Address of Hon. Edward Everett, at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 19th November, 1863, with the Dedicatory Speech of President Lincoln, and the Other Exercises of the Occasion; accompanied by an account of the origin of the undertaking and of the arrangement of the cemetery grounds, and by a map of the battle-field and a plan of the cemetery
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1864. First printing. Frontispiece map, lithographed plan of cemetery. Cloth over boards. Octavo. [v], 6-87, [88] pages. Expertly and sympathetically rebacked, with original spine laid down. Original gilt spine title preserved. Interior is clean and free of significant wear.
Contains the first officially authorized printing of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and its first appearance in book form. This "official report" of the Gettysburg dedication ceremonies was largely superintended by Edward Everett, whose address was the main feature of the day.
Lincoln's 1863 address at Gettysburg is probably the best known oration in American history, though here it receives distant second billing on page 84. Howes notes two other imprints of this work that omit Lincoln's address altogether.
This report was published for the benefit of the Cemetery Monument Fund, with 4,881 copies printed according to a late-1864 report of the Cemetery's Board of Managers. The same report indicates that only 211 copies were bound.
Interestingly, the text of Lincoln's address in this report bears the distinct punctuation and paragraphing of Lincoln's five known manuscript versions--which differs significantly from the contemporary newspaper transcriptions available to the publisher. The organizer of the Gettysburg ceremonies, David Wills, had asked Lincoln for his original manuscript but said he did not receive it. How then is the version of Lincoln's address in this report so Lincolnesque in its punctuation and arrangement? John Carbonell speculates that Lincoln's junior secretary, John Hay, provided Edward Everett with a transcript of Lincoln's manuscript, bypassing Wills.
This remarkable historical artifact was issued just two and a half months after Lincoln delivered his now famous address. This copy comes complete with the errata slip, the Hoen lithographed map of the battlefield and hospitals, and William Saunders' tinted "Map of the Grounds and Design for the Improvement of the Soldiers' National Cemetery , Gettysburg, P.A. 1863." Housed in a custom-made clamshell box.
A spectacular addition to any Civil War or Lincolniana or Americana collection.
Ref. MONAGHAN 194; HOWES E232; CARBONELL #6.
Item #1083
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