49 “The Mystic Chords Of Memory, Stretching From Every Battlefield, And Patriot Grave, To Every Living Heart And Hearthstone” 64LINCOLN, Abraham. Inaugural Address... Executive Document No. 1. Washington, March 8, 1861. Slim octavo, disbound; pp. 10, custom clamshell box. $8800 Rare second printing of Lincoln’s important first inaugural address, printed by order of the Senate four days after its delivery. On the morning of March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was escorted with little fanfare to his inauguration. Anticipating violence, riflemen were stationed on housetops along the parade route. On the platform erected at the Capitol’s east portico, “Lincoln put on a pair of steel-bowed spectacles and began reading his inaugural address in a clear, high-pitched voice that carried well out to the crowd of 25,000. The address was a document of inspired statesmanship. He reminded the South of his pledge not to interfere with slavery, but he firmly rejected secession—the Union was ‘unbroken.’ Finally he issued a grave warning [undiluted by his advisors, who recommended that Lincoln soften his martial tone]: ‘In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war… Abraham Lincoln was resolved to be President of the whole Union” (Bruce Catton). A fine copy. “Here Began The Horrid Practice Of Forcing Africans Into Slavery” 63CLARKSON, Thomas. History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament. London, 1808. Two volumes. Octavo, original blue paper boards, custom half morocco clamshell box. $11,000 First edition of Clarkson’s classic history of the slave trade, with the famous large folding engraving of the arrangement of slaves on decks of the slave-ship Brookes according to the “humane” Dolben Bill of 1788. An extraordinary copy, uncut in original boards. The famous folding engraved plate of slaves closely fitted on decks of the slave-ship Brookes is one of the most famous images in the history of the anti-slavery movement. The Dolben Bill of 1788 exacted a limit of the number of slaves per ship’s tonnage at five slaves per three tons. Anti-slavery activists obtained the measurements of the Brookes and imposed slaves on its decks in the ratio required by the “humane” Bill with stupefying results. In 1789, William Wilberforce had a scale model of the Brookes built (with images from this plate pasted on its decks), which he presented to the House of Commons during one of his most passionate and persuasive speeches. Occasional foxing. Single repaired tear to folding plate affecting corner of top image. Light wear to original paper boards and spines. Remarkably well-preserved.
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