Evening star., 1934-02-11

N THE eve Of the 125th anniversary
of his birth there has just reached
the National Capital, scene Of his
triumph and martyrdom, two Of
the most significant memorabilia
of Abraham Lincoln yet unearthed
iu the endless search which has been prosecuted
ever since his death They are two little brown
books which look though they might have
been gathered from the penny box Of a second
hand bookstall, but they happen to contain
the meat upon which the Emancipator fed
when he was training for the great turning
point of his career. They are the scrap00oks
with which he primed himself for his titanuc
debates with Stephen A. Douglas.
Until few weeks ago the very existence o.
these priceless objects was unknown and even
unsupported. They were at last discovered in
q mass of Lincoln papers gathered for, but not
used in, the famous Herndon biography. Their
outstanding historic importance recognized,
they promptly insured against loss or
theft and Emanuel Hertz, biographer of Lincoln,
personally carried them from New York to
Washington. Here, he placed them in the
custody of Henry r. Rainey, Speaker Of the
House, with the suggestion that they be shown
10 President Roosevelt.
INSIGNIFICANT of material aspect. but
J redolent of the stirring times which gave
them birth, the two little books reveal new
and striking insight into the mental habits OF
Lincoln and thus are destined to preoccupy
historians for many day. They also disclose
Lincoln as an assiduous reader of newspapers,
for their contents are almost entirely brief
clippings from the press of the 1850s, selected
with meticulous weighing Of the potential value
Of the boarded words. They are, in word,
Just scrapbooks but not the ponderouS kind
which must repose useless for the most part on
q shelf but the highly mobile, intimate little
volumes one may carry IN ones pocket to study
and digest at odd moments wherever one
may be.
Each of the books is about 21a by 5 inches The
first has Ledger" embossed in gold upon its
cover while the second is perfectly plain but
- has a brass Bible clasp and Is still inclosed
in an open-end box cover which Lincoln took
care never to lose. The clippings are all care
fully trimmed neatly pasted to the pages and
systematically indexed. The written name OF
Lincoln appears nowhere in or on either volume,
but even a schoolboy familiar with the uniform
small and quite legible hand which Lincoln
always wrote could not mistake the indexer.
What then. are the contents of the treasure
books which Lincoln made small enough to have
always with him as he prepared for the crucial
test that was to turn him toward the White
House to become the preserver Of the Union?
The books cover period Of about two years.
starting in 1885, and while the bulk of the
contents, of course, deals with the issue of
slavery, there many bits of miscellaneous
information Lincoln noticed in the newspapers
and which he thought might prove useful to
him at some time Among such items are
these:
A table of the solar system, distances between
large cities the popular vote for President In
1874, 1848, 1852 and 1856; dimensions of Ameri-
can lakes, population of the world ESTIMATED in
1854 at ,150, 600, ,0O0), coin and bullion in the
United States, status Of the magnetic tele-
graph" in 1857, tables on emigration, bank
statistics of 1858, mercantile insolvencies.
progress of Christianity, real and personal es-
tate in New York City in 1857, names of State
Governors, population and wealth of States.
debts of Europe (sic) in 1855, list of the
Presidents down to Buchanan (and one won-
ders if he pasted in that clipping the gentle
scrapbook maker dreamed of the fast approach
ing day when his own name would be appended
next in order)
I INCOLNS orderly habits of mind are at
L tested not only by the neatness and care
with which each clipping is affixed, but also by
q careful notation Of the source, penned along
side each bit. The newspaper names bring
memories of many which long since have gone
to a journalistic Valhalla-the Baltimore
Clipper. the Washington Intell1gencer. Republic
and Sentinel, the Richmond South the Charles
ton Mercury. The name of the New York
Times and the Tribune, in which Horace
Greeley was waging his doughty war for abo-
Htion, and the "home papers," such as the
Sangamon Journal, Quincy Herald and Illinois
State Journal, appear frequently, of course, but
the wide territory the clippings shows
Lincoln had some means of protecting himself
against merely provincial opinion on the burn
ing issue in which he was absorbed.
The first books contents begin with the
Henry Clay dctum that the Constitution "ls
silent and passive" on slavery, having neither
created nor does it continue" the custom These