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A Card! It is due to the citizens of Newburgh that I should make a full and sincere acknowledgment of the errors I have committed in reference to our present National difficulties…
Newburgh, New York, 29 June 1861. Broadside, 12.5” x 11.75”. CONDITION: Good, numerous document tape repairs and reinforcements at verso to separations along old folds, two small losses at center, with loss of letter “e” in “entered.” A remarkable and apparently unrecorded broadside published by William Foster Dodge, a native of Newburgh, New York, upon his return to his hometown, publicly apologizing for his disloyalty to the Union while in business in Charleston, South Carolina. Evidently having encountered significant hostility as he attempted to re-establish himself in town, Dodge lays his case frankly before the public: It is true, as I have been charged, that, at one time, I forgot my allegiance to my country, and entered the service of its enemies. I did aid and abet the rabble of Charleston in their efforts to Humble the National Flag, and slay its defenders. But I now publicly and humbly beg the citizens of my native place to forgive the great office I have been guilty of, and permit me unmolested to redeem my name, and atone for my crime, by a life of repentance. Dodge’s attempt to recover his standing in the community is signed in type by eleven citizens of Newburgh bearing witness to his character and the authenticity of his repentance. Among those listed are a future postmaster of Newburgh (Ezra Farrington), an early librarian in the town (William N. Reid), a lawyer and later a respected cross-examiner (William Fullerton), and two businessmen: store-owner Isaac Wood, Jr. and china, glass, and earthenware dealer James E. Horton. An ink inscription on the verso is evidence of the broadside’s subsequent role in negotiating Dodge’s place in northern society: “The within named Dodge was dismissed[?] p[?] by me[?] from the Regt, and the Adjt Genl Mann[?] U.S.A. told me that if he applied to him, he should [?] him.” William Foster Dodge was born in Newburgh, New York in 1820 and as a young man made his career in Charleston, South Carolina, where by 1860 he operated “Dodge’s Machinery Agency.” His offices were directly below Institute Hall (also called Secession Hall), where the ordinance of secession was ratified, and during the first (deadlocked) Democratic National Convention of 1860, Dodge “partitioned off a portion of his store,” providing gas lights, desks, writing materials, and the latest newspapers to any members of the press covering the event (“Mr. Wm. F. Dodge”). He afterwards maintained a register by which visiting reporters might connect with their colleagues. Evidently a friend to the “transmission of intelligence” in general, Dodge called for a “Convention of Southern Inventors” to be held about the same time (“Members of the Press”; “Convention”). On April 12th the following year—the same day as the Battle of Fort Sumter and the official start of the Civil War—we find Dodge advertising his “Machinery Agency and Inventors’ Exchange Patent Office Department…for securing Patents in the Confederate States of America” (“Dodge’s Machinery Agency”). Within a month and a half, however, Dodge had returned home, driven perhaps by his own change of heart or by the erosion of public trust in this “very clever gentleman,” derisively dubbed in one paper the “cutest [i.e., slyest] Yankee” (“William F. Dodge, Charleston”; “Convention”). Four months after the publication of this broadside, Dodge enlisted in the 66th Infantry Regiment (nicknamed the Governor’s Guard and the Mechanic Rifles), and was commissioned into Company F. The regiment was “present during the latter part of the siege of Yorktown; was active at Fair Oaks and during the Seven Days' battles, but suffered its most severe loss at Antietam, where 103 were killed, wounded or captured” (“66th”). The 66th also saw action at the Battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Dodge was appointed adjutant in December of 1862, and was discharged in 1864. He later removed to Newark, New Jersey, where he died in 1879. No holdings recorded in OCLC, nor do Google searches yield any examples. A rare broadside published just a month and a half into the Civil War, demonstrating the distrust that strained interpersonal relationships and communities with ties to the South. REFERENCES: “Mr. Wm. F. Dodge,” The Charleston Mercury, April 23, 1860, p. 2; “Members of the Press,” The Charleston Daily Courier, May 10, 1860, p. 1; “Convention of Southern Inventors,” The Times (Greensboro, N.C.), April 21, 1860, p. 6; “Dodge’s Machinery Agency,” The Charleston Daily Courier, April 12, 1861, p. 3; “William F. Dodge, Charleston,” The Charleston Daily Courier, May 28, 1860, p. 1; “66th Infantry Regiment” at New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center online; Headley, Russel. The History of Orange County New York (Middletown, NY, 1909).
Item #10381
Price: $2,500.00
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