ADS, one page, both sides, 5.5 x 10.75, June 17, 1852. A handwritten directive from Winfield Scott on the reverse of a partly printed bill of lading, which attests that the “good Ship called the Niagara whereof is Master for this present voyage J. B. Haynes…now riding at Anchor in the Port of Leghorn and bound for New York” contains “One Case cont’g a marble bust measuring cube ft 13.6.” Scott pens instructions for delivery of the bust on the reverse: “Deliver the within mentioned marble must [bust] of myself, by Mr. Ives, a native of New York, now temporarily at work as a sculptor in Rome & Florence – to the order of Major Thomas Williams, U. S. Army, who will pay all charges &c.” The lower portion is annotated and signed by the reference Williams, dated Fort Mackinac, Michigan, June 28, 1852, in full: “Please deliver the marble-bust to Sidney Brooks, Esqr, N. York.” Williams was a career army officer who fought in the Mexican War and who served for some years as aide-de-camp to Scott. As a Union general in the Civil War, he fought in North Carolina and then along the Mississippi and was killed in action in August 1862 in Baton Rouge. In fine condition, with writing showing through from opposing sides.
The date of Scott's directive is noteworthy as he was on the verge of being selected as the Whig candidate for President. The Whigs opened their convention in Baltimore on June 17th, the very day that Scott penned this document, and three days later they would choose him as their nominee for the 1852 Presidential race.
This document relates to the bust of Scott that was carved by Chauncey B. Ives (1810-1894) about 1851. An American neoclassical sculptor, Ives first worked in New Haven, Boston, and New York, producing many portrait busts, but in 1844, he went to Italy for his health. He spent the rest of his career there, continuing to make portrait busts of visiting Americans, but also putting into marble plaster busts that he had modeled at home. It is likely that the bust of Scott discussed here fell into this latter category.
