PHILADELPHIA,

1866.

MY DEAR SIR:

66

I am preparing for the press a BIBLIOGRAPHIA LINCOLNIANA," to comprise a list of all printed Eulogies, Addresses, Sermons, &c., occasioned by the death of President Lincoln. I am desirous of having it as complete as possible, and accordingly take the liberty of addressing you to solicit the complete title-viz: every word which appears on the title-page, verbatim, et literatim, et punctatim-with the text, the size, the number of pages, and the number of copies printed, of any which you may have delivered, or which may have come under your notice.

PHILADELPHIA,

1866.

MY DEAR SIR:

I am preparing for the press a "BIBLIOGRAPHIA LINCOLNIANA," to comprise a list of all printed Eulogies, Addresses, Sermons, &c., occasioned by the death of President Lincoln. I am desirous of having it as complete as possible, and accordingly take the liberty of addressing you to solicit the complete title-viz: every word which appears on the title-page, verbatim, et literatim, et punctatim-with the text, the size, the number of pages, and the number of copies printed, of any which you may have delivered, or which may have come under your notice.

INTRODUCTION.

1

IVE years ago the nation was called upon to give its utterance upon the fiendish crime committed at its national capital, on the person of its chief magistrate; and five years ago the writer of this monograph designed the present work to preserve and memoralize those utterances. To many this volume will appear to be nothing but a bald catalogue, of little value and less interest; a production showing very meagre results for five years of diligent labor expended in its preparation. Yet so it is, that in the field of literature, the bibliographers' task is that requiring the greatest patience and labor, with the least impressive results, as is quaintly said by Anthony à Wood, in the preface to his History of Oxford: "A painfull work it is I'll assure you, and more than difficult, wherein what toyle hath been taken, as no man thinketh, so no man believeth, but he hath made the triall," But is it therefore of the least value? Is it nothing to have preserved for future ages, a record of those products of the press, called forth by one of the greatest epochs in the nation's life; to erect a library within one cover for the true historian, the one of fifty or a hundred years hence, to make choice of the foundation whereupon to build his more enduring monument. It is with this aim alone that the Bibliographia Lincolniana has been executed. It was at first intended that it should accompany the "Life of President Lincoln," to be written by his old friend and law partner, the Hon. William H. Herndon, of Springfield, Illinois, but this gentleman has desisted from his work, having decided that the time has not yet arrived for the proper appreciation of such a work as his materials and knowledge of the subject would produce. It therefore appears in its present form. It had been the intention of the writer to add a biographical memoir, prepared solely from the works named in the following catalogue, giving extracts and selections from each; but his manuscript prepared after this manner, was accidentally lost in its transmission to the printer, so that the following sketch must be accepted in its stead, his time not allowing him the labor of producing a duplicate of the first.

1 When I state that about twelve hundred letters were written, and about eight hundred letters and pamphlets received, in the preparation of this volume, it will be seen that my assertion is not greatly exaggerated.

2 I allude, of course only to my own portion of this work.