American Historical Ephemera & Photography

The Daily Progress. Vol. VI, Number 130. Raleigh, NC: J.L. Pennington & Co., 15 April 1865.

2pp., folio, 20 1/4 x 23 1/2 in. Disbound (old creases with occasional separations, small pinholes, loss to lower margin).

An unusual publication issued in Raleigh, NC a mere two days after the city's surrender to General Sherman, the paper uses distinctly anti-Confederate language, having "been placed in possession of a N.Y. 'Herald.'" Also of note, the issue covers President Lincoln's April 4th visit to the captured Confederate capital, Richmond, VA: "no one incident of all this drama will so attract and fix the attention of the American people and the civilized world as the appearance to-day in the city of Richmond - erased capital of infernal traitors - of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States." The paper was issued on 15 April 1865, the day of Lincoln's death, however, the publishers and editors were unaware of his assassination and passing.

[Also with:] Columbia Phoenix. Columbia, SC: J.A. Selby, 6 April 1865. 6pp., 8vo, 9 x 8 3/4 in. Disbound (old creases, spotting consistent with late Confederate paper). Provenance: The Flowers Collection (stamp).

Includes front page contains coverage of the evacuation of Richmond and interior articles on the "Capture, Sack and Destruction of the City of Columbi," going into detail about "saving the South Carolina College library." A derogatory article regarding Charleston reports: "The Courier, under the Yankee regime, reaches us at intervals. It is monstrous dull and somewhat dirty. Clearly the editors possess nothing of the divine faculty. In the paper of the 22d March there is a report of a "Freedman's Jubilee," in which Cuffee ascends to the heavens of conceit and consequence...is allowed to play monkey tricks for a season prior to his being used up in the front rank, under the punch in the rear of Yankee bayonets....It affords a sufficient notion of the sort of beginning, in the education of negro children, that the motto of the flag borne over the little band of woollies ran thus: "We know no masters but ourselves." With such a tuition, such a moral to begin with - bad enough, in all conscience, to be taught to the white race - what fruit will it bring forth in the negro? God help the servants of such race, thus tutored."