Letterpress broadside with mourning border, measuring 235 by 145mm. Philadelphia, A.W. Auner, 1865.
A crisp copy of this handsome mourning poem, one of many written and published in the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination on 14 April, 1865.
Above the title is printed "In memory of Abraham Lincoln Sixteenth President of the United States." Below it, "An Honest Man's the Noblest Work of God." The poem itself is both a lament for Lincoln's passing and America's bloody history ("Oh why, my country, must thou bleed For deeds the rebels madly plan?"); a celebration of his accomplishments ("whose name and deeds can never die"); and an implied entreaty to forgiveness ("Oh weep for him whose patient heart Gave pardon to a fallen for; Who acted well a manly part, Tow'rds those who planned a fatal blow").
Septimus Winner (1827-1902) wrote the music, and while the lyrics are credited to Alice Hawthorne, she was but one of Winner's many pseudonyms. His mother, Mary Ann Winner (née Hawthorne) was a relative of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the pseudonym is a tribute to that connection. A prolific songwriter, composer, performer, teacher and publisher, he was active throughout Philadelphia's music community. The poem includes a notice of his own "Sp. Winner's Music Store" with premises on 933 Spring Garden Street.
Scarce: OCLC locates 9 copies.
Wolf, American song sheets, slip ballads, and poetical broadsides, 1850-1870, No. 1545; cf., Stern collection, 5016.
