CSA 2-P, 10¢ blue Paterson print (4 margins) tied RICEBORO Ga. CDS on fresh cover with ms. date Dec 3 (1862) and “Official Business” at upper left; addressed to Col. James Chestnut, Jr., Chief of Dept. of the Military, Columbia, South Carolina. Ex David Burton. $550.

James Chestnut, Jr. (1815-1885) was a prominent lawyer, South Carolina politician, and ultimately Brigadier General in the Confederate Army. As an aide to Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, he ordered the firing on Fort Sumter and served at First Manassas. Later, he was aide to President Jefferson Davis. After the war, he played a prominent part in the Reconstruction politics of S.C.  His wife, Mary Boykin Chestnut, wrote the revealing and informative Diary from Dixie, an extremely important primer of wartime life in Richmond and the plantation South.