Exceedingly rare DS as president, one page, 9.75 x 16.25, no date [1869-1877]. An unclipped and unissued ship’s pass signed neatly at the conclusion by President U.S. Grant and countersigned by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. The embossed white seal remains affixed to the lower left corner. In fine condition, with a small chip to the left edge, and an old mounting strip along the back of the upper left edge.
This unusual ship’s pass presents as quite the anomaly. While its unissued nature is not overly uncommon — these documents were often left blank and signed in advance before being sent out to American ports, where they were filled out as needed — the document features a few curious characteristics: the material is paper and not vellum; the upper portion, with a waved ‘trace line’ cutting through the vignette’s sails, is unclipped, and not of the more commonly seen ‘scallop-topped’ variety; and the date of the document, being a post-Civil War example, is very atypical, as no other similar ‘ship’s pass’ in our database dates to later than the early 1850s. A truly unique presidential keepsake.
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