Item #36133 EXTRA! JEFF DAVIS' ESCAPE!!! NEFARIOUS SCHEME FOR GETTING RID OF THE "DRAWN ELEPHANT." A RASCALLY PLOT EXPOSED. A MISERABLE OLD FARCE PLAYED OUT. THE PLAYERS:. Jefferson Davis.

EXTRA! JEFF DAVIS' ESCAPE!!! NEFARIOUS SCHEME FOR GETTING RID OF THE "DRAWN ELEPHANT." A RASCALLY PLOT EXPOSED. A MISERABLE OLD FARCE PLAYED OUT. THE PLAYERS: ...

[New York: Calvin Blanchard. 26 Ann Street, 1865?]. Broadside, 4-1/2" x 16". A couple of horizontal folds, light spotting, and a little shallow chipping at blank edges. Very Good.

This satiric broadside-- a bitter rejection of leniency for the Confederacy's president-- is a "burlesque trial of Jefferson Davis written in the form of a play" [NYHS entry]. It ends, "At No. 26 Ann Street, New York, you can get 'Peculiar Books.' There's real pleasure in 'those books'." That address was the site of Calvin Blanchard's printing shop. Hence, we, as well as the New York Historical Society, infer that Blanchard is responsible for this imprint.
Davis, "the dethroned Viceroy of King Cotton," is brought to the Bar "proud and defiant as ever," armed with a "petition from all the Churches in Dixie, and from a multitude of Christians North, South, East and West of Dixie, asking for, or rather REQUIRING the Prisoner's release" [italics in original]. The President pledges to pardon Davis "if he is found guilty of treason or murder." A voice asks, "And as to pardon, Mr. President, didn't Capt. Wirz, and Mistress Surratt, and the deserters, merit the pardon more than the big blackguard who set them on?" With participation by "Irishmen," a drunk "Dutchman." and others, the Court adjourns "amidst uproarious self-contempt."
OCLC 60852689 [1- NYHS] as of July 2022. Bangs Auction, Feb. 6, 1877, Lot 411. Not at online sites of NYPL, AAS, Newberry, Library of Congress, Harvard, Yale, U TX, Brown, U IL. Item #36133

Price: $2,000.00

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