A Civil War Proposal

Toward the end of the Civil War a Connecticut captain with the felicitous name of Valentine laid urgent siege to a lady’s heart. Lacking the time (or perhaps the money) to have his photograph taken for the cartes de visite then the rage, he substituted a sketch of himself—shown below mounted over a portion of the letter ill-treated by time. What happened to the marital hopes of the rest of the regiment, history fails to record, but Captain Valentine’s suit was in vain.