Inscription and Signature / Unsigned Portrait. This item is unavailable.Inscription and Signature / Unsigned Portrait

The postmaster general under Lincoln also served as Dred Scott's counsel before the Supreme Court in 1857. Bold "Yrs truly / M Blair" on a 3" X 1½" slip clipped from a letter, n.p., n.y. Very good. Small mounting trace on verso. Clean and nice, and strangely enough the few words on the verso in Blair's hand read: "for Caleb B. Smi[th] / Secy Int[erior]." Accompanied by an 8" X 5 3/4" sepia tone photogravure book illustration reproduction (1895) of Francis B. Carpenter's famed 1864 painting, "The first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the cabinet." Blair stands second from right in this well-known image, between a seated Secretary of State William B. Seward and a seated Attorney General Edward Bates. Fine.