Books and Manuscripts

[Lincoln, Abraham] Washington, Booker T., et al.
Signed Lincoln Centennial Association Banquet Program
Springfield, (Illinois), 1910. First edition. 8vo. Unpaginated (22 pp.). Signed at rear by speaker Booker T. Washington, as well as Edwin F. Irwin, Ernst H. H____, Herman Pierik, W.C. Sommer, Richings J. Shand, Albert Myers, A.W. Linking, William H. Conkling, C.W. Feaster. W.H. Winton, and Emanuel Salzenstein. Illustrated with a mounted frontispiece portrait of Lincoln (now loose). Original reverse calf, stamped in gilt, extremities browned; top and bottom edges trimmed, fore-edge untrimmed.

A rare program from the Lincoln Centennial Association's “Banquet given on the One hundred and First Anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln”, held at the St. Nicholas Hotel in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, on February 12, 1910. The program prints the dinner menu, the Association's incorporators, a poem “The Heroes of Time” listing Lincoln alongside such figures as Moses and Christ, as well as the night's speakers, including Booker T. Washington, who gave the keynote address “Some Results of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation”. At the rear of the volume Washington has signed his name, alongside 11 other figures who were present that evening.

The Lincoln Centennial Association was founded in Springfield in 1909 to observe the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. In 1929, they were renamed Abraham Lincoln Association, and still exist today with a focus on Lincoln-related research. They hold an annual symposium and banquet commemorating the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln.

Rare, we can locate only two other copies in the available auction record.