1865 Abraham Lincoln Memorial Medal Forever Inseperable 25 King-878 White Metal DeWitt Unlisted

The obverse carries Lincoln's bust with ASSASSINATED APRIL 15 1865 around it, a 25 below the truncation, IN GOD WE TRUST at the foot. The reverse is the campaign die: an eagle over FOR EVER INSEPERABLE, dated 1864. White metal at 24.5 mm, King-878. A memorial obverse on a reverse cut before he died. The 25 is what people argue about. It has been suggested more than once that these were unofficial pattern quarters, against which the relief is far too high to have struck as coinage. Why they were made has never been settled. Lincoln ran in 1864 as the National Union candidate with Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, against George B. McClellan, the general he had removed from command of the Army of the Potomac two years earlier. The election ran while the war did. That August, Lincoln wrote and had his cabinet sign a memorandum, unread, accepting that he was probably about to lose. Sherman took Atlanta two weeks later and the race turned. King numbers come from Robert P. King's Lincoln in Numismatics, the standard reference for Lincoln medals, tokens and medalets. J. Doyle DeWitt's separate catalog of campaign material does not carry this piece, which is all that DeWitt Unlisted means here. It is not a statement about rarity. About Uncirculated. Offered raw, without certification.