CSA 1, 5¢ green tied indistinct CDS on small narrow commercially made cover to Wm Harper Whitehead Care of Col. R. W. Johnston Sparta Ga., opening tear along right edge. $95.

Richard Malcolm Johnston was an educator and author born in Powelton, Georgia. After finishing studies at Mercer university, he studied law and was admitted to the Georgia bar. In 1857, he accepted an invitation to teach at the University of Georgia where he remained until the opening of the Civil War. At that time, he began a school for boys on his farm near Sparta. He managed to keep the school going while helping to organize troops for the state militia. At the close of the war, he moved to Maryland where he opened the Penn Lucy School for Boys. One of his teachers was Sidney Lanier, regarded as the poet laureate of the South. Lanier encouraged Johnston to become a serious writer. Among other works, he wrote a biography of Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, with whom he had once practiced law.