Lincoln's New Salem [Inscribed by Author; Engraving laid in, signed]

Ill.: The Abraham Lincoln Association, Springfield, 1934. 12mo with tan cloth boards and red title stamping; illustrated endpapers; xv, 128 pages: including frontispiece, illustrations, folded map; 20 cm. Etching 13x16cm Very good (+); boards a bit toned/foxed with minor edgewear and bumping to lower corners; ex libris sticker to front pastedown; pages are clean and binding is tight; a handsome copy. No jacket.

Inscribed by the author on the front flyleaf after illustrated endpapers. Includes signed engraving/etching of The Lincoln Homestead in Springfield, Illinois by Virginia Stuart Brown,a descendant of Abraham Lincoln’s first law partner, who was the last resident custodian of the Lincoln Home. Benjamin P. Thomas was the author of Abraham Lincoln: A Biography in 1952. According to a University of Michigan article about the author, "New Salem, as pictured by Thomas and rebuilt by the state, was not a random cluster of sordid jerry-built cabins but a well-ordered community of "substantial and comfortable" structures. It was not a poor, primitive settlement but a prosperous middle-class community, for, in the march of civilization, "roving hunters and trappers" and "restless squatters" had been superseded by farmers with "stock and capital." The "budding intellectuality" of the place was more important than its "crudities and imperfections." New Salem was Lincoln's school. Its supportive environment "freed him from the retarding influence of his family." Everyday life in New Salem presupposed the ideals that Lincoln came to support—equality of opportunity, democracy, nationalism. In other words, Thomas took for granted the "frontier hypothesis" that traced American ideals and institutions to the New Salems of the nation". Part One of this book is devoted to the history of New Salem. It tells who the inhabitants were, how they lived, and how they looked on life. Since many of those most active in the village lived in outlying settlements the account is not limited to the village, but provides a picture of their whole community. In Part Two, Lincoln's activities are discussed, and the meaning of the New Salem years in his development is appraised. Part Three explains the growth of the Lincoln legend around the site of the lost town, and the changing conception of the significance of the frontier as a factor in Lincoln's life. It explains how New Salem came to be restored, the manner in which the fact about the old cabins were secured, how the furnishings were acquired, and the problems that had to be solved in the restoration.--From the foreword.