Right before President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg address in 1864, the Rev. Thomas H. Stockton, chaplain to the US Congress during the Civil War, offered this prayer, “...As the trees are not dead, though the foliage is gone, so our heroes are not dead though their forms have fallen - with their personality they are all with Thee, and the spirit of their example is here. It fills the air, it fills our hearts, and long as time shall last it will hover in these skies and rest on this landscape....”

We are offering a rare 1862 wartime first edition by Stockton, titled Poems, with Autobiographic and Other Notes, published by William S. and Alfred Martien, Philadelphia, in 1862. Very scarce, first copy we have seen. With an 1862 inked inscription that is a little hard to read, Mrs. M.T. Gillies, from F.G. Kennedy, Jan. 4th, '62.

THE BOOK is dedicated to Abraham Lincoln, referred to as "Our Capital-President."

There are 8 full page engraved prints.

In his preface, Rev. Stockton notes, "It may seem strange that such a book as this should appear at all, especially that it should venture abroad under present circumstances." He notes that he started the book before the war began, that he "responded to my duty" and took up his chaplain robes, and the work on the book was suspended. "Afterward, its completion seemed necessary." Interesting. The book is best described as mystical poetry, with a subtitle reading, Faith and Sight, Or, the Spirit World and Sense World, with a Theory of the Divine Government of the World.

Wild stuff. 321 pages, bound in brown cloth with gilt titles, a solid copy. Very rare.