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A rare edition we have never encountered before...



Item # 673209

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April 15, 1865

EVENING EDITION OF THE TRIBUNE, New York, April 15, 1865  A fascinating edition of this famous newspaper which typically reported the assassination of Lincoln on page 4. But this unusual four page (more typically 8 pages) "Extra" edition has a front page heading as noted above, with the top of the first column presented like a mini-broadside:
                   "DEATH of the PRESIDENT"
"War Department, Washington, April 15, 1865.
Major-General Dix: Abraham Lincoln died this morning at twenty-two minutes after 7 o'clock.
                       Edwin M. Stanton,
                                          Secretary of War.
"
Beneath this is: "See the Fourth and Eighth pages of this sheet for the particulars of the attempted Assassination of the President and Secretary Seward."
The balance of the front page is taken up with mostly mundane reports, although column two is headed: "From the Army Of the Potomac" "The Surrender of Gen. Lee's Army--Details and Incidents Antecedent and Subsequent" which takes 1 1/2 columns.
From here the layout of this special four page edition gets interesting.
Since the "regular" edition, which we've sold many times, had already been laid out and which went to press with Lincoln still alive, they used what was page 8 for page 2 (paginated as "8" as well), and they used the front page of the regular edition for page 3 with the black mourning rules and the typical masthead, and they used page 4 of the regular edition (paginated as "4") for the back page of this edition, carrying the earlier reports of the assassination with all eleven dispatches.
The first dispatch, dated "Friday, April 14, 1865", simply states: "The President was shot in a theatre tonight, and perhaps mortally wounded." Each subsequent dispatch provides more information, and in the sixth it mentions that "At about 10 1/2 o'clock, in the midst of one of the acts, a pistol shot was heard, and at the same instant a man leaped upon the stage from the same box occupied by the President, brandished a long knife, and shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis!" The next dispatch mentions Lincoln's condition and reveals the identity of the assassin: "No hopes are entertained for his recovery. Laura Keene claims to have recognized the assassin as the actor, John Wilkes Booth." Much more in the remaining dispatches, especially with regard to Lincoln's hopeless condition, as well as the confusion as revealed in the last dispatch: "The accounts are confused and contradictory....We go to press without knowing the exact truth, but presume there is the slightest ground for hope..." All columns on all pages are black-bordered to commemorate this tragic event.
This "Extra" edition allowed the Tribune to put on the streets the report of Lincoln's death.
A very special and very rare four page edition, never bound nor trimmed, nice condition.

Category: Yankee