Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

[Boston,] 1813. Illustrated broadside printed on silk, 15.25” x 11.4”, two separate texts in two columns beneath a wood engraving, 6” x 7.75”, artist and engraver credits below the image. CONDITION: Good, .75” area of deterioration to edges from former mounting to wooden stretcher but otherwise quite stable, a few tiny punctures affecting parts of four letters of text.

A handsome broadside on silk commemorating in image and verse the heroism of Captain James Lawrence, published in the wake of his death during the War of 1812.

Born in New Jersey to a Loyalist family, Capt. James Lawrence, Esq. (1781–1813) enlisted in the U.S. Navy while still a teenager. Promoted to Lieutenant by the time of the Quasi-War with France, he saw action in the First Barbary War (1801–1805). During the War of 1812, Lawrence was at the epicenter of naval action. Commanding the USS Hornet, he became the first U.S. naval officer to capture a British vessel, the privateer Dolphin. In March 1813, he was promoted to Captain and appointed commander of the USS Chesapeake, which in June challenged the British frigate HMS Shannon, then blockading Boston Harbor. Despite being smaller and less well-armed, the Shannon prevailed over the Chesapeake. Lawrence was mortally wounded during the battle, and just before dying gave the final command—now a popular U.S. Navy catchphrase—“Don’t give up the ship.” No men aboard the Chesapeake officially surrendered to the British. Lawrence had been a very popular officer, and his death was mourned deeply in the Navy. His body was first buried by the enemy in Halifax, Nova Scotia, but was later laid to rest in Manhattan.

The engraving at the top of the broadside is a memorial design dedicated to Lawrence, including a stone bearing the inscription “Jas. Lawrence Esquire. Obt. June 4, 1813 Æ 31,” an oval tablet reading “Sacred to the memory of the BRAVE,” and a bust of Lawrence in uniform. Stands of flags (including a trident) flank the image, and naval emblems and tools are arrayed around the base of the monument. Below the engraving is the two-stanza poem “How sleep the brave” by the British poet William Collins, which opens: “How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, / By all their country's wishes blest.” The lower half of the broadside bears an (anonymous) elegy, comprising forty lines of rhymed couplets, which reads in part:

Spirit of sympathy! from Heaven descend! / A Nation weeps! Columbia mourns a friend. / Hush’d be the sound of Pleasure’s thrilling lyre— / Quench’d be the flame of Passion’s glowing fire; / Let shouts of victory for laurels won, / Give place to grief, for LAWRENCE, Valour’s son. / The Warrior who was e’er his country’s pride, / Has for that country, bravely, nobly died…Blest Shade! Farewell! thy memory, ever dear, / Oft shall receive fair Freedom’s holy tear; / In each fond heart shall live thy peerless name, / And there shall rise thy MONUMENTS of FAME. 

Born in Lexington, Mass., painter Nathan Winship Munroe (1789–1817) is thought to have studied under the noted portraitist Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828). Munroe worked in Boston and was considered promising, but died at the age of twenty-five.

Gershom Cobb (ca. 1780–1824) worked as a bank clerk and writing master in Boston, and did some engraving between about 1800 and 1813. He died in Dorchester, Mass.

OCLC records five examples, at AAS, the Library of Congress, Brown University, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

An evocative silk broadside eulogizing one of the most celebrated heroes of the War of 1812.

REFERENCES: Groce & Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America; Harper’s Weekly, June 22, 1861, pp. 133, 461; Ford, W. C. Broadsides, ballads, &c. printed in Massachusetts, 1639-1800 (Boston: The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1922), #3081; Wegelin #1272; “James Lawrence” at American Battlefield Trust online; “Report of the Librarian” (Oct. 1933) at American Antiquarian online.

Item #9054

Price: $2,750.00