AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED 5 SEPTEMBER 1861, FROM WEALTHY PHILADELPHIA PHILANTHROPIST FISHER, TO FORMER RHODE ISLAND CONGRESSMAN ELISHA POTTER, AGREEING WITH FISHER'S OPPOSITION TO LINCOLN ADMINISTRATION POLICIES

Philadelphia, 1861. Octavo sheet, folded to [3], [1 blank] pp. With accompanying envelope addressed to Potter in Newport, Rhode Island, postage stamps and cancel. Folded for mailing, about Fine.

A Harvard graduate, Fisher was a writer, an incorporator and benefactor of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind. Wikipedia says that, "During the American Civil War, he sympathized with the Confederacy." Fisher reveals himself here as a cautious Union man, without hostility to Slavery, and with reservations about Lincoln's conduct of the War.
Fisher, like Potter, worries about "the terrible dangers they [i.e., Lincoln's (truncated) men] are exposing us to. "Fremont's premature Emancipation Proclamation in August 1861 "will I fear drive Kentucky into the Southern Confederacy. . . I must admit even with all the pity I feel for my friends at the South I do not regret the probable failure of their treason, but I cannot bear to think of their total destruction."
"Oh that we had such a man as Fillmore in the Presidential Chair and Holt Dix Banks & Crittenden in the Cabinet. We have to thank the Southern conspirators not only for the destruction of our Union but the transfer of Power to a set of Incapables."
Fremont, commanding Union forces in Missouri, had just issued a Proclamation putting the state under martial law, confiscating the property of secessionists, and declaring immediate emancipation of their slaves. Fisher would have preferred a more diplomatic "sequestration" of rebel property, while "reserving to future decisions by the Courts. . . or by Congress as to the liberation of the Slaves. (Inventory #: 40756)