PBA Galleries

Partial Autograph Letter Signed, cut from a larger letter. 1 pp. With a printed General Order, May 1845, signed by Adjutant General Jones, annotated in pencil, “For Lt. Col. Hitchcock”.

To his brother, Samuel Hitchcock, Burlington, Vermont: “…Worth himself said that I had saved the Gov. $50,000 by my mode of getting in the Apalachicola Indians independent of the fact that I did get them in, but he had not the courage to say so in his report of the matter which he made in about half a dozen lines. This would excuse me for some bitterness if I could afford to suffer much under such a feeling but I am almost stupid enough not to feel it.” General Ethan Allen Hitchcock was one of the more literate officers of the US Army, his autobiographic diary of a half-century’s service in three wars being still considered a classic of military Americana. His first combat experience was in the Seminole War in Florida, where, over six years, he witnessed brutal and corrupt treatment of the Indians that filled him with disgust. Though his superior, General William Worth, took credit for ending that War peaceably, it was Hitchcock who engineered the diplomatic, bloodless denouement.