North-South split in the nation…for 28 more years, anyway. Price: $9,500.

Item #192 is a collection of lottery tickets. A lottery was used in the 1790’s to fund the Washington City Canal. Even then we were looking to get rich quick. Price: $3,750.

Not everything in this catalogue is as expensive. There are many items such as notes evidencing Revolutionary War obligations priced at a few hundred dollars for those not yet ready to purchase a John Hancock signature. In total, there are 199 items priced from $150 to $275,000. The descriptions, typical of a Reese catalogue, are lessons in history. Since no one is interviewing Adams, Jefferson, or Hamilton personally anymore, historians must research surviving documents, the trees so to speak, to paint their picture of the forest. Reese doesn’t give you the forest, but their descriptions of the trees that pass through their hands are worthy of a historian. The William Reese Company may be reached at 203-789-8081, or online at www.reeseco.com.

Michael Brown Rare Books Catalogue #32 – American Manuscripts

Michael Brown Rare Books Catalogue #32 fits well with the Reese Company’s catalogue. While the Reese catalogue is filled with items written by some of the best known names of America’s early days, the Brown catalogue has items from the more obscure and unknown. The writers are primarily lesser known Congressmen, State Legislators, and numerous ordinary citizens, but what they have produced is at times phenomenal. There are letters and diaries written by people who traveled through the backwoods of the new nation or settled in its distant outposts. They produce a history very different from that created in Washington, but every bit as important to whom we are. And like Reese, Brown provides descriptions of such detail as to make his catalogues the equivalent of history books. In all there are 72 items in the catalogue.

Typical of many of the entries in this catalogue is item #2, a letter from William Putnam of Kentucky to his brother in the North, who evidently does not share some of his views. In some of the uglier prose encountered, Putnam rails on about the inferiority of the recently freed slaves and of the “destruction” of the constitution by Lincoln. But he does hit on a soft spot in the Northern conscience when he claims that those in the North do not care about the former slaves either and will let them fall rather than provide needed assistance. Price: $650.

Item #4 is much more pleasant. It’s an 1860 manuscript by Hiram Wilson describing life (and attempts to convert) slaves who escaped to Canada via the underground railroad. This is an interesting document as we usually hear more about the railroad than the lives of its passengers once they finally disembarked at Canada station. Price: $4,500.