Seth Kaller, Inc.

Summary:

This mourning broadside features a bust portrait of Lincoln with quotes from the martyred president on the Declaration of Independence, extracted from 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates, his second inaugural address (“With malice toward none, with charity for all…let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds”), and his favorite poem.

[Abraham Lincoln.] Broadside. Ca 1865. Published by Clark & Thayer of Boston and printed by E.F. Rollins, Boston, Mass. 13.25” x 17.”

Inventory# 20973 $2,500

Transcript:

“These communities, (the thirteen colonies,) by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the world of men, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are born equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Yes, gentleman, to all His creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the race of men then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the furthest posterity. They created a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesman as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established those great self-evident truths that when, in the distant future, some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence, and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth, and justice and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.
Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let me entreat you to come back – return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me, take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.
You may do anything with me you choose, if you will but heed those sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity – the Declaration of American Independence.”

Historical Background:

“He being dead yet speaketh” Hebrews 11:4

This mourning broadside was published as an homage to the first martyred president, and encapsulated ideas and words that were to become Lincoln’s legacy. The country was in shock after April 14, 1865 and as Lincoln’s body traveled by train to Springfield, Illinois to be buried, thousands of mourners paid their respects, and many collected items and broadsides that were disseminated to pay tribute to the fallen president.

The top half of the document includes Lincoln’s “Tribute to the Declaration of Independence” excerpted from one of his seven famous debates with Senator Stephen Douglas. Lincoln lost the election, but the debates catapulted him into the national consciousness. The prominence he gained is credited for leading to his later election as President.

Two other speeches are featured in the broadside. His “speech in Philadelphia” refers to Lincoln’s address in Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, February 22, 1861. Here again, he invokes the Declaration of Independence and praises the concept of liberty. In this speech he makes the eerily portentous statement; “But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.”

The words excerpted here from Lincoln’s second inaugural address were barely a month old, and soon became an admonition for the ages. His words of forgiveness were oft-repeated to remind a mourning, yet divided and angry nation of the need for reconciliation. “With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds.”

The document ends with Lincoln’s “favorite poem,” entitled “Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” also known as “Mortality.” Despite a lack of formal education, Lincoln was a known lover of poetry; he was an avid reader and composer of poems. He would correspond with friends about poetry, often including poems of his own. This poem was significant to Lincoln for many reasons. It represented a melancholy so perennially present in his life, and indeed, it offered up a mystery. In a letter he wrote to Andrew Johnston, a lawyer in Quincy, Illinois, Lincoln declares; "I would give all I am worth, and go into debt, to be able to write so fine a piece as I think that is. Neither do I know who is the author.