From The Gettysburg Battlefield To The Appomattox Courthouse

Charles Eliot Norton. Abraham Lincoln. I. History of the administration of President Lincoln: including his Speeches, Letters, Addresses, Proclamations, and Messages. With a preliminary Sketch of his Life. By Henry J. Raymond. New York: J. C. Derby & N. C. Miller. 1864. 12mo. Pp. 496. [1864?]. Manuscript.

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This is a manuscript draft of Charles Eliot Norton’s review of Henry Raymond’s 1864 Lincoln campaign biography that appeared in the North American Review in January 1865.  Norton, who was at this time serving as co-editor of the magazine, said nothing about Raymond’s book but much about Lincoln, whom he greatly admired.  “[T]here has never been a statesman in America,” asserts Norton, “more thoroughly in sympathy with the best interests of the American people, or more completely imbued with reverence for those ideas of justice, freedom, and humanity which inspire American institutions, than Abraham Lincoln.”  A member of the Harvard Class of 1846, Norton was professor of art at his alma mater from 1874 to 1898.

bMS AM 2507 (1)  Charles Eliot Norton, Additional Papers   Gift of the Norton Family, 1903.