Note: Please see Day 3 (October 11) of the sale that features rare material relating to the Gettysburg Address.

Charles Lanman. Dictionary of the United States Congress, Containing Biographical Sketches of its Members from the Foundation of the Government. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1859. 

Large 8vo. 534. [2] 159. Original brown cloth. FIRST EDITION. Sabin 38917.

INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR CHARLES LANMAN to Buffalo industrialist George Coit. 

FIRST PUBLISHED BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LINCOLN, STRUCK BY A BULLET.

The first published biographical sketch of Abraham Lincoln is included in this compilation of Congressional biographies on page 298. The inclusion predates the first stand-alone biography, John Locke Scripps's pamphlet, issued the following year during Lincoln's presidential campaign. 

The short entry reads in part: "He was born in Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809; received limited education; adopted the profession of law...four times elected to the Illinois Legislature; and a Representative in Congress from Illinois, from 1847 to 1849."

The copy here is inscribed by the author, Charles Lanman, to George Coit Esq, the Buffalo industrialist. Inexplicably, the book's front board has been penetrated by a bullet, high center, which has proceeded only through the board and indented the preliminaries. The "wound" is clearly of some age. Accidental? Practice? Prophetic? Sorrow? Dark humor? The answer is lost to the ages, providing us with a tantalizing Lincoln artifact. 

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