Rare books from The Raab Collection

22/01/1948. Mahatma Gandhi This fragment states that “leaders doing the [right thing] was proving infectious”Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on January 30, 1948. Gandhi had been an astute political campaigner who fought for and won Indian independence from British rule, and championed the rights of the Indian poor. His example of non-violent protest set the example for Martin Luther King and others, and is still revered throughout the world today.Gandhi’s biography states: “He stopped at the thresholds of the huts of the thousands of dispossessed, dressed like one of their own. He spoke to them in their own language. Here was living truth at last, and not only quotations from books, for this reason the Mahatma [Great Soul], the name given to him by the people of India, is his real name. Who else has felt like him that all Indians are his own flesh and blood? When love came to the door of India, that door was opened wide. At Gandhi's call India blossomed forth to new greatness, just as once… Read More

1880. Thomas Edison Acquired by us directly from the descendant of Edison’s chief laboratory machinist John Kruesi, and never before offered for sale; This invention led to the lighting of New York City, the United States, and then globeThe Smithsonian displays an artifact with the same provenance: A lamp used to illuminate Menlo Park on December 31,1879, when Edison introduced his invention to the world. It is currently on in the exhibition Lighting A Revolution at the National Museum of American History.Thomas Edison propelled the world out of the gaslight era and into the electric age. With dreams of lighting up entire cites, Edison lined up financial backing, assembled a group of brilliant scientists and technicians, and applied his genius to the challenge of creating an effective and affordable electric lamp. With unflagging determination, he and his team tried out thousands of possibilities, convinced that every failure brought them one step closer to success. They succeeded where so many… Read More

1890. Jim Younger There are 31 letters from Cole Younger, 46 letters from Jim Younger, over a dozen poems and drawings by Jim, 44 letters of others, and innumerable other items.Provenance: the descendants of the recipient and never before offered for saleLetters of these men are not common, particularly those of Jim, of which only 3 appear in public sale recordsCole and Jim Younger, Cora: A HistoryThe Younger-James GangThomas Coleman “Cole” Younger and his brothers Jim and Bob have entered legend as outlaws who joined forces with the notorious Jesse and Frank James to rob banks and trains in the period following the Civil War. The James–Younger Gang became the most storied of the 19th-century gangs of the West. They were accused or were implicated in about 20 robberies and murders during its spree from 1866-1876.The Youngers were born into a large and affluent family, Cole in 1844 and Jim in 1848, near Lee’s Summit, Missouri. Though his father was a respected landowner and merchant, the elder… Read More

1959. Dwight D. Eisenhower Perhaps the most historically important gun to reach the market; Gifts of state are themselves rare, as since an Act of Congress in 1978, they have belonged to the nation and not the recipient; The magnificent shotgun, another one of which was given to President Eisenhower, comes with a copy of the thank you letter from McElroy to Khrushchev Khrushchev’s visit lessened Cold War tensions and was a major reason the Cold War did not turn hot [embed size=""full""]https://player.vimeo.com/490828807[/embed] ProvenanceThis gift was given by the craftsmen in Izhevsk to Premier Khrushchev, who brought it from Moscow and instructed his foreign policy team to present it to Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy, a gift of state meant to symbolize a detente between the two nations. It was retained by McElroy and passed to his son, whose heirs sold it directly to us. It has never before been offered for sale and was not known to have survived.RarityThis is perhaps the most… Read More

1940. Winston Churchill A note from the War Cabinet, May 20, 1940, pre-Dunkirk, written in his presence, trying to respond to the Nazi blitzkrieg in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands Both salvaged and retained for posterity by his private secretary John Colville, and affixed in a form of journal entry, with Colville's handwritten annotations as provenance Truly unique, we have never seen anything like this on the market beforeThe Battle of FranceOn May 10, 1940, the Phony War came to a stunning end as Hitler invaded the Low Countries—Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands—and France. His progress just in the first day was dramatic and altogether unlike the experience of World War I. It was clear that Britain needed a coalition government that would put aside party considerations and turn all attention to actively dealing with the war. The Labor Party refused to serve under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose appeasement policies were blamed for Britain’s unpreparedness, and… Read More

02/03/1864. Abraham Lincoln Lincoln donated this famous letter and its message to a Sanitary Fair, while praising the women for the work ""you are so patriotically employing"" to raise funds for his sick and wounded troops An extremely rare written mention of his all-known empathy and concern for the suffering and gallant soldiers of the Union The “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” show that Lincoln specifically mentioned “suffering soldiers” just four times during his presidency; this is one of those four mentions Lincoln’s compassion and mercy are central to his legacy, and the picture that has come down to us envisions him as a man who was generous of spirit. From the start of the Civil War, Lincoln felt the weight of the sacrifice that so many families were making for the Union, and he saw that tens and then hundreds of thousands of men – sons, husbands, and brothers – were dying. He was not anxious for any additional lives to be taken. HeThe United States Sanitary… Read More

31/05/1863. Abraham Lincoln In a remarkable statement articulating this, Lincoln writes: ""I esteem Gov. Francis Thomas, as an able, and very true man. I do not know that he agrees with me in everything—perhaps he does not; but he has given me evidence of sincere friendship, & as I think, of patriotism."" Reference for research, publication, and institutions: Raab L13.060Lincoln’s essential philosophy was to put personal feelings aside for the sake of the country. He built his famed Team of Rivals on that premise, selecting his political opponents to serve in his Cabinet. In 1862, he named Edwin M. Stanton to be Secretary of War, despite Stanton having called him “the original gorilla”, and blamed the reverses in the war to date to “the imbecility of this administration,” because he saw Stanton as competent and up to the job. He allowed General George B. McClellan to treat him rudely, so long as there was hope he would bring the country victories. It takes a great man and… Read More

12/04/1776. John Hancock Those very bells would sound 2 months later to celebrate his signing of the Declaration of Independence He announces the news of the capture of the first British vessel by a regularly commissioned American force, done by John Barry, news having been sent him as President the day before A newly discovered and unpublished letter, our best ever of Hancock from 1776 “You say nothing about Boston. I want to hear every little stirring. How pray are the bells taken from the steeples, I long to hear the Sound of those Bells. Do give me particulars…Captain Barry’s letter to me you will see in the enclosed papers. We have good accounts from our little fleet at New London…Persevere in doing all the good you can.”“We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” This, the closing line of the Declaration of Independence, manifests the frame of mind of the Signers at that momentous time. All fifty-six of them literally put their… Read More

19/12/1781. Thomas Jefferson This famous letter, the first by any American president on the subject of fossils or paleontology, was hand delivered by Daniel Boone Jefferson, stepping down as Virginia governor, says he will use his time on scientific pursuits like paleontology: ""The retirement into which I am withdrawing has increased my eagerness in pursuit of objects of this kind."" Formerly at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; never before offered for sale publiclyThomas Jefferson is one of America's first great naturalists. He commissioned the first official paleontological dig in the United States. He sent Lewis and Clark west not only to look for a passage west but also to find specimens of animals living and dead. Those specimens, which include extinct species, are now at the Academy of Sciences.But before Jefferson's interests in this subject formed the basis of our American passion decades earlier.A boneyard from the late Pleistocene, which was a warm salt spring,… Read More

Dec-43. Winston Churchill|Franklin D. Roosevelt|Eleanor Roosevelt This great event, sponsored by the British and American governments, was the subject of media reports in both countries and a US government war-time documentary to support the mission, that spans nearly 30 minutes and can be watched below Unique, and also signed by Gen. Bernard Montgomery, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, newsmen covering the event, and dozens of others Compiled by John H. Jones, a British member of the mission, union leader, and future Member of Parliament, and retained by his heirs until its acquisition this year by Raab We are not aware of any other item ever offered for sale carrying signatures of FDR, Eleanor, and Churchill together, let alone this varied and consequential collection of autographs [embed]https://vimeo.com/924542832?share=copy[/embed] In 1943, the US government sent 4 American workers over to the UK as part of a worker exchange. The purpose was to cement desperately needed… Read More

May-45. Winston Churchill The original of a famous letter: “I have been deeply touched by all the messages of good will which have reached me at this time. Thank you so much…”https://vimeo.com/924546563?share=copy For six years, Churchill’s had been a voice in the wilderness, crying out against the mortal danger posed by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. However, Great Britain was lost in a pipe-dream of peace, and Churchill was ignored and even scorned. Then the first wave of German military might overwhelmed Poland in September 1939, and Churchill was revealed as a prophet rather than a Cassandra. After a quiet winter, in April 1940 the Nazi juggernaut smashed into Denmark and Norway, followed shortly by invasions of France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Soon the prospects for Britain became worse than bleak, as the lion’s share of Europe was either allied with Germany or been been conquered by Hitler ‘s armies. Shockingly, France would collapse and surrender on June 22.In early… Read More

1812. Napoleon Bonaparte It is based on an 1809 intelligence operation that Napoleon commissioned to chart Persia, Russia and the steppes A remarkable and apparently unpublished manuscript documenting Russia and its environs in the early 1800s, fascinating for that purpose as well Acquired from the direct descendants and never before offered for sale""Resistance could only result in the burning by the assailant of a large part of the wooden houses of Moscow"" ""Minsk is a town of 10,000 inhabitants of which two thirds are Jewish."" https://vimeo.com/916160568?share=copyIn 1803, Camille Alphonse Trezel obtained the rank of lieutenant in the corps of topographical engineers. The next year he was promoted to assistant engineer geographer. After the Polish campaign, as a lieutenant, he was appointed acting aide to General Gardanne, in the embassy of France to Persia. He was commissioned at this time by Napoleon to take extensive notes, topographical, geographical and otherwise of… Read More

14/10/1861. Abraham Lincoln|Winfield Scott|Robert Anderson|George B. McClellan|Ambrose Burnside|John Dahlgren The people of the Union rallied to these very men as their hope for victory over the Confederacy after the disaster at Bull Run; a number of these signatories would die in actionThough it is much grander, this document did form the template of future fund raising for the Sanitary Commission; it is almost certainly the first document Lincoln and his Team of Rivals signed in its support An extraordinary, unique broadside, signed by Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet; heroes like Robert Anderson of Fort Sumter fame; Army generals like Winfield Scott, George B. McClellan, and Ambrose Burnside; early emancipation promoters like John C. Fremont and Benjamin Butler; founders of important fighting units like Thomas Meagher of the Irish Brigade; Navy notables like John Dahlgren and Charles Wilkes; and many othersAll the momentous year of 1860, the danger to the unity of the American nation had been… Read More

03/12/1777. Benjamin Franklin This was  an important moment in the relations between the two countries and the story of the American Revolution Franklin's efforts resulted in an agreement in France just 7 days after news of Saratoga had reached Passy, the first such agreement in Europe after the great victory changed the face of the Revolutionhttps://vimeo.com/913107222?share=copy Provenance: Historical Society of PennsylvaniaWhen news reached France of the Declaration of Independence of the thirteen colonies, it was perceived by many as the incarnation of the Enlightenment spirit against the tyranny of England. When Benjamin Franklin arrived in Paris on December 21, 1776, he found much sympathy for his cause and he himself was the “celebrated Dr. Franklin” from the beginning. The people gathered in crowds to see and acclaim him and shopkeepers rushed to their doors to catch a glimpse of him as he passed along the sidewalk.  Perhaps no person in history has come to symbolize America… Read More

19/11/1792. George Washington The only letter of his to the Senate as a whole, fulfilling this Constitutional role, that we have ever seen; One of the nominees is Washington’s own nephew, son of his sister Betty; The officers served under Gen. Anthony Wayne on the western frontier Letters of Washington as President are becoming increasingly uncommonIn the early 1790s, the western Pennsylvanian frontier was a dangerous place, with white settlers clashing with Native Americans with ever increasing frequency. U.S. military expeditions against these Indians were conducted in 1790 and 1791, culminating in two major defeats at the hands of Chief Little Turtle. General Josiah Harmar lost over 700 killed and wounded at the Battle of the Maumee, and General Arthur St. Clair. General St. Clair, Commander of the U.S. Army in 1791, had his force almost entirely wiped out, losing over 900 of his 1400-man army at the Battle of Wabash. Many of these troops, who had performed poorly, were state militiamen.… Read More