WILLIAM H. SEWARD.  LETTER SIGNED as President Lincoln's Secretary of State  (Washington, DC, Feb. 20, 1862) To Baron Frederick von Egloffstein, commander of a New York Civil War regiment. 1pg.9.5 x 7.5"  Includes envelope addressed to the Baron signed by State Department Chief Clerk and Assistant Secretary of State William Hunter. (Some folds and creases, signature bit smudged dur to the shaky handwriting of Seward who was often in ill health. Very Good overall.)

Baron von Egloffstein was a Colonel in the Union Army, founding and commanding the 103rd New York Volunteer Infantry, called the "Seward Infantry" in honor of the former Governor of New York who had joined  Lincoln's cabinet as his chief diplomat.  Von Egloffstein, a Bavarian noble who had emigrated to the US as a young man, was also notable as a soldier, explorer, mapmaker, landscape artist and inventive engraver. As topographer for the last Western expedition of Colonel Fremont, he suffered near starvation in the mountains while producing maps and panoramas of Utah, Wyoming, Nevada and California, and later, the first detailed description and drawings of the Grand Canyon. At the start of the Civil War, he led his regiment in combat until suffering serious wounds - though he would outlive Seward, who would die three years after he was attacked during the Lincoln assassination.