FRANK LESLIE'S ILLUSTRATED, New York, March 24, 1866

• General Robert E. Lee portrait
• A.S.P.C.A. founder Henry Bergh

The entire front page is taken up with a print captioned: 'Robert E. Lee, General-in-Chief of the Late Confederate Army" with a related article on him on page 3.
Many other prints within including one of: "Mr. Henry Bergh, Founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." with a related article on him as well. This issue was just a month before the formal incorporation of the A.S.P.C.A.
Sixteen pages, small damp stain at margins, nice condition.

Background: This March 24, 1866, issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper is a rare and highly desirable Reconstruction-era primary source, notable for featuring dual historical highlights on the threshold of major national shifts. Its full front-page woodcut engraving of General Robert E. Lee—captioned as "General-in-Chief of the Late Confederate Army"—captures the Northern public's intense fascination with post-war Confederate leadership less than a year after Appomattox, published right as Lee was testifying before Congress on the state of the South. Equally significant is its early feature on Henry Bergh, published just weeks before he officially secured the charter incorporating the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) on April 10, 1866; this pre-founding print and profile represent one of the earliest media documentations of the animal rights movement in the Western Hemisphere. Complete 16-page issues from this volatile post-Civil War period featuring both pivotal military-political portraiture and historic social reform content are exceptionally scarce and sought after by 19th-century Americana collectors.