148 pp. (Small 8vo) 18x11.5 cm (7x4½") original orange wrappers. First Edition.
First edition of southerner James Rogers’ play on the final days of Lincoln’s presidency and his assassination, a scarce presentation/association copy from the library of James Garfield, inscribed on the front cover, “Compliments of the Author for James A. Garfield.” Garfield was assassinated only 16 years after Lincoln and, also like Lincoln, was “born in a log cabin, the last American president who could claim that distinction” (Goodheart). Madam Surratt, “the first Lincoln play to be more than a propaganda piece,” was published in the decade after Lincoln’s assassination and two years before the assassination of President James Garfield (Whitney, “Lincoln’s Life as Dramatic Art,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 61:3). This scarce presentation/association copy of James Webb Rogers’ play, inscribed to Garfield, covers Lincoln’s presidency and assassination, and is named for the woman who was sentenced to death on charges of treason and co-conspiracy in plotting it. Rogers was a southern lawyer and poet who “served in the Confederate army… His play is constructed like an Elizabethan tragedy, with John Wilkes Booth as a combination Hamlet-Iago… while Lincoln sits in the White House telling frontier stories… To Rogers’ credit, however, the play does give some sense of the terrible suffering of a nation divided against itself” (Whitney). The title page contains a quote from Lincoln, “Malice to none; but charity to all,” and one by Rogers: “If my work should live, it will stand as a beacon, over a bloody sea, to warn our children, when we, who fought upon it, shall have passed away.” Garfield, America’s 20th president, was often seen “as a junior version of the famous Rail-Splitter himself… Though a full generation younger than Lincoln, Garfield, too, had been born in a log cabin, the last American president who could claim that distinction… Along with Lincoln… Garfield was considered in his time an exemplar of the self-made man” (Goodheart, 1861, 104, 95). Visitors to his home “always remarked on the size of Garfield’s study, which overflowed with well-thumbed volumes” (Rutkow, James A. Garfield, 44-46). OCLC lists 21 copies, including the Library of Congress, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Newberry, American Antiquarian Society, Harvard, Columbia and Oxford. The first Presidential Library was completed at the Lawnfield Estate in Ohio by the widow of James Garfield, Lucretia Garfield, four years after his assassination. The Library housed almost 3,000 books that were acquired and treasured by the 20th president. This is one of several dozen of Garfield’s books that were deaccessioned not long ago.