Lincoln’s Legacy: Historic Americana from the Life of Abraham Lincoln

1 p. note on 2 pp. letter; 9 x 5 3/4 in. (241 x 146 mm); creasing from old folds; with original addressed envelope. 

BOOTH CONSPIRATOR LAMENTS HIS ACTIONS LATER IN LIFE, "...my life, which for the past 40 years to me, has been one of sorrow & pain."

A note by Samuel B. Arnold (1834-1906), written at the conclusion of a letter to him by A.E. Fostell, dated 5 March 1904, requesting a signed photograph of Arnold, and offering to pay. At the bottom of the second page, Arnold writes, "Yours of the 5th received and contents noted. In reply & beg I state that I have no Photos of myself, outside of the one received from the Balt. American, the negative of which I suppose was destroyed in the destruction of its office during the conflagration 7th & 8th July 1904. Situated as I am it will be impossible for me to furnish you one. I thank you for the interest taken by you in my life, which for the past 40 years to me, has been one of sorrow & pain."

Arnold was raised in Baltimore, where he was schoolmates with John Wilkes Booth. When the war broke out he enlisted in the Confederate Army, but was discharged due to health reasons. After moving back home, he was recruited by Booth to conspire in Booth's initial plot to kidnap Lincoln and hold him for ransom, which failed on two separate occasions. After Booth assassinated the President on 15 April 1865, Arnold was arrested as a suspected accomplice. He confessed his role in the kidnapping plot and was convicted by the military tribunal, and was sentenced to life in prison. In 1869, he was pardoned, along with two of the other conspirators, by President Andrew Johnson, and lived out the rest of his life in Maryland, writing articles for the Baltimore American about his experiences, before he died in 1906.

Provenance:

Louise Taper, Beverly Hills, California

Exhibition:

The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America, at the Huntington Library, October 1993-August 1994