Tribune Tracts No. 6, Life of Abraham Lincoln
New York: Horace Greeley & Co., 1860.
32 pp, printed in double columns. Original self-wrappers. Front wrap has some restoration, an old price written in ink, and an old bookseller's description affixed to the bottom margin. Internally clean and sound; housed in a custom cloth clamshell case. An early Lincoln campaign biography, described by Howes (S-247a) as "the most authentic" of the many accounts of Lincoln's life produced during the 1860 and 1864 campaigns. Published simultaneously by the Chicago Press and Tribune and in this New York edition, Scripps' work was based in part on an autobiographical sketch written by Lincoln. It also included additional details Lincoln provided only reluctantly, after telling Scripps that his life could be condensed into a single sentence from Gray's Elegy: "'The short and simple annals of the poor.' That's my life, and that's all you or anyone else can make of it." According to Horrocks (Lincoln's Campaign Biographies, p. 54), "Although he informed Lincoln that he had added 'nothing that I was not fully authorized to put into it,' Scripps freely embellished Lincoln's manuscript, adding details concerning his ancestors, parents, and religious upbringing that the candidate chose to omit." Lincoln may have been displeased with this, but the public was not, and the pamphlet sold very well. Monaghan 79.
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