306 issues bound, large folio (667 x 533 mm). (Toning, offsetting, spotting throughout.) Contemporary red cloth (rear hinge cracked, minor ink stains, light rubbing and soiling to extremities).

A DAY BY DAY RECORD OF A NATION TEETERING ON THE BRINK OF WAR.

The National Intelligencer was founded in Washington, D.C. by journalist and publisher Samuel Harrison Smith in 1800. A close personal friend and advisor of Thomas Jefferson, this association gave Smith considerable access to Jefferson's administration and established the Intelligencer as a reliable mouthpiece for the Democratic-Republican Party; its allegiances shifted to the Whigs following the Democratic-Republican Party's dissolution in the late 1820s. So notorious and aggressive was the paper's journalistic style that its offices were singled out for destruction by British forces during the burning of Washington on 24 August 1814, with British commander Sir George Cockburn famously commanding, "Be sure that all the C's are destroyed, so the rascals cannot any longer abuse my name."

By 1860, the National Intelligencer was firmly established as one of the nation's leading newspapers. Strongly pro-Union, its editors supported Constitutional Union Party candidate John Bell during the 1860 election, believing that for any of the other three presidential candidates to be elected would surely end in dissolution of the Union. Ironically, Bell was the first of two 1860 presidential candidates to declare his support for the Confederacy following the attack on Fort Sumter in 1861.

The present volume contains 306 daily newspapers dated from 2 January to 31 December 1860, with detailed coverage of the presidential contest, Lincoln's election, numerous incidents which further inflamed tensions between North and South and, finally, the secession of South Carolina from the Union on 24 December.

PROVENANCE:
Library of the Department of the Navy (institutional bookplate); "Sec. of the Navy" ( contemporary inscription to corners of many issues)