Town Hall Lecture by the Great Colored Orator, Fred. Douglass, This Evning. Subject: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Letterpress handbill. [Rutland, Vermont]: N.p., [27 September 1865]. 5 3/8 x 5 7/8 in. Pencil inscription to lower margin reads "Rutland Vt". Handsomely presented in modern mat and frame.

EXCEEDINGLY SCARCE. At the time of cataloging, no other copies could be located. 

Possibly unique handbill advertising a lecture by Frederick Douglass on the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln at the Vermont Fair in September 1865. 

Douglass'  stirring address was enthusiastically praised in a report published by The Rutland Weekly Herald in the October 5th issue: "He held the audience in close attention for more than an hour and half; his language was choice and elegant, yet vigorous and forceful; his manner self-possessed and graceful; his points telling; and his eloquence, as he pleaded that the colored people of the South who had fought in defense of the Union, should be treated as well as those who had fought against it, that those who had watered the land with their tears and enriched the soil with their blood, should receive as good treatment at the hands of the government as they who had fattened upon the tears and blood of others, was thrilling and irresistible. The speaker was frequently applauded, and the interest of the large audience was unabated to the close of his instructive and eloquent lecture." 

The content of the address likely drew heavily from the eulogy he delivered for President Lincoln on 1 June at Cooper Union in New York. 

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