RB Hayes" as President, 1 page, 4½x7. Washington, District of Columbia, March 10, 1880. On Executive Mansion letterhead to "Genl Breck". Headed: "Private". In full: "I wish all papers bearing on the case of Yeatman Bickham & the Maj. Slemmer. Reports and all." Thomas Yeatman Bickham (1841-1891), who typically went by Yeatman Bickham, is listed on the roster of the 49th Indiana Infantry Volunteers. After the war he was a businessman in Ohio, predominantly in the wood furniture manufacturing business. His extended family included William Bickham, a newspaper editor and publisher in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area. Major Adam Slemmer (1829-1868) served in the Union Army during the Civil War, gaining the nickname "Old Pickens" for successfully defending Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor with a handful of men, when Florida seceded from the Union. Adam Slemmer died young in 1868 of typhoid fever. The letter was sent to General Samuel Breck (1834-1918), a veteran of the Civil War and several Indian wars, who served most of his post-Civil War military career in adjutant general posts in various army departments, rising to Adjutant General of the US Army in 1897. On November 7, 1876, Republican Governor Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893) of Ohio defeated Democratic Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York in the closest electoral vote election in United States history. Hayes went on to serve as United States President for one term, overseeing the end of Reconstruction in the former Confederacy. Before achieving prominence on the national stage, he served as the city solicitor of Cincinnati from 1858-1961 and fought in the American Civil War for the Union, eventually earning a promotion to Major General. Hayes declined to run for a second term in 1880, the year he signed this letter. Lightly soiled. Otherwise, fine condition.