Salisbury House History Series Lecture

Harold Holzer is the co-chairman of the U. S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, and the author, co-author, or editor of 30 books on Lincoln and the Civil War era. Among his award-winning works are The Lincoln Image, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Lincoln as I Knew Him, Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: The Civil War in Art, The Lincoln Family Album, and with Governor Mario Cuomo, Lincoln on Democracy, which has been published in four languages.

His recent book Lincoln at Cooper Union won a 2005 Lincoln Prize, among many other awards, and his latest works include Lincoln in the Times, which he edited with David Donald, Lincoln Revisited, and Lincoln and Freedom. His next books will be Lincoln: President-Elect, due from Simon & Schuster in fall 2008; and Lincoln in American Memory, a Library of America collection featuring 150 years of great writers on the subject of Abraham Lincoln, scheduled for publication in February 2009.

Holzer has also written more than 300 articles over the past 35 years in both scholarly and popular publications, and contributed chapters to 23 additional books. He has won awards from the Illinois State Historical Society, the Civil War Round Tables of New York and Chicago, and the Lincoln Groups of New York and the District of Columbia. In addition to his writing, Holzer lectures throughout the country. His program “Lincoln Seen and Heard?” with actor Sam Waterston has been nationally broadcast and staged from such venues as the White House, the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, the Clinton Presidential Library, and the Library of Congress. He also appears frequently on C-SPAN, PBS, the History Channel, and other television networks. He is currently filming a segment for the forthcoming PBS documentary Looking for Lincoln, and will be a regular on-air guest during the two-year C-SPAN observances of Lincoln’s 200th birthday.

He has also served as guest curator for a number of Lincoln art exhibitions, including several shows at the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne. And he will be guest historian for the upcoming show “Lincoln and New York” at the New-York Historical Society.

A former journalist, and political and government press secretary, Harold Holzer has served as an executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1992, currently as senior vice president for external affairs. He and his wife, Edith, who live in Rye, New York, have two grown daughters and a grandson.

March 2008

 

SALISBURY HOUSE PERMANENT COLLECTION

Among Salisbury House’s permanent collection of objects, art and artifacts is a significant collection of over 2,000 books and 700 original letters and documents, including several from Abraham Lincoln or that pertain to him and his presidency. Associate Director at SH&G’s, Loulou Kane, has placed several of these objects in a special exhibit in the rare books library at Salisbury House as a part of Lincoln’s Bicentennial Celebration. Following is a description of these objects...

ABRAHAM LINCOLN NOTE, 1863

Handwritten note by President Lincoln on exterior of envelope that had contained a letter recommending Colonel Nelson Cross for Brigadier General. The letter was from Henry C. Bowen (1813-1896) a New York businessman who at this time was serving as collector of U.S. revenue for the third district of New York. Lincoln wrote on the envelope: “Submitted to the Sec. of War & General-in-Chief A. Lincoln July 21, 1863.”

Col. Cross, who was mustered out of service in 1864, was appointed Brevett Brigadier General and Major General of Volunteers in 1865, for gallant and meritorious service.

THE LITERARY WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Introduction by Carl Van Doren
Illustrated by John Steuart Curry
Printed for members of the Limited Editions Club in 1942

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE WAR YEARS, Vol. I
by Carl Sandburg 1939
Author-poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) had his first financial success with Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, published in 1926. Over the next several years he completed four additional volumes, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940.

TRIAL OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN BY THE GREAT STATESMEN OF THE PAST
This broadside, published in 1863 by the Metropolitan Record -- official publication of the Catholic Church in New York City -- takes aim at President Lincoln and what it claims to be his disregard and abuse of the country’s Constitution. Quoting earlier statesmen such as George Washington, Daniel Webster, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton among others, to make its argument, this polemic decries the President’s policies of press censorship, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the inauguration of national military conscription and other violations of state sovereignty. The publication had supported the Civil War until 1863 (Emancipation Proclamation), but turned against it thereafter.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN LETTER, 1860

Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Austrian journalist Dr. I.F. Castelli, written from Springfield, Illinois and dated June 28, 1860, several months before being elected President: “Dear Sir: Our mutual friend, F. Hassaurek of Cincinnati, Ohio, requesting my autograph for you. With pleasure I comply with his request – Yours truly, A. Lincoln”

Frederick Hassaurek (1832-1885) was editor of the Cincinnati Hochwachter and an editor of the Ohio Staats Zeitung. A delegate to the Republican National Convention from Ohio in 1860 and 1868, he was appointed Ambassador to Ecuador in 1861 where he served until 1866.