AMERICANA 62 Custer’s Classic Account 69CUSTER, George A. My Life on the Plains. New York, 1874. Octavo, original blue cloth gilt, custom clamshell box. $4800 First edition of this classic of western Americana, illustrated with eight fullpage wood-engravings by A. Roberts, including a portrait of Custer and four portraits of chiefs, a very nice copy. Originally serialized in Galaxy magazine between 1872-74, Custer’s fascinating autobiography of life as a cavalryman fighting Native-American tribes on the plains appeared in book form only two years before his last stand at Little Bighorn. Introduced by his sketch of the landscape and speculations on the history and nature of the “Indian,” Custer’s narrative begins with the expedition of Major-General Hancock in the spring of 1867 and ends with the Washita campaign on the frontiers of Kansas. Only light scattered foxing, cloth with mild toning to spine, slight rubbing to spine ends, gilt bright. A lovely copy. “The Mystic Chords Of Memory, Stretching From Every Battlefield, And Patriot Grave, To Every Living Heart And Hearthstone” 70LINCOLN, Abraham. Inaugural Address. Washington, March 8, 1861. Slim octavo, disbound; pp. 10. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $8800 Rare second printing of Lincoln’s important first inaugural address, printed by order of the Senate four days after its delivery. On the morning of March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was escorted with little fanfare to his inauguration. Anticipating violence, riflemen were stationed on housetops along the parade route. On the platform erected at the Capitol’s east portico, “Lincoln put on a pair of steel-bowed spectacles and began reading his inaugural address in a clear, high-pitched voice that carried well out to the crowd of 25,000. The address was a document of inspired statesmanship. He reminded the South of his pledge not to interfere with slavery, but he firmly rejected secession—the Union was ‘unbroken.’ Finally he issued a grave warning: ‘In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war… Abraham Lincoln was resolved to be President of the whole Union” (Bruce Catton). A fine copy.
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