A Book by Abraham Lincoln

Signed by Abraham Lincoln a few days after his election as President of the United States, this first edition of *The Life and Writings of De Witt Clinton* far exceeded its estimate.

Published in 1849 by the American historian and jurist William W.Campbell (1806–1881), this copy sold for $64,000, against an estimate of $20,000–$30,000. The book bore the pencil inscription “A.Lincoln–Springfield, Ill. –Nov. 19, 1860,” written by Abraham Lincoln, then president-elect of the United States, less than two weeks after his election victory and a few months before his final departure from Springfield for Washington, D.C., where he would take office in March 1861. Governor of New York State, U.S. Senator, and later mayor of New York City, De Witt Clinton (1769–1828), to whom this biography is dedicated, is best remembered as the architect of the Erie Canal, a massive project inaugurated in 1825 that permanently transformed the American economy by connecting the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. An advocate of a proactive public investment policy, he embodied for the Whigs—the party to which Lincoln belonged early in his career—the model of a statesman capable of fostering the country’s development through major infrastructure projects. Lincoln himself supported similar projects in Illinois, particularly related to railroads, making this biography a true political reference work. According to Robert E.Bray, in *What Abraham Lincoln Read. An Evaluative and Annotated List, Lincoln never built up a large library, but in Springfield he assembled a few hundred volumes covering law, literature, history, and politics. This copy later passed into the collections of Charles E.Feinberg and then Harry J.Sonneborn, two leading figures in bibliophilia