December 10-13, 2024 Firearms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/10/2024
An extremely rare, wartime ALS by Colonel Christopher Greene, written from Providence on 22 SEP 1780 and addressed to Major Simeon Perkins, 1 page, docketed on verso. Greene was commander of the famous Rhode Island Regiment, composed largely of African-Americans, and was refitting for the forthcoming campaign season. In this note, Greene asks Perkins "to deliver Six hundred Brushes and priming wires...for the [muskets of the] Troops of my Regt." The letter was subsequently used as a receipt, in which the sergeant dispatched by Greene, Amaziah Weatherhead, signs for "The Within Two hundred & Nine Brushes & Priming Wires" (gun tools always being in short supply in the Continental Army). Greene (1737-1781) had directed the spirited defense of Fort Mercer in the 1777 Battle of Red Bank and also distinguished himself as a temporary brigade commander during the 1778 Battle of Rhode Island. Congress voted to award him with a sword of honor for his valor in the earlier engagement, which was posthumously received by his family in 1786, he having been killed in a surprise attack on his headquarters by "Delancey's Cowboys" (a corps of Loyalist irregulars) at Pine's Bridge, Westchester County, New York on 14 MAY 1781. Greene, his major, and six black soldiers from his regiment were killed and another two mortally wounded in the brutal action. One account stated that Greene's "body was found in the woods, about a mile distant from his tent, cut, and mangled in the most shocking way." The regiment would avenge their deaths in subsequent actions, included the taking of Redoubt No. 10 during the Siege of Yorktown later that year, in which the Rhode Island light infantry company distinguished themselves.