Autograph Letter, signed (“Edward Everett”) as Secretary of State, to novelist John Pendleton Kennedy, then Secretary of the Navy

1852. 2 pp. pen-and-ink on folded sheet. 1 vols. 12mo. Fine. 2 pp. pen-and-ink on folded sheet. 1 vols. 12mo. Secretary of State Edward Everett writes to Secretary of the Navy John Pendleton Kennedy on Justice Lemuel Shaw’s behalf to recommend his son John Oakes Shaw for a position in the Navy. Oakes Shaw (as he was known) was the eldest son from his father's second marriage, to Hope Savage. He became the brother-in-law of Herman Meville when the author married Justice Shaw’s daughter, Elizabeth, from his first marriage. In fact Oakes had truly disgraced his family when in 1844 he married an “inopportunely preganant Caroline (Caro) Sarah Cobb.”
Reading in full, “Mr. John O. Shaw of Boston a son of Chief Justice [Lemuel] Shaw of Massachusetts is desirous of being appointed a pursor in the Navy. His father, equally respectable as a Magistrate & a citizen, desires me to speak a good word for him. I have no knowledge of the young man, but I am sure the Chief Justice would not recommend him, if he did not think him fully qualified for the place”. Parker, Herman Melville, Volume 1: 1819-1851, pp. 341-343 (Inventory #: 256467)