The Property of
PURCHASE COLLEGE FOUNDATION*
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President. Autograph manuscript, THE PERORATION OR CONCLUDING PORTION OF A SPEECH, prepared during the 1858 campaign for the Senate against Stephen A. Douglas which culminated in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, one word corrected and two words inserted by Lincoln, n.p., n.d. [Springfield, Illinois, c. July 1858?]. 1 1/4 pages, folio, 320 x 204mm. (12 5/8 x 8 7/16 in.), 37 lines (167 words) written in dark brown ink on rectos only of two sheets of heavy wove paper (no watermark), left-hand margins of each sheet with three printed rules (one blue flanked by two red), almost imperceptible soiling at left-hand portion (perhaps where it was held during the speech by the speaker?), otherwise in very fine condition. Dark blue crushed levant morocco protective case, cover with gilt roll-tooled borders, upper cover lettered in gold "Notes on Abolition Abraham Lincoln."
Details
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President. Autograph manuscript, THE PERORATION OR CONCLUDING PORTION OF A SPEECH, prepared during the 1858 campaign for the Senate against Stephen A. Douglas which culminated in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, one word corrected and two words inserted by Lincoln, n.p., n.d. [Springfield, Illinois, c. July 1858?]. 1 1/4 pages, folio, 320 x 204mm. (12 5/8 x 8 7/16 in.), 37 lines (167 words) written in dark brown ink on rectos only of two sheets of heavy wove paper (no watermark), left-hand margins of each sheet with three printed rules (one blue flanked by two red), almost imperceptible soiling at left-hand portion (perhaps where it was held during the speech by the speaker?), otherwise in very fine condition. Dark blue crushed levant morocco protective case, cover with gilt roll-tooled borders, upper cover lettered in gold "Notes on Abolition Abraham Lincoln."
"IN THE REPUBLICAN CAUSE THERE IS A HIGHER AIM THAN THAT OF MERE OFFICE...THE HIGHER OBJECT OF THIS CONTEST MAY NOT BE COMPLETELY ATTAINED WITHIN THE TERM OF MY NATURAL LIFE": LINCOLN'S PERORATION FROM A SPEECH, PREDICTING A "GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION": THE ABOLITION OF THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY
A remarkable manuscript, once part of the Lincoln papers, which dates from a pivotal period during the political ascension of Abraham Lincoln. Previously described as a fragment, it is complete in itself and may be identified by its oratorical tone and pacing, textual parallels with other addresses and by its physical arrangement on the paper as the peroration, or rhetorical summation, from an unidentified speech. (Only one other Lincoln peroration from this, the Lincoln-Douglas contest, is extant in manuscript form: that of Lincoln's 30 October 1858 address, also a two-page fragment; see Collected Works, ed. R.P. Basler, 3:334). Robert Todd Lincoln's testimony (see Provenance below) that his father wrote this manuscript in 1858 is persuasive; the editors of Lincoln's work date it, more precisely, about July 1858. That places the present manuscript in a crucial period when Lincoln was actively preparing for his famous contest with Stephen A. Douglas for one of two Illinois Senate seats. This strenuous oratorical duel between two superb stump speakers constituted "Lincoln's most important political speaking, without which he probably never would have become president" (Waldo W. Braden, Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker, 1988, p. 19). The profound historical implications of the Lincoln-Douglas clash, which attracted national attention, need no elaboration here. Although in the end Lincoln failed by a narrow margin to unseat the incumbent Douglas, his resolute forensic attack on the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which permitted the expansion of slavery into the territories), his ringing moral indictment of the institution of slavery and his impassioned oratory catapulted him to national prominence. As one historian has written: "In retrospect, the tall form of Lincoln dominates the scene...The momentum gathered in their contest...carried both Lincoln and Douglas to the threshold of the White House, but only one could enter" (Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s, 1962, pp. 96, 120).
Lincoln writes: "I have never professed an indifference to the honors of official station; and were I to do so now, I should only make myself ridiculous. Yet I have never failed -- do not now fail -- to remember that in the republican cause there is a higher aim than that of mere office. I have not allowed myself to forget that the abolition of the Slave-trade by Great Brittain [sic], was agitated a hundred years before it was a final success; that the measure had its open fire-eating opponents; its stealthy 'don't care' opponents; its dollar and cents opponents; its inferior race opponents; its negro equality opponents; and its religion and good order opponents; that all these got offices, and their adversaries got none. But I have also remembered that though they blazed, like tallow-candles for a century, at last they flickered in the socket, died out, stank in the dark for a brief season, and were remembered no more, even by the smell. School-boys know that Wilb[e]rforce, and Granville Sharpe [sic] helped that cause forward; but who can now name a single man who labored to retard it? I can not but regard it as possible that the higher object of this contest may not be completely attained within the term of my natural life. But I can not doubt either that it will come in due time. Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see."
Lincoln had accepted the Republican party nomination on 16 June 1858 with the "House Divided" address; his seven formal debates with the "Little Giant" took place between 21 August and 15 October and he delivered his last speech of the campaign on 30 October. During the campaign -- now better known than most presidential races -- it is estimated that Lincoln covered over 4,000 miles by rail, boat and carriage and spoke in 39 different counties (Braden, pp. 22-23). By his own tally, he made over 60 speeches and addresses, many two or three hours in length. These oratorical efforts ranged from extemporaneous remarks to carefully prepared full-scale addresses which Lincoln is known to have written out in their entirety. He appears to have lavished particular care on the peroration or ending of his speeches, and may have been content to deliver much of a given address extemporaneously or from sketchy notes and then conclude with a carefully prepared climax like the present.
It is striking how very little manuscript material survives to document this great creative outpouring. We possess not a single complete speech in manuscript and only a dozen or so fragments -- most of a single page, some of a few lines only -- are known to survive (see Basler 2:547; 3:97, 101, 205, 325, 334). All but one or two of these are in permanent institutional collections, and the present is likely to be one of the last such manuscripts to be offered for sale. The last two Lincoln speech fragments to appear at auction were a leaf related to the "House Divided" address (sale, Sotheby's New York, 16 December 1992, lot 195, $1,400,000, now in the Gilder-Lehrman deposit at The Pierpont Morgan Library) and a "Fragment on Slavery" leaf from an unidentified speech, c. 1857-59 (sale, Sotheby's New York, 21 May 1992, $900,000).
The opening passage of this peroration, in which Lincoln admits to ambition for office but counters with a ringing declaration that he is driven by higher motives, closely parallels a passage at the end of the Lewiston Address of 17 August: "While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office...It is nothing, I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing..." (Basler 2:547). Another passage of similar intent occurs in the 10 July Chicago Address (Basler 2:496), and in the last speech of the campaign, at Springfield on 30 October, where he reiterated: "Ambition has been ascribed to me...I claim no insensibility to political honors; but today, could the Missouri proposition be restored,...I would...gladly agree, that Judge Douglas should never be out, and I never in, an office, so long as we both, or either, live" (Basler 3:334).
It is also striking that the rhythms of the line, "Yet I have never failed -- do not now fail -- ..." seem to anticipate those of a famous passage in the Second Inaugural: "fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray..." Lincoln's historical reference to Great Britain's abolition of the slave trade (agitated in the early 18th century and fully accomplished in 1807) is unusual, for Lincoln rarely looked beyond his nation's borders for such examples and, as he was no doubt acutely aware, Britain's situation -- with most of its slave population in far-flung colonial outposts -- differed significantly from that of the U.S. In the closing passage Lincoln takes a solemn, almost resigned tone, conceding that the "higher object of this contest," the elimination of slavery, may not be accomplished "within the term of my natural life," although "I cannot doubt that it will come in due time." Looking beyond his own mortal existence he affirms that, "Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see." (Lincoln's concluding words have a prophetic ring, for it was not until the ratification of the 13th Amendment, on 18 December 1865, eight months after the President's death, that slavery was entirely abolished.)
This manuscript is one of a few known to have once been part of the Lincoln Papers, gathered from the White House in the aftermath of Lincoln's death and closely guarded by the late President's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, until the archive was deposited in the Library of Congress in 1919. On a few occasions, he is known to have selected a letter or manuscript from the collection as a gift to a friend or admirer of his father. (See David S. Mearns, The Lincoln Papers, 1948, 1:18-22 and 131).
Provenance:
1. Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926). During his tenure as Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain from 1889-1892, Robert may have made the acquaintance of
2. Grace, Duchess of St. Albans (d.1926), gift of the above in 1892. Prior to 1950, the manuscript was accompanied by a letter of presentation from Robert Todd Lincoln dated 17 September 1892 which read (in part): "The Ms. is a note made in preparing for one of the speeches in the joint-debate Campaign between Mr. Douglas and my father in 1858...My father could little imagine when writing [it], that in less than five years a Proclamation under his own signature would not only end all questions of the extension of slavery to the free territories of the United States but would free all the slaves in all the States" (this is historically inaccurate, of course)
3. John Bancker Gribbel (sale, Parke Bernet, 3 December 1947, lot 403) 4. Richie and Dolly Maass, from Forrest G. Sweet
5. The Purchase College Foundation, by gift of the above, February 1996.
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax, as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the front of the catalogue.
"IN THE REPUBLICAN CAUSE THERE IS A HIGHER AIM THAN THAT OF MERE OFFICE...THE HIGHER OBJECT OF THIS CONTEST MAY NOT BE COMPLETELY ATTAINED WITHIN THE TERM OF MY NATURAL LIFE": LINCOLN'S PERORATION FROM A SPEECH, PREDICTING A "GLORIOUS CONSUMMATION": THE ABOLITION OF THE INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY
A remarkable manuscript, once part of the Lincoln papers, which dates from a pivotal period during the political ascension of Abraham Lincoln. Previously described as a fragment, it is complete in itself and may be identified by its oratorical tone and pacing, textual parallels with other addresses and by its physical arrangement on the paper as the peroration, or rhetorical summation, from an unidentified speech. (Only one other Lincoln peroration from this, the Lincoln-Douglas contest, is extant in manuscript form: that of Lincoln's 30 October 1858 address, also a two-page fragment; see Collected Works, ed. R.P. Basler, 3:334). Robert Todd Lincoln's testimony (see Provenance below) that his father wrote this manuscript in 1858 is persuasive; the editors of Lincoln's work date it, more precisely, about July 1858. That places the present manuscript in a crucial period when Lincoln was actively preparing for his famous contest with Stephen A. Douglas for one of two Illinois Senate seats. This strenuous oratorical duel between two superb stump speakers constituted "Lincoln's most important political speaking, without which he probably never would have become president" (Waldo W. Braden, Abraham Lincoln: Public Speaker, 1988, p. 19). The profound historical implications of the Lincoln-Douglas clash, which attracted national attention, need no elaboration here. Although in the end Lincoln failed by a narrow margin to unseat the incumbent Douglas, his resolute forensic attack on the Kansas-Nebraska Act (which permitted the expansion of slavery into the territories), his ringing moral indictment of the institution of slavery and his impassioned oratory catapulted him to national prominence. As one historian has written: "In retrospect, the tall form of Lincoln dominates the scene...The momentum gathered in their contest...carried both Lincoln and Douglas to the threshold of the White House, but only one could enter" (Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s, 1962, pp. 96, 120).
Lincoln writes: "I have never professed an indifference to the honors of official station; and were I to do so now, I should only make myself ridiculous. Yet I have never failed -- do not now fail -- to remember that in the republican cause there is a higher aim than that of mere office. I have not allowed myself to forget that the abolition of the Slave-trade by Great Brittain [sic], was agitated a hundred years before it was a final success; that the measure had its open fire-eating opponents; its stealthy 'don't care' opponents; its dollar and cents opponents; its inferior race opponents; its negro equality opponents; and its religion and good order opponents; that all these got offices, and their adversaries got none. But I have also remembered that though they blazed, like tallow-candles for a century, at last they flickered in the socket, died out, stank in the dark for a brief season, and were remembered no more, even by the smell. School-boys know that Wilb[e]rforce, and Granville Sharpe [sic] helped that cause forward; but who can now name a single man who labored to retard it? I can not but regard it as possible that the higher object of this contest may not be completely attained within the term of my natural life. But I can not doubt either that it will come in due time. Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see."
Lincoln had accepted the Republican party nomination on 16 June 1858 with the "House Divided" address; his seven formal debates with the "Little Giant" took place between 21 August and 15 October and he delivered his last speech of the campaign on 30 October. During the campaign -- now better known than most presidential races -- it is estimated that Lincoln covered over 4,000 miles by rail, boat and carriage and spoke in 39 different counties (Braden, pp. 22-23). By his own tally, he made over 60 speeches and addresses, many two or three hours in length. These oratorical efforts ranged from extemporaneous remarks to carefully prepared full-scale addresses which Lincoln is known to have written out in their entirety. He appears to have lavished particular care on the peroration or ending of his speeches, and may have been content to deliver much of a given address extemporaneously or from sketchy notes and then conclude with a carefully prepared climax like the present.
It is striking how very little manuscript material survives to document this great creative outpouring. We possess not a single complete speech in manuscript and only a dozen or so fragments -- most of a single page, some of a few lines only -- are known to survive (see Basler 2:547; 3:97, 101, 205, 325, 334). All but one or two of these are in permanent institutional collections, and the present is likely to be one of the last such manuscripts to be offered for sale. The last two Lincoln speech fragments to appear at auction were a leaf related to the "House Divided" address (sale, Sotheby's New York, 16 December 1992, lot 195, $1,400,000, now in the Gilder-Lehrman deposit at The Pierpont Morgan Library) and a "Fragment on Slavery" leaf from an unidentified speech, c. 1857-59 (sale, Sotheby's New York, 21 May 1992, $900,000).
The opening passage of this peroration, in which Lincoln admits to ambition for office but counters with a ringing declaration that he is driven by higher motives, closely parallels a passage at the end of the Lewiston Address of 17 August: "While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office...It is nothing, I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing..." (Basler 2:547). Another passage of similar intent occurs in the 10 July Chicago Address (Basler 2:496), and in the last speech of the campaign, at Springfield on 30 October, where he reiterated: "Ambition has been ascribed to me...I claim no insensibility to political honors; but today, could the Missouri proposition be restored,...I would...gladly agree, that Judge Douglas should never be out, and I never in, an office, so long as we both, or either, live" (Basler 3:334).
It is also striking that the rhythms of the line, "Yet I have never failed -- do not now fail -- ..." seem to anticipate those of a famous passage in the Second Inaugural: "fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray..." Lincoln's historical reference to Great Britain's abolition of the slave trade (agitated in the early 18th century and fully accomplished in 1807) is unusual, for Lincoln rarely looked beyond his nation's borders for such examples and, as he was no doubt acutely aware, Britain's situation -- with most of its slave population in far-flung colonial outposts -- differed significantly from that of the U.S. In the closing passage Lincoln takes a solemn, almost resigned tone, conceding that the "higher object of this contest," the elimination of slavery, may not be accomplished "within the term of my natural life," although "I cannot doubt that it will come in due time." Looking beyond his own mortal existence he affirms that, "Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see." (Lincoln's concluding words have a prophetic ring, for it was not until the ratification of the 13th Amendment, on 18 December 1865, eight months after the President's death, that slavery was entirely abolished.)
This manuscript is one of a few known to have once been part of the Lincoln Papers, gathered from the White House in the aftermath of Lincoln's death and closely guarded by the late President's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, until the archive was deposited in the Library of Congress in 1919. On a few occasions, he is known to have selected a letter or manuscript from the collection as a gift to a friend or admirer of his father. (See David S. Mearns, The Lincoln Papers, 1948, 1:18-22 and 131).
Provenance:
1. Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926). During his tenure as Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain from 1889-1892, Robert may have made the acquaintance of
2. Grace, Duchess of St. Albans (d.1926), gift of the above in 1892. Prior to 1950, the manuscript was accompanied by a letter of presentation from Robert Todd Lincoln dated 17 September 1892 which read (in part): "The Ms. is a note made in preparing for one of the speeches in the joint-debate Campaign between Mr. Douglas and my father in 1858...My father could little imagine when writing [it], that in less than five years a Proclamation under his own signature would not only end all questions of the extension of slavery to the free territories of the United States but would free all the slaves in all the States" (this is historically inaccurate, of course)
3. John Bancker Gribbel (sale, Parke Bernet, 3 December 1947, lot 403) 4. Richie and Dolly Maass, from Forrest G. Sweet
5. The Purchase College Foundation, by gift of the above, February 1996.
*This lot may be exempt from sales tax, as set forth in the Sales Tax Notice at the front of the catalogue.