(CIVIL WAR MASSACHUSETTS) Train Extra Right of Free Speech

Sale 2432 - Lot 124

Price Realized: $ 1,250

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600

(CIVIL WAR--MASSACHUSETTS.) Train Extra! Right of Free Speech! George Francis Train Arrested in Faneuil Hall. Letterpress broadside, 27 x 10 1/2 inches; partial separations at folds, two paper repairs on verso, minor wear. [Boston, circa October 1862]

Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

On 6 October 1862, Charles Sumner addressed a public meeting in Boston to celebrate President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. George Francis Train, a railroad entrepreneur and sometime political activist, attempted to address the meeting and was arrested. According to his statement to the police, printed here, "I was annoyed to find the meeting cut and dried. Annoyed to find that liberty was only for the black man and not for the white man. Annoyed to see Boston in slavery, Massachusetts in chains." He jumped the railing after Sumner's speech, hoping to get a few words in, but was restrained by the angry crowd. Here he offers a lengthy condemnation of emancipation and the conduct of the war: "The men of property are enslaved. The white man is on his back. . . . The brave army is indignant that black men have been forced upon them. They do not wish to divide the laurels with the black race." A lengthy racist manifesto from the Copperhead north, signed in type "Geo. Francis Train, Arrested for being a White Man." Only one copy in OCLC, and none known at auction.