Sep 24, 2020 - Sale 2546

Sale 2546 - Lot 135

Price Realized: $ 1,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(ABRAHAM LINCOLN.) Charles Grobe, composer. Lincoln Quick Step. 6 pages including lithographed cover, 14 1/4 x 10 3/4 inches, on 2 folding sheets, never bound; minor wear; inscribed on cover "Dan'l G. Thomas Esq., compliments of the publisher." Philadelphia: Lee & Walker, [1860]
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Additional Details

First edition, issued as a campaign piece. It is dedicated to "the Hon. Abraham Lincoln" and though an instrumental, it is prefaced with 4 lines of campaign verse: "Honest Old Abe has split many a rail / He is up to his work, and he'll surely not fail / He has guided his flat-boat thro' many a strait / And watchful he'll prove at the helm of the state." The cover illustration was done by Henry Whateley (see the "H.W." initialed along the lower edge) for T. Sinclair's Lithography. It features a beardless portrait surrounded by a decorative border featuring vignettes of Lincoln splitting a rail and piloting a raft, along with the tools of his trades. Lincoln's record as an attorney and legislator is not addressed--funny how these feats of strength are always emphasized. Other editions appeared with a different cover illustration during or after Lincoln's presidency.
Original owner Daniel G. Thomas (1837-1870) was a Philadelphia councilman and state legislator who would soon serve as a captain in the United States Army. Thomas later wrote to Lincoln in January 1861 to voice his gratitude for the appointment of Simon Cameron as Secretary of War; in 1865 he acquired a relic clipped from Lincoln's bloody final shirt.