Collection of Three General Orders

Washington, DC: War Department, Adjutant General's Office, 1862. Handbills. 12mo. Very good to near fine. One is 4-punched at left edge (not affecting text). Unusual gathering of three Wisconsin-related "General Orders" issued in 1862, 1863 and 1864, all issued from the Adjutant General's Office at the War Department in Washington, DC, as follows: General Orders, No. 217 (30 December 1862), 1p, Notes three miscellaneous actions for three individual servicemen, the last of which involves 2d Lieutenant Samuel B. Morse of the 7th Wisconsin Volunteers, who resigned before the order dismissing him. General Orders, No. 11 (10 January 1863), 1p, dismissing Colonel R.C. Murphy of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteers from the Army "for allowing his command to be surprised at Holly Springs, Mississippi, without having taken proper steps to protect his post, or repulse the enemy, and his troops having been found in bed at the time of attack." General Orders, No. 211 (15 June 1864), 1p, text of a Congressional resolution "tendering the thanks of Congress to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey, of the 4th Regiment of Wisconsin Volunteers... for distinguished services in the recent campaign on the Red River, by which the gunboat flotilla under Rear Admiral David D. Porter was rescued from imminent peril." General Orders were usually made in modest quantities for distribution to the various army commands, where the company clerks would collect them (hence the occasional file holes). A great many were destroyed during the course of the war, and original examples of most survive in surprisingly few copies.