Lincoln’s first vice president, discusses local Maine politics regarding the replacement of a longstanding U.S. District Court Judge.

“Planters! Here’s a chance, Here are limbs to work or dance…”

Scarce English abolitionist music signed in print by composer Henry Russell on the front page.

“They grinned and pushed on, and with a yell that told the southern chivalry their doom, [they] rolled irresistibly over and into the work.”

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.

In the middle of the Civil War Siege of Yorktown, General Charles Hamilton fruitlessly asks for more artillery.

Fifteen members of Congress order a total of 3,050 copies of a speech by Senator Collamer. The 29-page pamphlet was entitled Speech of Hon. Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, on Affairs in Kansas, Delivered in the Senate of the United States, April 3 and 4, 1856.

“The Sanitary Commission is … of direct practical value to the nation, in this time of its trial. It is entitled to the gratitude and confidence of the people… There is no agency through which voluntary offerings of patriotism can be more effectively made.  A. Lincoln.”

Assistant Adjutant General Seth Williams writes to Provost Marshal M. R. Patrick that he will ask Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant to establish regulations to govern political agents in the camps prior to the 1864 elections.

“As you and I have both expressed friendly sentiments towards the citizens of the Flowery Kingdom, we may hope to be in high favor should we live till that time.”

When enslaved African Americans fled to the ships of the Union blockading fleet, officers often sent them to “contraband” camps such as those at Port Royal, South Carolina, or Fortress Monroe, Virginia, or shipped them north. However, the Union Navy, short on manpower, also encouraged able-bodied male contrabands to enlist. In September 1861, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles authorized the enlistment of contrabands “under the same forms and regulations as apply to other enlistments.” As crew members of navy ships and gunboats, these black sailors served on blockade duty and even on expeditions up southern rivers and creeks.

On January 5, 1863, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles ordered commanders of squadrons to forward monthly returns of “contrabands” employed on board the respective vessels under their command. The USS Western World had been part of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron in 1861 and 1862. After extensive overhaul, the Western World was reassigned in March 1863 to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron for service in the Chesapeake Bay.

In this letter, Acting Rear Admiral Samuel P. Lee chastises the Western World’s commander for the lack of details in his May 1863 “Contraband” report.

“General Grants election has brought such actual Peace, that there is not a part of a peg even, to hang an excitement on”

General William T. Sherman copies the first two pages of a letter in which Admiral David Dixon Porter, then Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, declines an invitation to a “Grand Reunion of the Western Armies at Chicago.” Porter had commanded the Mississippi River Squadron from October 1862 to 1864, aiding in opening the entire river to Union forces through cooperation with the western armies. Sherman likely read from this copy at the meeting of the Army of the Tennessee in Chicago.

Showing Union troops arriving in Philadelphia from New Jersey via ferry and marching in formation towards the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, cheered on by Philadelphians. Text at the bottom lists members of the committee and men willing to accept donations for the saloon. This image became a choice souvenir for soldiers passing through Philadelphia.