Important Civil War Ames M1850 presentation sword circa 1861
staff and field sword with ornate hilt adorned with US and 32-inch etched blade marked: Ames Mfg. Co., Chicopee, Mass.; within exceptional brass scabbard inscribed and presented to: COL. HENRY WILSON, 22ND REG. M.V., FROM THE INSPECTORS AT THE BOSTON CUSTOM HOUSE, SEPT. 27TH, 1861.

accompanied by collection of ephemera:
Parker, John L. HISTORY OF THE TWENTY-SECOND MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY. Boston: Regimental Assoc., 1887.
Russell, Thomas. THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICE OF HON. HENRY WILSON. Boston: Russell, 1872.
CDV- portrait of Henry Wilson by W. Snell.
Col. Henry Wilson portrait engraving by J.C. Buttre.
Henry Wilson cigar label and ring (framed as one)
Envelope and Wilson Regiment sharpshooter badge (framed as one)
Framed portraits PRESIDENT, NEW MEMBERS OF THE CABINET & OTHERS by O.D. Case & Co.
and framed assortment of Grant/Wilson campaign ephemera. (9pcs)

Provenance : Henry Wilson (1812-1875) was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, serving from 1855-73. Wilson was elected vice president of the United States on the Republican ticket with President Ulysses S. Grant and served from 1873 until his death. He was born Jeremiah Jones Colbath and had his name legally changed by the legislature to Henry Wilson in 1833. Wilson spent much of his career as an advocate for racial justice. He called for the elimination of segregated schools, the repeal of laws forbidding interracial marriage and militia service, and a civil rights law.

During the Civil War, Wilson served as the influential and responsible chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs and worked earnestly for emancipation measures. He joined other Radical Republicans to oppose President Andrew Johnson's program for bringing the seceded Southern states peaceably back into the Union at the expense of the newly freed Negroes. It was during this period that Wilson was presented this sword Wilson for this successful command of the 22nd regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in 1861. Wilson's services gained him the vice-presidential office when Ulysses S. Grant won the 1872 election.

Wilson prepared pedestrian but useful accounts of congressional debates and acts during the Civil War and Reconstruction crises. His most ambitious work was his three-volume History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872-1877), which reflected the simplistic but forthright viewpoint of the Northern workers and farmers. A sick man during his last several years, he was stricken with apoplexy in the Capitol and died in the Vice President's Room on Nov. 22, 1875.