Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - May - 2009 Issue
A Spring Miscellany from Austin's Antiquarian Books
Man Ray photograph of Theodore Miller's daughter Lee.
Horace Greeley was not exactly a young man when he went west in 1859, now pushing 50 years of age. The publisher of the New York Tribune was by then one of the most powerful newspapermen, arguing for liberal causes and vehemently against the "slave power." However, despite his enthusiastic advocacy of causes, and his unsuccessful presidential run in 1872, most people probably remember him for his admonition, "Go West, young man." The inspiration for this advice was surely, in part, the journey he described in this 1860 book: An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859. It consists of letters he wrote back to the Tribune. Greeley has inscribed this copy. Item 99. $250.
Item 61 ties together two major generations of American leaders. It is An Address Delivered at Charlestown, August 1, 1826, in Commemoration of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. In an eerie coincidence, America's second and third presidents both died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A few weeks later, a young first term Congressman named Edward Everett gave this address at a town outside of Boston. Everett would go on to have a long and distinguished political career, serving as a congressman, senator, and governor of Massachusetts, ambassador to England and Secretary of State, along with a stop as President of Harvard College. However, his influence faded as his enormous dedication to preserving the Union left him a bit too compromising for northern tastes in the 1850s. In 1860, he ran for vice-president on the compromise-oriented Constitutional Union Party, opposing Lincoln. However, once war broke out, Everett became a strong Lincoln supporter and friend. It was Everett who gave the lengthy, keynote address at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield, though it is Lincoln's brief remarks which followed that became some of the best-known words ever spoken. Nevertheless, Lincoln wrote Everett, perhaps the most noted speaker of the day, his congratulations for the speech. Everett died in 1865, after tirelessly campaigning for Lincoln in 1864. $85.
Austin's Antiquarian Books may be reached at 802-464-8438 or mail@austinsbooks.com. Their website is found at www.austinsbooks.com.
