Description:

(ABRAHAM LINCOLN)
(1809-1865) Sixteenth President of the United States who led the Union through the Civil War and emancipated the slaves, assassinated. A.L.S. of journalist ALBERT D. RICHARSON to James Parton, 4pp, 8vo, April 29, 1865, regarding a biography on Lincoln who had been assassinated two weeks prior. In part: "I did not fancy you would be the 'authorized' biographer wh[ich] seems to be a sort of literary undertakership. I suppose Mr. Lincoln's family and special friends as usual will want him done up in six volumes of elegant, stupid & undiscriminating panegyric. But that is not what We the People want. I think he did not express himself very much in letters, or documents of any kind except the verbatim reports of his speeches. He was peculiarly oral. He was Abe Lincoln the talker and stumpspeaker. I suspect that Mrs. Lincoln with a good deal of folly on the surface, has a strong undercurrent of common, clear sense. Probably, if properly approached, she would give you access to the private papers, tho' I don't believe you would draw on them much. At all events it would do no harm to ascertain...In my minds eye I can see...how patiently & laboriously you would hunt down the salient points of his strange career & curious individuality & tell the world exactly what the world wants to know about him. It seems to me you would write a book on the subject which would outsell anything...except perhaps Uncle Tom...". Albert Deane Richardson (1833 - 1869) was a well-known American journalist, Union spy, and author. Accompanied by the original letter from autograph dealer John Heise who sold the piece to The Lincoln Library in 1950. Very good.

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July 22, 2011 11:30 AM EDT
Stamford, CT, US

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