Primary Resources

Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

Courtesy of Andover Historical Society

Andover Historical Society.  “The Newsletter” 25 No. 2 (Summer, 2000).  This issue of the AHS’ newsletter focused on the Underground Railroad and abolitionist activities in Andover.  Specifically, the newsletter discusses various “stations” on the UGRR in Andover and the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe when she was in town.

Lawrence Public Library Special Collections Citations

Sermons Preached in Boston on the Death of Abraham Lincoln.  Boston: J.E. Tilton and Company, 1865.  Call #: SC 92 LIN  The Reverend George Hepworth’s sermon on the death of Abraham Lincoln gives a brief biography of Lincoln and ably demonstrates his importance to the American people.
           
Chesnutt, Charles W. Frederick Douglass (excerpted), ed. M.A. DeWolfe Howe.  Boston:  Small, Maynard & Company, 1899.  An 1899 biography of Frederick Douglass. 

Newburyport PL Special Collections

“Order of Exercises on the Occasion of the Funeral of Abraham Lincoln, in the Pleasant Street Church.”  April 19, 1865.  Call #: N 974.4512 L737 pamphlet

Lord, John Lewis.  “John Lewis Lord Diaries—1827-1878”.  Vols. III (part 1), III (part 2), IV, VII, X (excerpts).  Call #: N974.4512 L866 v.5  Newbury resident John Lewis Lord chronicles the political culture of Massachusetts in the 1840s.  He also discusses Frederick Douglass and his narrative.

Winchester Public Library Lincoln-Lee Collection

Scripps, John Locke.  “Life of Abraham Lincoln.”  New York Tribune, Tribune Tracts, No. 6.  c. 1860.  We have excerpted portions of Scripp’s early biography of Abraham Lincoln, written before he was elected President.  The biography appeared in the New York Tribune and concludes by quoting a contemporary Chicago Tribune article about Lincoln: “If Mr. Lincoln is elected President, he will bring but little that is ornamental to the White House.  The country must accept his sincerity, his ability, and his honesty, in the mould in which they are cast.  He will not be able to make so polite a bow as Franklin Pierce, but he will not commence anew the agitation of the slavery question by recommending to Congress an Kansas-Nebraska Bills…He will take to the Presidential Chair just the qualities which the country now demands to save it from impending destruction – ability that no man can question, firmness that nothing can overbear, honest that never has been impeached, and patriotism that never despairs.”

Tarbell, Ida.  “Abraham Lincoln.”  McClure’s Magazine: Vol. VI, No. 1: December, 1895.  Lincoln and Lee collection, Box 6 (Lincoln).  Muckraker Ida Tarbell wrote a biography of Lincoln in 1895 for McClure’s Magazine.  The first portion of that biography is included here.
 
*Various Lincoln Ephemera in separate folder in the Winchester folder.  Some of it is dated, most was published during the centennial celebrations of Lincoln’s birth in 1909.  Items either come from the Oversized Box or Box 6 (Lincoln) of the Winchester Public Library’s Lincoln and Lee collection. 

Library of Congress Website (annotations courtesy of the LOC website)

Signed with monogram: WH [Winslow Homer].  Arguments of the Chivalry.  Boston: John H. Bufford, 1856.  Lithograph on wove paper.  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm083.html). 
This dramatic print shows a violent incident that occurred in Congress on May 22, 1856, which inflamed sectional passion. The artist recreates the severe beating of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina. Brooks (right) is standing over Sumner (seated), and Rep. Lawrence M. Keitt stands (center) raising his cane against possible intervention, while holding a pistol. In the foreground are Georgia Senator Robert Toombs (far left with hat) and Illinois Senator Stephen A Douglas (hands in pockets), looking vindicated by the event.

Unattributed.  [Nursemaid with her charge].  Sixth-plate ambrotype, hand-tinted, ca. 1855.  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm039.html).  (56.1)
Although household slaves held higher status than field hands, this partial portrait of a nursemaid reveals that higher status was relative. The photographer chose to obscure the nursemaid's face, directing our attention to the white child as the main subject of this ambrotype--heightening the infant's prominence by hand-coloring the face and dress. By the late-1850s, the glass ambrotype had replaced the silver-coated copper plate of the daguerreotype for popular photographic portraiture, because it was less expensive and faster to produce

Kaufmann, Theodor.  Effects of the Fugitive-Slave Law.New York: Hoff & Bloede, 1850. Lithograph on woven paper.  Library of Congress,  Prints and Photographs Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm146.html ).  (33A.1)
In 1850, Congress passed this controversial law, which allowed slave-hunters to seize alleged fugitive slaves without due process of law and prohibited anyone from aiding escaped fugitives or obstructing their recovery. The law threatened the safety of all blacks, slave and free, and forced many Northerners to become more defiant in their support of fugitives. Both broadside and print, shown here, present objections in prose and verse to justify noncompliance with this law.

Currier, Nathaniel.  Congressional Scales, a True Balance.  New York: N. Currier, 1850. Lithograph on woven paper. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm151.html). Copyright deposit (34A).
This satirical print by Currier& Ives comments on President Zachary Taylor's attempts to balance southern and northern interests on the question of slavery in 1850. Various members of Congress fill the evenly balanced scales including the Compromise of 1850 opponents Senator Henry Clay, left, and Senator John C. Calhoun, right.

“Emancipation or Preservation of the Union?” The New York Times.  (New York, August 25, 1862). Library of Congress, Serial & Government Publications Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm080.html ).  (235)
A letter from President Lincoln that appears on the front page of the August 25, 1862, New York Times was written in response to Horace Greeley's New York Tribune (August 20, 1862) editorial entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," in which he beseeched the President to free the slaves at once. The Times, one of the leading Republican papers of the country, was unwavering in its determination that the Federal union should be preserved. It is not surprising that Lincoln sent his letter to the New York Times for publication.

Moore, Henry P.  “Slaves of the rebel Genl. Thomas F. Drayton, Hilton Head, S.C.”  Photograph, [May 1862].  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm228.html). (40.14)
Percival Drayton was denounced by the legislature of his native South Carolina when he chose to fight for the Union during the Civil War. Given command of the USS Pocahontas, Drayton participated in the successful 1861 expedition against Port Royal, South Carolina, during which the defending troops--under the command of his brother, Brigadier General Thomas Drayton--were forced to withdraw inland, with the general himself leaving behind a house and slaves pictured here.

A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings. Boston: Green & Russell, 1760
Library of Congress, Rare Book & Special Collections Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr004.html).
This first slave narrative independently printed in the North American colonies recounts the adventures of Briton Hammon (fl. 1760) during an extended absence from his master, which included shipwreck off the Florida capes, captivity among cannibalistic Indians, imprisonment by pirates in Havana, and service on several British gun ships, one of which saw action against the French.
Told in the picaresque style of the popular "rake's progress" literature, this tale is representative of the early slave narrative genre and at the same time an example of another popular genre--captivity tales:

As soon as the Vessel was burnt down to the Water's edge, the Indians stood for the Shore, together with our Boat, on board of which they put 5 hands. After we came to the Shore, they led me to their Hutts, where I expected nothing but immediate Death, and as they spoke broken English, were often telling me, while coming from the Sloop to the Shore, that they intended to roast me alive. But the Providence of God order'd it otherways, for He appeared for my Help, in this Mount of Difficulty, and they were better to me than my Fears, and soon unbound me, but set a Guard over me every Night.

This copy is one of only two known extant and was formerly in the great Americana library of the nineteenth-century collector George Brinley of Hartford Connecticut.
Among the nearly six thousand known slave narratives, the Library has significant examples of all types, including eighteenth-century pieces published separately for slave or former-slave authors, those published with the aid of nineteenth-century abolitionist editors, and an extensive compilation of ex-slave testimonials by the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s.

Joseph Cinquez,The brave Congolese Chief. . .  New York: Moses Y. Beach Lithograph, 1839 Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr039.html).
In June 1839, African slaves aboard the Spanish ship Amistad, bound for Cuba, seized control of the vessel and attempted to pilot it back to Africa. They were recaptured, however, and charged with murder and piracy. The mutiny grabbed headlines and became a cause célèbre for American abolitionists. Print publishers were quick to capitalize on images of the incident, like this portrait print of Joseph Cinquez. Editors of the New York Sun sent an artist to the prison ship to sketch the leader of the revolt, and issued this portrait, "scooping" competing newspapers. In the ensuing trial former U.S. President and prominent abolitionist John Quincy Adams represented the Africans before the Supreme Court and won their acquittal and return transport to Africa.

Baker, Thomas, arranger.  The Song of the Contrabands: "O Let My People Go."  New York: Horace Waters, 1861.  Library of Congress, Music Division (http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr051.html).  Copyright deposit, 1861
Many pre-1861 accounts of southern life mention African American spirituals in passing, but it was not until the Civil War that texts and music of actual songs began to be published. "O Let My People Go" is one of the very first spirituals to be published with both words and music. As the cover says, it was collected from the "contrabands"-- fugitives from slavery--at Fort Monroe, a fort in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia that remained in Union hands throughout the war. The text is close to the standard text of "Go Down, Moses" although it has many more verses than the standard version, but the tune differs.

Anthony Burns.  Boston: R. M. Edwards, 1855.  Wood engraving with letterpress.  Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trr107.html
Copyright deposit, 1855 (100A)
This is a portrait of fugitive slave Anthony Burns (ca.1830-1862), whose arrest and trial in Boston under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 incited riots and protests by white and black abolitionists and citizens of Boston in the spring of 1854. The portrait is surrounded by scenes from his life, including his sale on the auction block, escape from Richmond, Virginia, capture and imprisonment in Boston, and his return to a vessel to transport him to the South. Within a year after his capture, abolitionists were able to raise enough money to purchase Burns's freedom.