Raynors HCA 2019-01
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/21/2019
Broadsheet, “Sentinel Extra”, ca. December 2, 1862, 9? x 24 in. 2 pp. In large part, “The suspension of specie payments by the banks… made large issues of United States notes unavoidable. In no other way could the payment of the troops and the satisfaction of other just demands be so economically or so well provided for… A return to specie payments, however, at the earliest period … should ever be kept in view. Fluctuations in the value of currency are always injurious… Convertibility, prompt and certain convertibility, into coin is generally acknowledged to be the best and surest safeguard against them; and it is extremely doubtful whether a circulation of United States notes payable in coin and sufficiently large for the wants of the people can be permanently, usefully, and safely maintained… There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary upon which to divide…Among the friends of the Union there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race amongst us… emancipation will be unsatisfactory to the advocates of perpetual slavery, but the length of time [37 years in Lincoln’s compensated emancipation proposal] should greatly mitigate their dissatisfaction. The time spares both races from the evils of sudden derangement… while most of those whose habitual course of thought will be disturbed by the measure will have passed away before its consummation. They will never see it. Another class will hail the prospect of emancipation, but will deprecate the length of time. They will feel that it gives too little to the now living slaves. But it really gives them much. It saves them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend immediate emancipation in localities where their numbers are very great, and it gives the inspiring assurance that their posterity shall be free forever… Let us ascertain the sum we have expended in the war since compensated emancipation was proposed last March, and consider whether if that measure had been promptly accepted by even some of the slave States the same sum would not have done more to close the war than has been otherwise done… Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth...”
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