Seaton, William Wintson, editor of the Republican

William Winston Seaton (1785-1866) journalist, Mayor of Washington D.C., and Lincoln advisor, and Abraham W. Venable (1799-1876) U.S. Congressman and Confederate Congressman from North Carolina. The document is a deposition of Venable in a legal case being heard at Frankfort, Kentucky between Sarah Harris and Abijah Northle, et. al. Venable states that he is a U.S. Congressman from North Carolina, has known Richard H. Mosby of North Carolina for years, and that Mosby is a man of truth and character. The names James Lyon and Robert Nicholas are also mentioned. Given the handwriting, Venable appears to have written a great portion of the first part of the document. Seaton indicates that the deposition was taken in the Library Room of the Capitol. Seaton was raised in Virginia. His mother was a cousin of Patrick Henry. When 18, he became assistant editor of a Richmond paper. He next edited the Petersburg "Republican," but soon purchased the "North Carolina Journal," published at Halifax, N.C., then the capital of N.C. When Raleigh became the capital, he worked with the " Register," edited by Joseph Gales, Sr., whose daughter he married. In 1812 he moved to Washington D.C. and joined the " National Intelligencer," in company with his brother-in-law, Joseph Gales, Jr.. Their partnership lasted until Gale died in 1860. From 1812-20 Seaton and Gales were the exclusive congressional reporters as well as editors of their journal. Their reportings foreshadowed what is today known as the Congressional Record. The Intelligencer was Anti-British, and when the Capital was burned by Admiral Cockburn and his British rabble, Cockburn was especially ired at the Intelligencer and personally helped carry the printing material and library out into the street where it was destroyed. Both Seaton and Gales served as Mayors of Washington D.C. Seaton served as mayor from 1840-52. During his period as mayor, Abraham Lincoln served in the Congress. Lincoln consulted Seaton when he sought to introduce a compromise bill in the House regarding slavery in the District of Columbia that would placate conflicting antislavery and proslavery members of the Whig party. He had Seaton's support. When news leaked out oppossition from all sides broke out and Seaton withdrew his support. The bill was never introduced. Abraham Venable was the nephew of Abraham Bedford Venable, a U.S. Senator. He was born in Virginia, graduated from Hampden-Sidney College in 1816 and studied medicine. He graduated from Princeton College in 1819; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1821 and commenced practice in Prince Edward and Mecklenburg Counties, Va. He moved to North Carolina in 1829 and served as a U.S. Congressman from 1847-53. Later, he was a presidential elector on the Breckinridge and Lane ticket in 1860. He was a delegate from N.C. to the Provisional Confederate Congress in 1861 and was a Confederate Congressman from 1862-64. The document is also docketed and signed by John H. Hann, clerk of the U.S. Court in Kentucky form 1807-51.

Alexander Campbell

Thomas Campbell (July 27, 1777 - June 15, 1844) was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing specially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. In 1799, he wrote 'The Pleasures of Hope' a traditional 18th century survey in heroic couplets. He also produced several stirring patriotic war songs- Ye Mariners of England, The Soldier's Dream, Hohenlinden and in 1801, The Battle of Baltic.A rare 1837 full leather copy of The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, including Theodric, and many other poems not contained in any former edition. Published in Philadelphia by J. Crissy, 1837. Bound in full leather with gilt titles, a marbled page block, 182 pages, plus 38 pages of notes. 7 and a half by 4 and a half inches, with marbled endpapers.Born in Glasgow, Thomas Campbell was the youngest son of Alexander Campbell, of the Campbells of Kirnan, Argyll. His father belonged to a Glasgow firm trading in Petersburg, Virginia, and lost his money in consequence of the American Revolutionary War. Campbell, who was educated at the Glasgow High School and University of Glasgow, won prizes for classics and for verse-writing. He spent the holidays as a tutor in the western Highlands. His poem Glenara and the ballad of Lord Ullin's Daughter owe their origin to a visit to Mull. In May 1797 he went to Edinburgh to attend lectures on law. He supported himself by private teaching and by writing, towards which he was helped by Dr. Robert Anderson, the editor of the British Poets. Among his contemporaries in Edinburgh were Sir Walter Scott, Henry Brougham, Francis Jeffrey, Dr. Thomas Brown, John Leyden and James Grahame. These early days in Edinburgh influenced such works as The Wounded Hussar, The Dirge of Wallace and the Epistle to Three Ladies.In 1799, six months after the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, The Pleasures of Hope was published. It is a rhetorical and didactic poem in the taste of his time, and owed much to the fact that it dealt with topics near to men's hearts, with the French Revolution, the partition of Poland and with negro slavery. Its success was instantaneous, but Campbell was deficient in energy and perseverance and did not follow it up. He went abroad in June 1800 without any very definite aim, visited Gottlieb Friedrich Klopstock at Hamburg, and made his way to Regensburg, which was taken by the French three days after his arrival. He found refuge in a Scottish monastery. Some of his best lyrics, Hohenlinden, Ye Mariners of England and The Soldier's Dream, belong to his German tour. He spent the winter in Altona, where he met an Irish exile, Anthony McCann, whose history suggested The Exile of Erin.He had at that time the intention of writing an epic on Edinburgh to be entitled The Queen of the North. On the outbreak of war between Denmark and England he hurried home, the Battle of the Baltic being drafted soon after. At Edinburgh he was introduced to the first Lord Minto, who took him in the next year to London as occasional secretary. In June 1803 appeared a new edition of the Pleasures of Hope, to which some lyrics were added.In 1803 Campbell married his second cousin, Matilda Sinclair, and settled in London. He was well received in Whig society, especially at Holland House. His prospects, however, were slight when in 1805 he received a government pension of £200. In that year the Campbells removed to Sydenham. Campbell was at this time regularly employed on the Star newspaper, for which he translated the foreign news. In 1809 he published a narrative poem in the Spenserian stanza, Gertrude of Wyoming -- referring to the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania and the Wyoming Valley Massacre -- with which were printed some of his best lyrics. He was slow and fastidious in composition, and the poem suffered from overelaboration. Francis Jeffrey wrote to the author:"Your timidity or fastidiousness, or some other knavish quality, will not let you give your conceptions glowing, and bold, and powerful, as they present themselves; but you must chasten, and refine, and soften them, forsooth, till half their nature and grandeur is chiselled away from them. Believe me, the world will never know how truly you are a great and original poet till you venture to cast before it some of the rough pearls of your fancy."In 1812 he delivered a series of lectures on poetry in London at the Royal Institution; and he was urged by Sir Walter Scott to become a candidate for the chair of literature at Edinburgh University. In 1814 he went to Paris, making there the acquaintance of the elder Schlegel, of Baron Cuvier and others. His pecuniary anxieties were relieved in 1815 by a legacy of £4000. He continued to occupy himself with his Specimens of the British Poets, the design of which had been projected years before. The work was published in 1819. It contains on the whole an admirable selection with short lives of the poets, and prefixed to it an essay on poetry containing much valuable criticism. In 1820 he accepted the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine, and in the same year made another tour in Germany.Four years later appeared his Theodric, a not very successful poem of domestic life. He took an active share in the foundation of the University of London, visiting Berlin to inquire into the German system of education, and making recommendations which were adopted by Lord Brougham. He was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University (1826-1829) in competition against Sir Walter Scott. Campbell retired from the editorship of the New Monthly Magazine in 1830, and a year later made an unsuccessful venture with The Metropolitan Magazine. He had championed the cause of the Poles in The Pleasures of Hope, and the news of the capture of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831 affected him as if it had been the deepest of personal calamities. "Poland preys on my heart night and day," he wrote in one of his letters, and his sympathy found a practical expression in the foundation in London of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland. In 1834 he travelled to Paris and Algiers, where he wrote his Letters from the South (printed 1837). The small production of Campbell may be partly explained by his domestic calamities. His wife died in 1828. Of his two sons, one died in infancy and the other became insane. His own health suffered, and he gradually withdrew from public life. He died at Boulogne in 1844 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.Campbell's other works include a Life of Mrs Siddons (1842), and a narrative poem, The Pilgrim of Glencoe (1842). See The Life and Letters of Thomas Campbell (3 vols., 1849), edited by William Beattie, M.D.; Literary Reminiscences and Memoirs of Thomas Campbell (1860), by Cyrus Redding; The Complete Poetical Works Of Thomas Campbell (1869); The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell (1875), in the Aldine Edition of the British Poets, edited by the Rev. V. Alfred Hill, with a sketch of the poet's life by William Allingham; and the Oxford Edition of the Complete Works of Thomas Campbell (1908), edited by J. Logie Robertson. See also Thomas Campbell in the Unfamous Scots Series, by J.C. Madden, and a selection by Lewis Campbell (1904) for the Golden Treasury Series.

Walden, J. W. -- Image

Tintype of an African American with the photographer's back mark.

“J.W. WALDEN, PHOTOGRAPHER, PETERSBURG, VA.”
Size approximately 3 1/4 x 2 inches.

Offered on Ebay Sept. 2009

Ducey, John -- Stoneware/potter

1869 Invoice Signed by Petersburg Crock Maker John Ducey