JAMES
MONROE. Partly
Printed Document Signed as President, Washington, DC, 11 July 1818.
Countersigned by JOHN C. CALHOUN as Secretary
of War. 1 page, 7¾” x 12”, on vellum.
An uncommon
naval appointment signed by James Monroe, the Virginia statesman who
had served in Congress, as a diplomat, as Governor of Virginia, and
in the Cabinet before his election to the Presidency. Here he names
Griffen Tompkins a midshipman in the U.S. Navy. The President has signed
at the lower right, “James Monroe.”
Curiously,
the document is countersigned at the lower left by John C. Calhoun (“J.
C. Calhoun”), the South Carolina champion of states' rights.
At this date, Calhoun was the Secretary of War, and Benjamin Crowninshield
was the Secretary of the Navy in Monroe’s Cabinet. Ordinarily,
Crowninshield would be the official who would countersign a midshipman’s
warrant; it may be that he was out of town when this document was signed
and Calhoun therefore signed in his stead.
The document
has a Navy Department seal embossed in the upper left corner. The piece
is clean but has some slight wrinkling and a few small holes which do
not affect any text. Monroe’s signature is dark and clear; Calhoun’s
is light as the ink did not adhere well to the vellum.
The combination
of Monroe and Calhoun on a Presidential document is quite scarce. $1200.00
This
vellum document has a uniform background color;
the dark areas at the margins in this illustration are just shadows
in the photograph.
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