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

1 p.; 7 x 8 1/2 in. (178 x 216 mm) on pale blue paper; silked; creasing from old folds, small losses along same affecting a few letters; small marginal loss in upper right corner not affecting text; scattered spotting.

THE "BASS-ACKWARDS" MANUSCRIPT, THE ONLY SURVIVING WRITTEN EXAMPLE OF LINCOLN'S FRONTIER RIBALDRY.

In the years following his death one of Lincoln's close friends, Henry Clay Whitney, would write that "His stories may be literally retold, every word, period, and comma, but the real humor perished with Lincoln...he provoked as much laughter by the grotesque expression of his homely face as by the abstract fun of his stories."

Lincoln's humor set him apart from other presidents, making him both beloved and reviled upon his election in 1860. For some, his coarse, backwoods humor was unbecoming of a man with the power of the United States government behind him, and especially a man whom the upper-class slaveholders of the south considered to be representing a clear and present danger to their way of life. To others, however, Lincoln's humor made him more appealing. A talented mimic and storyteller, his humor was the product of his upbringing in the frontiers of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, where tall tales and exaggeration were key ingredients to good jokes.

The manuscript comprises a series of "spoonerisms," in which the storyteller transposes the first few letters of a word for humorous effect. In full: "He said he was riding bass-ackwards on a jass-ack, through a patton-cotch, on a pair of baddle-sags, stuffed full of binger-gred, when the animal steered at a scump, and the lirrup-steather broke, and throwed him in the forner of the kence and broke his pishing-fole. He said he would not have minded it much, but he fell right in a great tow-curd; in fact, he said it give him a right smart sick of fitness—he had the molera-corbus pretty bad– He said, about bray dake he come to himself, ran home, seized up a stick of wood and split the axe to make a light, rushed into the house, and found the door sick abed, and his wife standing open– But thank goodness she is getting right hat and farty again–"

This manuscript was first published by William Herndon's co-author Jesse W. Weik in The Real Lincoln (p. 192) with the explanation that Lincoln had written it for an unidentified bailiff in the Springfield courts, whom Basler later tentatively identified as Whig attorney Arnold R. Robinson (Collected Works l, p. 490n). It was thereafter gifted to the Illinois State Historical Library, where it was then traded to an anonymous collector for a first edition Book of Mormon. Due to its ribald content, the letter was a target for numerous persons interested in protecting the "sacred memory" of Abraham Lincoln by destroying it. Hamilton relates in his memoir that "two collectors bartered with the owner of the great manuscript...one of whom admitted that he intended to burn it! Fortunately, in a sealed-bid competition, his offer was topped by a collector who loved the story as an inimitable bit of Lincoln's humor and who secretly preserved it for many years..." (Auction Madness, p. 119).

Basler 8:420; D.C. Mearns, Largely Lincoln, 1961; C. Hamilton, American Autographs, 1983, p. 441 (illustrated); Nevins and Stone, Lincoln: A Contemporary Portrait, 1962, pp. 180-181; Oates, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths, 1984, p. 50.

Provenance:

A bailiff of a Springfield court, reportedly Arnold R. Robinson, gifted from Lincoln

The Illinois State Historical Library, gift of a descendant

Previously sold, Charles Hamilton Galleries, 16 May 1963. (Hamilton, Auction Madness, p. 119, for an account of the manuscript: "This unsigned bit of Lincolniana was knocked down for $4,000 at one of my earliest auctions nearly twenty years ago. What would it fetch today!")

Lindley and Charles Eberstadt; previously sold, their sale, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 13 October 1964, lot 124. (Manuscript described in their sale as being "the most intimate and unusual Lincoln document known to survive," and "perhaps the greatest Presidential character piece extant")

Previously sold, Christie's New York, 9 December 1994, lot 44

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

Abraham Lincoln: A Personal Journey at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum, 12 October 2001-18 February 2002