Gideon Welles and Stephen P. Lee revoke an appointment at the end of the war.

While Douglass’s letters are scarce, documents signed during his tenure as recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia can be had very reasonably.

Engravings include: Lincoln and son Tad at home. Scene at the death bed of President Lincoln. Funeral service at the White House. Ford’s Theatre. Attempted assassination of Secretary Seward. Citizens viewing the body at City Hall, New York.

On the front page under “News from the North” is the text of Abraham Lincoln’s reply to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Greeley’s letter urging Lincoln to emancipate all slaves in Union-held territory was known as “The Prayer of Twenty Millions.” It was first published on August 20, 1862. Lincoln responded on August 22, declaring that his paramount goal is to save the Union, regardless of its effect on slavery, as well as his personal views that all men should be free.

An early Lincoln campaign biography based on interviews with Lincoln associates in Springfield.

The United States is the only nation in history to end slavery through Civil War. Nations as diverse as Russia, the British Empire, France, Brazil, and others around the world ended their reliance on slave labor through legislative means that included some form of compensation to slave owners for their lost “assets.” Here, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the front page that Lincoln presented a special message to Congress with a plan to end slavery through compensation. There would be no takers among the slaveholding border states.

“the President [Lincoln] gives old [Admiral] Goldsborough fits, threatening to cashier him &c &c.  Good for the President. Had he known what I have, about him (G) he would have come to the same conclusion six months ago.”

In his fourth and final State of the Union address to Congress, President Lincoln reaffirms his commitment both to restoring the Union through military victory and his determination to see the end of slavery in the United States. After briefly addressing foreign affairs and inviting Congressional attention to the reports of his Cabinet officers, Lincoln notes that “The war continues.” He expresses pleasure at the steady advance of Union forces, allowing many occupied areas to grow crops, and admires the confidence of the Union forces illustrated by General William T. Sherman’s march through Georgia, then underway.

The President draws several lessons from the 1864 national elections recently completed. First, he believes the election demonstrates a unanimous and unshakeable commitment to restoring the Union. Second, he finds hope because the human and natural resources of the Union are both “unexhausted” and “inexhaustible.” Seeing immigration as a “replenishing stream,” Lincoln looks forward to a future when Atlantic and Pacific states are connected by “railways and telegraph lines.” Third, he sees a growing commitment to emancipation.

Therefore, he urges the House of Representatives to pass the proposed Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, even before the next Congress takes office. Lincoln remains committed to emancipation and the destruction of slavery, even while offering lenient pardon to those rebels willing to return to their allegiance to the Union, either individually or collectively.

While Douglass’s letters are scarce, documents signed during his tenure as recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia can be had very reasonably.

“It is a fact that the enslavement of human beings has so far infused its insidious poison into the very hearts of the Southern people, that they have come to believe and declare the evil of slavery to be a good, and to require the power of Government to be exerted to maintain, extend, and perpetuate an institution that enables thousands to sell their own children, to be enslaved, with all their posterity, into hopeless bondage....”

The founder of New York City’s Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art echoes the language and logic of the Emancipation Proclamation (as well as citing some Southern pro-slavery arguments to demonstrate their ridiculousness) in this open letter to President Lincoln. Cooper and the Cooper Union had long been advocates of abolition and both Lincoln and Frederick Douglass had famously lectured at the institution.

Two black teamsters duel on the front page; the text of the Emancipation Proclamation is printed on page 2; the execution of 38 Indian murderers at Mankato, Minnesota on page 4, Thomas Nast centerfold: “The War in the West, the War in the Border States.”

Also, illustrations: Winslow Homer, “A Shell in the Rebel Trenches”; a map of Mississippi; the “Reception of the Authorities of New Orleans by General Butler”; “General Bank’s Forces Landing at Baton Rouge, Louisiana”; “Brigadier General James Blunt”; “Brigadier General John M’Neil”; and a cartoon of a black man celebrating his emancipation by declaring himself no longer part of a farm’s livestock, but instead a man.