After lying buried for almost three quarters of a century in the columnsof a single newspaper, unknown even to Lincoln specialists, this eulogyon President Zachary Taylor was discovered by sheer accident. It wasthen brought to the attention of Rev. William E. Barton, D.D., ofChicago, who has long been an ardent student of Abraham Lincoln and haspublished several books about him. By diligent searching he was able togather the many details which he has embodied in his Introduction to theeulogy, and the publishers have gladly coöperated with him for thepreservation of all the material in a worthy and attractive form.
4 Park Street, Boston
September 1, 1922
THIS EDITION IS LIMITED TO FOUR HUNDRED AND
THIRTY-FIVE COPIES, PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE
PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A., OF WHICH FOUR HUNDRED
[Pg 5]ARE FOR SALE. THIS IS NUMBER [Handwritten: 273]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY WILLIAM R. BARTON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED[Pg 7]
The discovery of an unknown address by Abraham Lincoln is an event ofliterary and historical significance. Various attempts have been made torecover his "Lost Speech," delivered in Bloomington, in 1856. Henry C.Whitney undertook to reconstruct it from notes and memory, with a resultwhich has been approved by some who heard it, while others, including aconsiderable group who gathered in Bloomington to celebrate the fiftiethanniversary of its original delivery and of the event which called itforth, declared their conviction that "Abraham Lincoln's 'Lost Speech'is still lost." So far as I am aware no one now living remembers to haveheard Lincoln's address on the death of President Zachary Taylor.Lincoln's oration on the death of Henry Clay is well[Pg 10] known, and hisspeech commemorative of his friend, Benjamin Ferguson, also is ofrecord. His eulogy on President Zachary Taylor, however, appears to havebeen wholly overlooked by Lincoln's biographers and by the compilers ofvarious editions of his works. Nicolay and Hay make no allusion to it,either in their "Life" of Lincoln or in their painstaking compilationsof his writings and speeches. I have found but one reference to it, thatin Whitney's "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln."
Lovers of Lincoln are to be congratulated upon this discovery, of whichsome account is to be given in this introduction. The address wasdelivered in the City Hall in Chicago on Thursday afternoon, July 25,1850. It was printed in