News | August 21, 2024

Abraham Lincoln’s Books and Speeches Centrestage at New Grolier Club Exhibition

Vincent Dilio

Republican Song Book (New York: Thayer & Eldridge, 1860) and Lincoln & Hamlin / Ward 12 (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1860). Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein.

Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print will exhibit the revered but rarely seen books, documents, and ephemera that empowered Lincoln’s political ascendance, his leadership during the Civil War, and his efforts to end slavery.

On view in the Ground Floor Gallery of the Grolier Club in New York from September 25 through December 28, the exhibition is composed of materials from the Americana collection of philanthropist David M. Rubenstein. Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print is timed to appear during the U.S. presidential election and fulfills the aims of the David M. Rubenstein Americana Collection to mount non-partisan presentations that foster civic engagement and historical understanding.

Especially relevant during this election year is the wide array of printed materials from the campaigns of 1860, the year in which Lincoln became president, deepening tensions between North and South. Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print tells the story of how the 16th president won by leveraging the power of popular print media. Included are the many artfully partisan 1860 campaign biographies that crafted Lincoln’s public image; the entertaining political songsters that idealized his western, rural origins; and the visually impressive campaign pamphlets and election ballots that circulated across a nation having to choose between four candidates for the highest office.

Among the more than 200 works on display are important editions of Lincoln’s greatest accomplishments, such as a signed Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, the Cooper Union Speech, and his debates with Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas. Through original historical printings, the exhibition follows the life of Abraham Lincoln from his birth in the American West and his self-taught readings of literature, philosophy, and the law. The exhibition is curated by Mazy Boroujerdi, special advisor to the Rubenstein Collection, and is accompanied by a catalogue published by Marquand Books.

Grolier Club

The exhibition catalogue

Vincent Dilio

Detail of By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. [Emancipation Proclamation, “Great Central Fair Edition,” signed.] [Philadelphia: Boker & Leland, 1864]. Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of Emancipation by the President of the United States. [Boston: Forbes, 1863]. Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein.

Vincent Dilio

Abraham Lincoln, Tribune Tracts.—No. 4., Speech . . . Delivered at the Cooper Institute. New York: New York Tribune, 1860. Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein.

“Lincoln’s story is the most fascinating and exemplary story in American presidential history,” said David Rubenstein. “He is not only our greatest president for having kept the Union together during a period of terrible division and discord. He is also a model American for his tremendous humility, for having continually sought consensus, for always bettering himself through reading, and for making sure that the rights and protections enshrined in our founding documents are shared by all.”

“In many ways, books made Abraham Lincoln,” said curator Mazy Boroujerdi. “He became a lawyer through self-disciplined study, won the White House through the concurrent rise of American popular publishing, and remains one of the most written about figures over the 160 years since his death, with each generation reinterpreting him through new biographies and research. There is no better way to tell the story of Lincoln than through books, and there is no better subject for a book exhibition than Lincoln.”

Among the treasures on view is the only edition of the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln signed. One of 48 copies printed for Philadelphia’s Great Central Fair in 1864, it was originally sold for $10 a copy to raise money for the United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian relief organization that assisted the medical and hygiene efforts of the U.S. War Department. Also on view is a pocket-sized Emancipation Proclamation (1863), printed in Boston by the industrialist and abolitionist John Murray Forbes, which Northern soldiers distributed amongst African American communities at the front.

Also on view are printings of notable speeches that made Lincoln a rising political star, including the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Vying with Stephen A. Douglas through seven district debates for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, the men’s sharply opposing opinions about slavery quickly became national news. First printed in newspapers, Lincoln published the compilation Political Debates (1860), a signed edition of which is on view. Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union speech was a tour de force of historical research and political rhetoric. First printed in 1860 as Tribune Tracts.—No. 4., Speech . . . Delivered at the Cooper Institute, Lincoln defined what abolitionists were fighting for and challenged proslavery factions as contrary to the Constitution, the Founders, and morality.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is the most acclaimed speech by any American president. Named for the location at which the three-day military battle was won by the Union army in July 1863, the speech is on view in the book An Oration Delivered on the Battlefield of Gettysburg (New York: Baker & Godwin, 1863). Another treasure featured in the show is a rare, signed souvenir copy on vellum of the Thirteenth Amendment, officially titled A Resolution Submitting to the Legislatures of the Several States a Proposition to Amend the Constitution of the United States (1865).

The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue Abraham Lincoln: His Life in Print: Books and Ephemera from the David M. Rubenstein Americana Collection, available from Marquand Books.