Pamphlet: "REMARKS of HON. LYMAN TRUBULL, OF ILLINOIS, ON seizure of Arsenals at Harper's Ferry, Va., and Liberty, Mo., and in vindication of the Republican Party and its Creed, in response to Senators Chesnut, Yulee, Saulsbury, Clay, and Pugh. Delivered in the United States Senate, December 6, 7 and 8, 1859". Printed at Washington, D.C., Buell & Blanchard, printers, 1859.
Complete as a  16 page pamphlet, never bound nor trimmed, 6 by 9 1/4 inches, wear at the margins, wear at the back leaf folds.

Background: This pristine, 16-page political pamphlet captures a watershed moment in the fracturing of the antebellum United States, containing the three-day Senate speech delivered by Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull between December 6 and 8, 1859. Coming a mere two weeks after John Brown was hanged for his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and amid a similarly tense climate surrounding the seizure of the arsenal at Liberty, Missouri, this document represents the critical, high-stakes defense of the fledgling Republican Party against Southern accusations of treason and radical abolitionism. Trumbull, a formidable constitutional lawyer and close ally of Abraham Lincoln, used this address to vindicate the Republican creed, masterfully arguing that the party sought only the constitutional restriction of slavery’s expansion rather than violent insurrection, thereby mapping out the exact ideological battle lines that would define the pivotal presidential election of 1860. The item holds exceptional bibliographic rarity and historical value because it survives in its original, untouched state: a 6 by 9¼-inch octavo that was "never bound nor trimmed." Because 19th-century political speeches were typically printed rapidly on large sheets, folded into signatures, and often roughly cut or heavily bound into compilation volumes by owners, finding a copy that preserves its original untrimmed deckle edges and as-issued format offers an incredibly rare, pristine window into Civil War-era print culture.