RARE \"Confederate General Albert Pike 1X2 Clipped Signature for Sale

On eBay Now...

RARE \"Confederate General Albert Pike 1X2 Clipped Signature For Sale

$RARE \$
When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

RARE \"Confederate General Albert Pike 1X2 Clipped Signature:
$4899.99

Up for sale a RARE! "Confederate General Albert Pike 1X2 Clipped Signature.

ES-227A

Albert Pike (December 29, 1809 – April 2, 1891) was an American author, poet, orator, editor, lawyer, jurist and Confederate general who served as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in exile from 1864 to 1865. He had previously served as a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, commanding the District of Indian Territory in the Trans-Mississippi Theater. A prominent member of the Freemasons, Pike served as the Sovereign Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Scottish Rite (Southern Jurisdiction, USA) from 1859 to 1889. Albert Pike was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 29, 1809, the son of Benjamin and Sarah (Andrews) Pike, and spent his childhood in Byfield and Newburyport, Massachusetts. His colonial ancestors settled the area in 1635, and included John Pike (1613–1688/1689), the founder of Woodbridge, New Jersey. He attended school in Newburyport and Framingham until he was 15. In August 1825, he passed entrance exams at Harvard University, though when the college requested payment of tuition fees for the first two years, he chose not to attend. He began a program of self-education, later becoming a schoolteacher in Gloucester, North Bedford, Fairhaven and Newburyport. Pike was an imposing figure; 6 feet (1.83 m) tall and 300 pounds (140 kg) with hair that reached his shoulders and a long beard. In 1831, he left Massachusetts to travel west, first stopping in Nashville, Tennessee, and later moving to St. Louis, Missouri. There he joined a hunting and trading expedition to Taos, New Mexico. En route his horse broke and ran, forcing Pike to walk the remaining 500 miles (800 km) to Taos. After this, he joined a trapping expedition to the Llano Estacado in New Mexico and Texas. Trapping was minimal and, after traveling about 1,300 miles (2,100 km), half of it on foot, he finally arrived at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Settling in Arkansas in 1833, Pike taught in a school and wrote a series of articles for the Little Rock Arkansas Advocate under the pen name of "Casca." The articles were sufficiently well received for him to be asked to join the newspaper's staff. Under Pike's administration, the Advocate promoted the viewpoint of the Whig Party in a politically volatile and divided Arkansas in December 1832. After marrying Mary Ann Hamilton in 1834, he purchased the newspaper. He was the first reporter for the Arkansas Supreme Court. He wrote a book (published anonymously), titled The Arkansas Form Book, which was a guidebook for lawyers. Pike began to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1837, selling the Advocate the same year. He proved to be a highly effective lawyer, representing clients in courts at every level, which continued after he received permission to practice before the United States Supreme Court in 1849. He also made several contacts among the Native American tribes in the area. He specialized in claims on behalf of Native Americans against the federal government. In 1852, he represented Creek Nation before the Supreme Court in a claim regarding ceded tribal land. In 1854 he advocated for the Choctaw and Chickasaw, although compensation later awarded to the tribes in 1856 and 1857 was insufficient. These relationships were to influence the course of his Civil War service. He also began a campaign of newspaper essays urging support for the construction of a transcontinental railroad extending from New Orleans to the Pacific coast, moving to New Orleans in 1853 and preparing to pass the state bar in furtherance of his campaign, and was ultimately able to secure a charter from the Louisiana State Legislature for a project, following which he returned to Little Rock in 1857. He joined the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party at its founding, and, in the summer of 1854, helped introduce the party in Arkansas. He attended the national convention in 1856, but walked out when it failed to adopt a pro-slavery platform. In the lead-up to the Civil War, Pike signed a pamphlet which proposed expelling all free African Americans from Arkansas. It said that the "evil is the existence among us of a class of free colored persons". Additionally, Pike wrote on several legal subjects. He also continued writing poetry, a hobby he had begun in his youth in Massachusetts. His poems were highly regarded in his day, but are now mostly forgotten. Several volumes of his works were privately published posthumously by his daughter. In 1859, he received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Harvard.