Raynor HCA 2014-04
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/1/2014
Printed by "The Grant County Herald" Newspaper, measuring 9-1/4” x 11-3/4" with a two-column format. Printed in left-hand column is: "Interview with the President. Mr. Lincoln's View of Democratic Strategy." The right-hand column features a "Letter of General Grant" and a poem by Bayard Taylor entitled, "On the Chicago Surrender." This broadside is lightly toned, with some foxing, pinholes at creases where folded. Has been reinforced on verso with archival tape, the print is sharp and crisp. This bold black printed Broadside was the First Separate Printing of an original article published in THE GRANT COUNTY HERALD of Wisconsin. The original article was titled, "The Loyal Road to Peace and the Disloyal Road to Ruin--President Lincoln on the Democratic Strategy." The article recounts a letter by John T. Mills, Judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit, who reported on an interview between former Wisconsin Governor Alexander William Randall and Abraham Lincoln on August 19, 1864. In this interview Lincoln chides the Democrats who wanted the 200,000 "Colored Troops" returned to the South [where they would no doubt have been pressed into military service] as part of a compromise truce agreement. Lincoln said that such a move would cost the Union the war: "Sir,... the slightest knowledge of Arithmetic will prove to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed with Democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it. There are now in the service of the United States near 200,000 able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and acquiring, Union territory. The Democratic strategy demands that these forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by restoring them to slavery... We shall have to fight two nations instead of one. You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to them ultimate success... Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men, take 200,000 men from our side and put them in the battlefield or cornfield against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks... Let my enemies prove to the country that the destruction of slavery is not necessary to a restoration of the Union. I will abide the issue." General Grant's letter is dispatched from the "Headquarters Armies of the United States - City Point, VA., Aug. 16, 1864," and suggests that the North is on the verge of victory, and should not, therefore, accept "peace on any terms" -- which would undo all the accomplishments of the war, including the freedom of thousands of slaves who escaped to the North.
Click on a thumbnail above to display a larger image below
Hold down the mouse button and slide side to side to see more thumbnails(if available).
Click above for larger image.