Provenance: Marshall D. Krolick Collection

...Care to this Book it is a well earned history...

Edward Everett (1794-1865). Address of Hon. Edward Everett, at the Consecration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, 1863. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1864. 

8vo. Frontispiece map, folding maps. Recased with original cloth laid down. Modern cloth slipcase. Carbonell, Gettysburg Address 6; Monaghan 194. 

INSCRIBED BY DAVID WILLS to front free end paper: "With kind regards of / David Wills / Gettysburg / Oct. 12 1882". Inscribed below in pencil: "To A.J. Diehl Co B 86 Ill Vol.../Inbt...1862 to 1865 / Care to this Book / it is a well earned history". Bookplate of George Jefferson Mersereau affixed to interior front board. Could be in reference to George Jefferson Mersreau (1836-1880) or his son, George Jefferson Mersereau (1875-1947). 

WITH: Order of Exercises for Unveiling of Bronze Tablet on the Wills Building Gettysburg, Penn'a. Printed handbill. [Gettysburg, Pennsylvania]: N.p., 19 November 1926. 1 page, 8vo. Signed in type by Harry W. Long, Harry E. Koch, and E.F. Strausbaugh. 

A fine early edition of Everett's account of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, published on 30 January 1864, just two months after the event. Lincoln's address appears after Everett's lengthy oration on page 84. 

This copy, the "official report" commissioned by the Soldiers' National Cemetery Association, bears the inscription of David Wills (1831 - 1894), who was a pivotal figure in establishing the National Cemetery at Gettysburg immediately after the Battle. The day before the consecration, President Lincoln stayed at Wills's home and made the final edits to the Gettysburg Address. 

Carbonell notes that "this is the so-called 'official report' authorized and paid for by the Soldiers' National Cemetery Association, published in Boston by Little, Brown and Company, copyrighted by them on January 26, 1864, and sold for the benefit of the 'Cemetery Monument fund'. The January 30 issue of the New York Tribune announced that the book was 'Published This Day' and in a letter to Lincoln with the same date Everett wrote 'I shall have the honor of forwarding to you by Express today or on Monday next, a copy of the Authorized Edition of my Gettysburg Address & of the Remarks made by yourself & the other matters connected with the Ceremonial of the Dedication of the Cemetery. It appeared, owing to unavoidable delays, only yesterday.'"  (6, p.10)

This copy also includes a dedication to Civil War veteran A.J. Diehl, who enlisted as a Corporal on 12 August 1862 and mustered into Company B of the 86th Illinois Infantry on the 27th. He moved south with his regiment and fought in the Western Theater, later joining Sherman's Atlanta and Carolina Campaigns. Diehl was wounded in the right arm at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain on 27 June 1864. Despite his wounds, he continued with his regiment and was mustered out on 6 June 1865 at Washington, D.C. 

The book is further enhanced by the inclusion of the order of exercises for a memorial plaque at the Wills Building, where Abraham Lincoln stayed on the night of 18 November, 1863, before delivering the Gettysburg Address the next day. The memorial was erected on the anniversary of the address in 1926 by the Sons of Veterans of the Civil War. The Wills Building is operated by the National Parks Service and can be visited in Gettysburg. 

An important association copy of an early printing of the Gettysburg Address. 

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