Nashville, Tennessee, August 31, 1864. One sheet, approximately 9 3/4 x 7 1/2 in. (248 x 190 mm). Manuscript letter in a secretarial hand, on State of Tennessee, Executive Department stationery, signed by Andrew Johnson, as Military Governor of Tennessee, to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Johnson requests that 1st Lieutenant Edward S. Richards be appointed Captain and Assistant Adjutant General for the state of Tennessee. Creasing from contemporary folds. In mat with a portrait of Johnson, and in frame, 17 x 21 1/2 in. (432 x 546 mm).

Edward S. Richards (1840-1906), was born in Ohio and educated at Urbana University. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was mustered as a private in Company A of the Ohio 6th Infantry, in May 1861. In April 1862 he accepted the position of Lieutenant in the 10th Tennessee Infantry. After being appointed Assistant Adjutant General he served on Johnson's staff in the Adjutant General's office until the end of the war. Following the war, Richards returned to Ohio, and later moved to Chicago to work with his brother in a grain commission house.