Raynors HCA 2017-02
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/23/2017
Newspaper, a complete and authentic issue of Harper’s Weekly, September 6, 1862, 16pp., disbound, VG. In response to Horace Greeley’s impertinent letter titled “The Prayer of the Twenty Millions,” President Lincoln responds with a letter dated August 22, 1862, which is printed in this issue on an interior page. In small part, “ “I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. ..... As to the policy I ‘seem to be pursuing’ as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’ If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free. Yours, A. Lincoln.” Additionally, this issue carries a back page political cartoon by Henry Louis Stephens spoofing Greeley’s “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” letter. The caption reads, “Horace Greeley, “Mr. President, do you propose to ignore, disregard, and in effect defy these twenty million here present, whom I command?” In the foreground, Greeley gestures grandly as he dramatically dictates the correspondence to his assistant. Greeley’s singers reject the call to arms. Inclusion of a black man among them reflects the policy of the Second Confiscation Act and Militia Act of 1862, both of which authorized the president to use black Americans in the Union military. The group on the right includes a black man, a black boy, a Quaker (note the dark, wide-brimmed hat), and an old man.
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