Gettysburg cane carved for Edwin Stanton
Heritage Auctions (ha.com)
A Gift From Lincoln
The Artifact
Gettysburg cane carved for Edwin Stanton
Condition
The cane is well used, with normal wear consistent with age and handling.
Details
In November 1863, Abraham Lincoln was invited to share “a few appropriate remarks” at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on grounds where the battle had been fought just four months earlier. On the 19th, Lincoln delivered a brief oration in front of an assembled crowd of 15,000 soldiers and civilians, in which he “resolve[d] that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
During his Gettysburg trip, Lincoln fashioned a 38-inch-long cane from a branch taken from the battlefield, possibly by his resident host, David Wills. The president gifted it as a keepsake to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who was not part of Lincoln’s Gettysburg entourage but whom the president knew had a fondness for canes. Stanton later added a brass knob (shown here), on which had been engraved “From the Gettysburg Battlefield, July 1. 2. 3. 1863. A. Lincoln, Pres’t of U.S.,” memorializing the importance of the cane’s origin. After Stanton’s death in 1869, the cane passed to a son, then to a granddaughter, before being sold with other items belonging to Stanton at an estate sale in 1971.
Extras
In addition to the Gettysburg cane, the collection included four other canes owned by Stanton—one of them fashioned from the flagstaff of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, where the war began—as well as the wooden crate in which the canes were preserved.
Quotable
In February 1909, writer W.C. Predigo described Stanton’s Gettysburg cane—“an interesting relic formerly the property of President Lincoln”—for The National Magazine: “Upon the occasion of his memorable visit to Gettysburg the President cut with his own hands a cane, which he afterward presented to his War Secretary, Edwin M. Stanton, by whom it was naturally highly prized. This cane is now in the possession of Mr. (Ernest L.) Jahncke, President of the Jahncke Navigation Company of New Orleans, who married a granddaughter of Secretary Stanton. It has a brass top with an engraved inscription, which was probably placed on the treasured souvenir by Secretary Stanton, by whose family it has been carefully preserved. As might be expected of anything selected by Lincoln, it is strong and solid, somewhat of ‘a big stick’ in appearance, and promises to survive many more generations of owners.”
Price
$93,750 (realized at Dallas, Texas, in October 2025). “Together, these canes form one of the most remarkable groupings of Civil War relics in private hands, bridging the president who saved the Union with the secretary who enforced his will,” a Heritage Auctions representative noted at the time.
