Lincoln Railway Coach

Creator

Bernhardt Wall 1942

Preview

Creation Date

1941

Description

This item is an etching in umber ink found in Bernhardt Wall, Following Abraham Lincoln, 1809 – 1865, Vol. 4, Set No. 3, Lime Rock: CT, 1944, [leaf 60]. The book was etched and printed by the author. The etching is signed in pencil by the artist and author. It is also signed in the print “Wall 1942.” The print is 3.75 x 5 inches.

The text on the etching reads as follows: “Railway Coach in which President Lincoln and his party traveled to Gettysburg. Collection of E. L. Bangs Baltimore, Md.” Lincoln legend has it that President Lincoln wrote the “Gettysburg Address” on the back of an envelope or a scrap of paper in this railway car while he was traveling to Gettysburg. But modern scholarship agrees that Lincoln carefully wrote the speech in Washington before he left and finished it at David Wills’ house, where he stayed as a guest, in Gettysburg. The legend was popularized in Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, The Perfect Tribute, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906. Modern scholarship debunking the legend can be found in Kent Gramm, “A More Perfect Tribute,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 25, No. 2, (Summer, 2004), pp. 50-58.