Bibliophemera

Thanks to Leap Year, I have one last day to post something to this blog for February. As I've just finished reading Killing Lincoln , by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard, here's a publisher's double-sided advertisement for a biography of a man close to Lincoln-- Ulysses S. Grant , the great Union General in the Civil War and the 18th President of the United States: A Personal History of Ulysses S. Grant , by Albert D. Richardson, published shortly after Grant's death. Grant and his wife were invited by Lincoln to accompany the Lincolns to Ford's Theater the night of the assassination, April 14, 1865, but Grant deferred to his wife's wishes to get out of town that afternoon. There's a lesson in there, I suppose. Had he accepted the President's invitation, there may not have been a President Grant. John Wilkes Booth had hoped to kill Grant along with Lincoln when he heard they might be watching the play together that night. Grant would live anoth...