The Most Famous Artifact of Lincoln's Humor -- His "Bass-Ackwards" Manuscript

A master storyteller and talented mimic, Lincoln's humor was the product of his upbringing in the frontiers of Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, where tall tales and exaggeration were key ingredients to good jokes and effective tools in the courtrooms and legislative halls. For some, it made him more appealing and approachable to the common man. For others, his coarse backwoods humor was undignified, reinforcing their belief that he was unfit to be president.

This manuscript utilizes a series of "spoonerisms," in which the storyteller transposes the first few letters of two adjacent or nearby words for humorous effect. Its namesake, Rev. William Archibald Spooner of New College, Oxford University, was allegedly prone to unintentionally making such mistakes in speaking

Complete Transcript
He said he was riding bass-ackwards on a jass-ack, through a patton-cotch, on a pair of baddle-sags, stuffed full of binger-gred, when the animal steered at a scump, and the lirrup-steather broke, and throwed him in the forner of the kence and broke his pishing-fole. He said he would not have minded it much, but ^he^fell right in a great tow-curd; in fact, he said it give him ^a^right smart sick of fitness?he had the molera-corbus pretty bad. He said, about bray dake he come to himself, ran home, seized up a stick of wood and split the axe to make a light, rushed into the house, and found the door sick abed, and his wife standing open. But thank goodness she is getting right hat and farty again.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Autograph Manuscript, "Bass-Ackwards" story, ca. 1845-1850, [Springfield, IL]. 1 p., 7 x 8.5 in.

Historical Background
C. F. Gunther of Chicago told Jesse W. Weik that Lincoln penned this for a bailiff in the Springfield courts. It was first published by Emanuel Hertz in The Hidden Lincoln in 1938. It once belonged to the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield, which traded it for a first edition of the Book of Mormon. According to auctioneer Charles Hamilton, one collector considered it so unworthy of Lincoln's sacred memory, he bid intending to burn it! Fortunately, he lost.

Provenance
Abraham Lincoln to a bailiff of a Springfield court, reportedly Arnold R. Robinson > The Illinois State Historical Library, gift of a descendant > Charles Hamilton Galleries, May 16, 1963. (See account in Hamilton, Auction Madness, 119: "This unsigned bit of Lincolniana was knocked down for $4,000 at one of my earliest auctions nearly twenty years ago. What would it fetch today!" > Lindley and Charles Eberstadt > Parke-Bernet Galleries (Eberstadt sale), October 13, 1964, lot 124, described as being "the most intimate and unusual Lincoln document known to survive," and "perhaps the greatest Presidential character piece extant" > Christie's (a Western Collector), December 9, 1994, lot 84 > Louise Taper, Beverly Hills, California > The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Foundation, 2007 > Freeman's/Hindman, May 21, 2025, lot 21.

Exhibitions
The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America, at the Huntington Library, October 1993-August 1994
Abraham Lincoln: A Personal Journey at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum, October 12, 2001?February 18, 2002

Condition: Silked; creasing from folds; small losses along folds affecting a few letters; small marginal loss in upper right corner not affecting text; scattered spotting.