Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) NOTE After lying buried for almost three quarters of a century in the columns of a single newspaper, unknown even to Lincoln specialists, this eulogy on President Zachary Taylor was discovered by sheer accident. It was then brought to the attention of Rev. William E. Barton, D.D., of Chicago, who has long been an ardent student of Abraham Lincoln and has published several books about him. By diligent searching he was able to gather the many details which he has embodied in his Introduction to the eulogy, and the publishers have gladly cooeperated with him for the preservation of all the material in a worthy and attractive form. 4 PARK STREET, BOSTON _September 1, 1922_ THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICE OF GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR THIS EDITION IS LIMITED TO FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE COPIES, PRINTED AT THE RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A., OF WHICH FOUR HUNDRED ARE FOR SALE. THIS IS NUMBER [Handwritten: 273] THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICE OF GENERAL ZACHARY TAYLOR AN ADDRESS BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN [Illustration] BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY WILLIAM R. BARTON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INTRODUCTION The discovery of an unknown address by Abraham Lincoln is an event of literary and historical significance. Various attempts have been made to recover his "Lost Speech," delivered in Bloomington, in 1856. Henry C. Whitney undertook to reconstruct it from notes and memory, with a result which has been approved by some who heard it, while others, including a considerable group who gathered in Bloomington to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its original delivery and of the event which called it forth, declared their conviction that "Abraham Lincoln's 'Lost Speech' is still lost." So far as I am aware no one now living remembers to have heard Lincoln's address on the death of President Zachary Taylor. Lincoln's oration on the death of Henry Clay is well known, and his speech commemorative of his friend, Benjamin Ferguson, also is of record. His eulogy on President Zachary Taylor, however, appears to have been wholly overlooked by Lincoln's biographers and by the compilers of various editions of his works. Nicolay and Hay make no allusion to it, either in their "Life" of Lincoln or in their painstaking compilations of his writings and speeches. I have found but one reference to it, that in Whitney's "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln." Lovers of Lincoln are to be congratulated upon this discovery, of which some account is to be given in this introduction. The address was delivered in the City Hall in Chicago on Thursday afternoon, July 25, 1850. It was printed in one Chicago paper. It was set up from Lincoln's original manuscript, furnished for the purpose.