Beschreibung:

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President . Partly printed document signed ("A.Lincoln") as President, Washington, D.C., 19 February 1862. 1 page, 4to, on pale gray paper, text engraved in a fine italic hand, accomplished in manuscript by a clerk, neatly matted with engraved portraits of Washington and Lincoln and framed under UV plexiglas. LINCOLN PROCLAIMS THE CELEBRATION OF WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY A document suggesting the connections between Lincoln and his predecessor, the first President. Upon his departure from Springfield, almost exactly one year earlier, to take up the duties of the Presidency, Lincoln, in his farewell remarks to his neighbors, made the famous remark, "I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington" (cf. Collected Works , ed. R.P. Basler, 4:190, version A). En route to his inauguration, Lincoln detoured to Harrisburg, to appear before the Pennsylvania General Assembly on Washington's birthday. Here, after a difficult year which saw the secession crisis, the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter and the debacle of the Union armies at First Bull Run, Lincoln again evokes the legacy of Washington: "I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of State to affix the Seal of the United States to my Proclamation recommending the celebration of the anniversary of the birth of George Washington..." The actual Proclamation read as follows: "It is recommended to the People of the United States that they assemble in their customary places of meeting for public solemnity on the twenty-second day of February...and celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the Father of His Country by causing to be read to them his immortal Farewell address...." ( ibid., 5:136-137). The idea for such a national observance apparently originated with a letter of 17 February to Lincoln from Representative Edward Haight of New York, suggesting that the "Commander in chief order that the Farewell Address of Washington be read on his next birthday, at the head of the Armies & Navies--and that the Loyal people of the United States in all their states, cities & hamlets--their churches, houses & hearts be requested to devote that day to Exaltation for victory and gratitude to the Almighty..." ( ibid. , ms. in Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress). Lincoln was very familiar with Washington's Farewell Address, which "ranks in popular acclaim with the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address..." (J.T. Flexner, George Washington: Anguish and Farewell , p.292), and it was a text Lincoln knew and referred to in his own recent speeches, such as the Manchester address (1 March 1860) and the New Haven address (6 March 1860), among others.