AALL REVIEW: President’s Birthday Sparks Interest in Lincoln Documents... Reported by Ed Butler
Interest in writings by and about President Abraham Lincoln has intensified with current observance of the 200th anniversary of the president’s birth.
Anecdotes about collecting these precious manuscripts captivated an educational seminar audience at the 2009 annual conference of the American Association of Law Libraries. The seminar was educational program B-5. John R. Sellers, Lincoln papers archivist of the Library of Congress, told how the library managed to take title to a good share of these writings.
Daniel W. Stowell, Lincoln papers archivist at the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Ill., described a recently completed project to publish an online collection of Lincoln’s law practice papers that provides a representative sampling of his widespread practice in central Illinois.
Aided by a $1.3 million donation by the Union Pacific Railroad, an exhibit of the Library of Congress’ Lincoln archive is now making its way around the country.
Sellers noted that when he served in the House of Representatives, Lincoln lived in a boarding house on the site where part of the Library of Congress now stands.
He said the library began collecting original writings about Lincoln in 1870. At the time of Lincoln’s death, the government did not lay claim to presidential papers. However, in 1917, the president’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, gave the library a large accumulation of documents. Sellers lamented that Robert had culled some embarrassing letters and had made gifts of letters to individuals, some of which have been retrieved for the library. Sellers regrets that the resultant gaps create a distortion of the Lincoln record.
Nonetheless, the library has received enough of the papers that they reflect the “meat” of the Lincoln administration, Sellers said.
He added that Robert gave the library a further supply of the papers in 1923, on the promise they would remain sealed another 21 years.
Sellers said safe maintenance of the papers is a major expense, with one case housing the original Gettysburg Address costing $40,000. Businessman Donald G. Jones donated $700,000 to help with this sort of expense.
Sellers estimated that the library has approximately 50,000 pages of Lincoln documents, including the first inaugural Bible used in 1861.
Letters borrowed from other collections include that of Grace Bedel, age 11, who suggested that Lincoln grow a beard to be more electable.
Stowell said the online presentation of Lincoln law practice documents is the second edition. The first was a CD presenting more than 96,000 documents. The online version uses a selection of 64 cases that are representative of Lincoln’s law practice and shed light on Antebellum America as well as Lincoln, Stowell said. The web site of the law practice papers is www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org.
Ed Butler is Branch Manager at the Law Library for San Bernardino County in San Bernardino,California.