February 27, 1861; The New York Herald
Everybody likes to make presents to a new President, especially everybody who wants an office or who likes to effect a little notoriety, and Mr. Lincoln has in consequence been a recipient of several favors of this kind, some of them of a very curious nature. Before he left Springfield he received a handsome cane from San Francisco, mounted in pure California gold in its virgin state. While on his route – somewhere, we believe, between Indianapolis and Cleveland – a very nice present, in the shape of a torpedo, with the fuse lighted, was found under his seat in the railroad car – an emblem, we suppose, of the hot time before him. A mysterious box was also presented to him somewhere else, which his suite exercised the great caution in opening, after mature deliberation, lest it should contain a torpedo or some other internal machine; but its contents proved to be a torpedo for the republican party, and not for Lincoln in person, for the box only enclosed the effigy of a negro. On another occasion he got a handsomely bound book; whether it was the Helper book or the constitution of the United States we are not aware.
When he arrived in New York some of the capitalists here presented him with a magnificent carriage; but they made a grave mistake in its construction, for it is not bombproof, and hence he has not been able to use it at all up to this time with any regard to his personal safety.
The latest gift presented to the new President is a handsome gold breastpin intended to be emblematic of Union; but, curiously enough, the device is composed of two flags crossed – one the unmistakeable of our Union, with its thirty-four stars displayed, and the other a rather misty delineation of a banner, which, we presume from its indistinctness, is intended to represent the flag that is to be of the Southern confederacy, but which is not yet decided upon. A bundle of sticks forms the basis of these two flags, which may mean to recall the fasces of the Roman liotors, the emblem of retributive justice which was borne before the magistrates of that republic, and perhaps indicates the policy which Mr. Lincoln is expected to pursue towards the seceded States; or it may be intended to symbolize the well known fable of Aesop: it is not very easy to tell which reading is the correct one. So far it would seem that the presents made to Old Abe are not very apropos.