Biography of Henry Clay
E340.C6 P9
This copy George D. Prentice’s Biography of Henry Clay (Hartford:
Hanmer & Phelps, 1831) originally formed part of the library of Williamsburg
mayor and College of William and Mary president Robert M. Saunders, who lived
during the mid-19th century in the Robert Carter House on Williamsburg’s
Palace Green. The flyleaf bears the brown ink autograph of his father-in-law
John Page of Rosewell plantation, friend of Jefferson and early governor of
Virginia. [Read about Henry
Clay online.]
The later inscription by Union soldier H. M. Flanagin of Penns Grove, New Jersey
acknowledges that the book was taken on December 10, 1862. After the Confederate
defeat at the Battle of Williamsburg on May 5, 1862, the Saunders family evacuated
the old colonial capital. David Cronin, a Federal provost marshal in charge
of the town during its occupation, reminisced in his Evolution of a Life
about visiting the Carter House during this period. “I have never looked
upon a more deplorable picture of the ravages of war than when standing amid
the litter of half-destroyed books, papers and documents on the floor of the
Governor’s library . . . heavy-booted and spurred cavalrymen had played
football with everything of value.”
Civil
War
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