Details:

John Davis Long autographed typed letter (TLS) sent to Francis M. Bunce dated Jany. 12, 1899. The letter is additionally signed by Bunce.

Fine condition.

John Davis Long (October 27, 1838 – August 28, 1915) was an American lawyer, politician, and writer from Massachusetts. He was the 32nd governor of Massachusetts, serving from 1880 to 1883. He later served as the Secretary of the Navy from 1897 to 1902, a period that included the primarily naval Spanish–American War.

Francis Marvin Bunce (1836-1901) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1857. He was promoted to lieutenant by the beginning of the Civil War and participated in the Union blockade of the Confederacy as part of the Gulf Squadron and then served as executive officer of the gunboat USS Penobscot during the siege of Yorktown in the Peninsula Campaign. He later supported the attack on Morris Island and Fort Wagner outside Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. In 1863, he participated in the siege of Charleston aboard the monitor USS Patapsco. He later served on or commanded several other monitors for the remainder of the war. After the war, he commanded the monitor USS Monadnock in its voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco, the first extended ocean voyage by a monitor. Over the next three decades, he alternated land and sea duty and gained promotion to captain (1883), commodore (1894), and acting rear admiral (1895), when he took command of the North Atlantic Squadron. He favored training ships to act as a squadron rather than individually and the outbreak of the Cuban War of Independence heightened tensions with Spain. In 1897, he took command of the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn, from which he sent the battleship USS Maine to Key West, Florida, from which it was deployed to Havana, where its explosion triggered the Spanish-American War. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1898 and retired from the Navy at the statutory retirement age of 62 on December 25, 1898.

Authentication:
Includes a full letter of authenticity from JG Autographs, Inc.

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Reference sku: 11285 1393878-1