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Edouard Rene de Laboulaye

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:400.00 - 600.00 USD
Edouard Rene de Laboulaye

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Auction Date:2014 Mar 12 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
ALS in French, signed “E. Laboulaye,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 5.25 x 8.25, October 10, 1871. Letter to a lady. In part (translated): “The situation in France is so serious, future so uncertain that we are living a bad dream, and we lose all independence of mind. Maybe the pains in America have been as important as ours, but you are out of the secession war by a victory and you had courage and hope on your side. France on the contrary is humiliated, demoralized, and even more ruined by the Prussian rapacity. The country gives up and future is more than uncertain. How will we get out of this abyss, I do not know, but I feel as you do that we are in God’s hands, and our salvation depends upon him only…How much we should thank you to have in mind relieving our miseries. Poor people of France are suffering excessively…Next to Versailles we have Saint Cloud, Garches, Vaucresson, charming villages, small towns that are nothing but a pile of rubbles. People fled, they are starting to come back; we put them up in wooden shacks. The church even the school are all planks; the Prussians did not spare a thing. And they did that, not during the war, but in full peace, after the armistice, for hatred of France, not by barbarity. It takes the whole impudence of Prussians to dare talk about civilization and superiority of morals, when in cold blood they have committed such crimes…You ask me what should be done with the funds that you are receiving. I think that there is such poverty to relieve that this is not the time to think about charity for education; the most pressing is to prevent people from starving to death this winter…Mr. Bartholdi wrote me from San Francisco and told me how much he was touched by the welcome you extended to him. He is very happy to be in the United States while up here we are struggling with the poverty and dangers of the situation. In fact, he is a very gallant man and an artist with a lot of talents; I truly wish that his project can succeed in America.” In fine condition, with central vertical and horizontal folds and subtle toning.

A great admirer of the Constitution, Laboulaye held intellectual interest in the political system of the United States, even publishing a three-volume work on the political history of the nation over the course of a decade. A strong supporter of the Union during the Civil War, he begins this letter by comparing its aftermath to the result of the recently concluded Franco-Prussian War, in which France was defeated. It was at the end of the Civil War that Laboulaye first suggested the idea that spawned the Statue of Liberty, saying, ‘If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations.' Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, a friend of Laboulaye, was inspired by the idea and sought to make it reality. In June of 1871, Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic with letters of introduction signed by Laboulaye. He discovered the ideal location as soon as he arrived at New York Harbor, noticing a small island that all vessels had to pass, and began to campaign for support. The political strife in France and difficulties in obtaining funding forced long delays, but the monument conceived by Laboulaye and constructed by Bartholdi was finally dedicated on October 28, 1886. This extraordinary letter—penned almost exactly 15 years before the official unveiling of the monument—documents the very beginnings of what has become a worldwide icon of American ideals.