July - September 2005
T
Volume 5 Number 3
PROJECT RECEIVES SUPPORT FOR ONGOING RESEARCH
he late Dr. Clarence A. Tripp, author of The Intimate
World of Abraham Lincoln, left a bequest to the Illinois
Historic Preservation Agency’s Public Trust Fund. Illinois
State Historian Dr. Thomas F. Schwartz, who chairs the
committee in charge of the bequest, indicated that $100,000
would be given annually to the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
for the next five years. According to Dr. Schwartz, “Any
serious study of Lincoln is dependent upon a comprehensive
compilation, accurate transcription, and informed editorial
annotation of all his correspondence. The Papers of Abraham
Lincoln will be the most significant contribution to Lincoln
studies since the 1953 publication of The Collected Works.”
In addition to this generous gift, the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum Foundation pledged
$50,000 to support the project in the current fiscal year.
The project will use the funds primarily to begin
research at the National Archives facilities in College Park,
I
Maryland, and in Washington, D.C. These two repositories
hold most of the official records of the federal government.
The papers of the Civil War-era State Department, Treasury
Department, and Interior Department are at the facility in
College Park, while War Department, Congressional,
Judiciary, and other records are housed in the National
Archives building on Pennsylvania Avenue in downtown
Washington.
Project researchers have identified seventy-eight
record groups in the National Archives that may contain
Lincoln documents. Each record group is subdivided into a
number of record series, each of which has its own internal
organization. Although the task is complex, there are more
undiscovered documents in the collections of the National
Archives than in any other repository.
ERIKA NUNAMAKER JOINS EDITORIAL STAFF
n September, Erika Nunamaker joined the project staff
as a research associate. Her position is part of the project’s
expansion for work on Series II and Series III of the Papers
of Abraham Lincoln.
Nunamaker, a native of Mundelein, Illinois, earned
a B.A. in history and English from Illinois Wesleyan University
in 2001. In 2003, she completed a Master’s degree in Early
American Culture from the University of Delaware through
the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum in Winterthur,
Delaware. During her time at Illinois Wesleyan, she was an
intern at the David Davis Mansion and at the McLean County
Museum of History. Her training at the Winterthur included
work as a Senior Guide at the museum. She joins the project
from her most recent post as an educator at Dickson Mounds
Museum in Lewistown, Illinois.
Nunamaker is the author of two articles,
“Schoolhouses of the Past in Illinois: The Era of One-Room
Schools,” published in The Living
Museum in 2005 and “Trembling for
the Nation: Illinois Women and the
Election of 1860,” published in the
Journal of Illinois History in 2002.
She lives in Lincoln with her husband.
In her capacity as a research
associate, Nunamaker will initially
conduct work related to the search
for documents in libraries and
repositories across the country. She
is now working to determine priority locations to which staff
members will travel in the next year to collect digital images.
EDITORS CAPTURE IMAGES AT LINCOLN MEMORIAL UNIVERSITY
I
n July, Daniel Stowell and Susan Krause traveled to
Harrogate, Tennessee, to capture digital images of Lincoln
documents held at Lincoln Memorial University (LMU).
They located 105 documents within the project’s scope,
including a check that Lincoln wrote, withdrawing from his
account his legal fees from the Illinois Central Railroad’s tax
case against McLean County, Illinois (see image below).
Capturing digital images of
documents at repositories requires the
assistance of various professionals at the
institutions we visit. The project greatly
appreciated the efforts of the staff at the
Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at
LMU, particularly Charles M. Hubbard,
director of the museum, and Leanne Garland, who maintains
the museum’s archives and research library. They were very
receptive and interested in our work.
In addition to providing access to the documents,
they also donated to the project back issues of the Lincoln
Herald, a quarterly publication of the Abraham Lincoln
Library and Museum.
TARBELL VOLUMES INCLUDED ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
D
uring the trip to the Abraham Lincoln Library and
Museum at Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) in
Harrogate, Tennessee, Daniel Stowell and Susan Krause
digitized documents that were tipped into a special, threevolume edition of Ida M. Tarbell’s The Life of Abraham
Lincoln Drawn from Original Sources and Containing
Many Speeches, Letters and Telegrams Hitherto
Unpublished by Ida M. Tarbell.
Among the documents included in this “Special
Illustrators’ Edition,” was an Order to Affix the Presidential
Seal to the pardon of Henry Crittenden, which was signed
by Abraham Lincoln, and twenty-two letters to President
Lincoln. According to the end papers, the set at LMU was
number forty-six of seventy five. However, editors have been
unable to determine whether or not other copies of the Tarbell
volumes, published in 1900, included authentic documents.
It is possible that manuscript collector Foreman M. Lebold,
the owner who donated the volumes to LMU, tipped in the
documents himself. The set located at the Abraham Lincoln
T
DONORS
he project acknowledges with deep appreciation
the generosity of the following contributors:
Betty Stevens
Daniel W. Stowell
Steven M. Wilson
Marshall-Putnam Republican Women
Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum
at Lincoln Memorial University
Presidential Library (ALPL) does not have documents tipped
into the pages like the one in Harrogate.
Other historical volumes published in the late 1800s
and early 1900s included documents tipped into the pages.
For example, a two-volume set of Isaac N. Arnold’s
biography of Lincoln included such documents, attached by
the publisher. The Arnold set located at ALPL includes many
documents and a clipped Lincoln signature.
So, the Tarbell volumes at LMU remain something
of a mystery, but the project was fortunate to digitize several
of the interesting original documents the set at LMU contains.
On this and the next page are four of the documents that the
project scanned from the Tarbell volumes. All images are
courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at
LMU.
Order to Affix the Presidential Seal
to Pardon of Henry Crittenden
26 July 1864
A. H. Reeder to Abraham Lincoln
17 May 1864
A
. H. Reeder wrote to Lincoln from Easton,
Pennsylvania. His was a letter of introduction for
his friend Charles M. Runk, who wished to meet the
President. Interestingly, Reeder emphasized that not
only was Runk a “sound Republican,” but also “a
lawyer” no doubt appealing to Lincoln’s connection to
the fraternity of the bar.
Henry M. Rice to Abraham Lincoln
17 February 1865
Henry Grider and others to Abraham Lincoln
31 July 1861
W
S
even Union Party Congressmen from Kentucky wrote to
Lincoln, recommending the appointment of A. W. Graham
of Bowling Green as district judge of the state of Kentucky. The
Congressmen were Henry Grider, Aaron Harding, George
Washington Dunlap, John William Menzies, Robert Mallory,
William Henry Wadsworth, and James Stresly Jackson.
hen the position of marshal for the state of
Minnesota became available, Henry M. Rice
wrote to President Lincoln, recommending their
“mutual friend” Cyrus Aldrich for the post. Rice
argued that no one was better qualified than the
colonel, and his appointment would “give general
satisfaction—in fact, real gratification to to a very
large class of our loyal citizens.”
LINCOLN EDITOR
The Quarterly Newsletter of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
ISSN 1537-226X
Printed by authority of the State of Illinois
(3.8M—10-05)
A Project of
How You Can Help:
Project Staff:
• By advising project staff of known or reported Lincoln
documents in your locality. We are seeking copies of any
document, letter, or contemporary printed account that relates
to Abraham Lincoln’s entire life, 1809-1865.
• By making a tax-deductible donation to the Papers of
Abraham Lincoln in support of the project. Such gifts provide
crucial support in furtherance of the project’s objectives.
Daniel W. Stowell, Director/Editor; John A. Lupton, Assistant Director/Assistant
Editor; Susan Krause, Assistant Editor; Stacy Pratt McDermott, Assistant
Editor; Christopher A. Schnell, Assistant Editor; Kelley Boston, Research
Associate; Erika Nunamaker, Research Associate; Carmen Morgan,
Secretary; Michael Kelley, Graduate Assistant; Jenifer Maseman, Graduate
Assistant.
Please address inquiries and gifts to:
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln
#1 Old State Capitol Plaza, Springfield, IL 62701-1507
Phone: (217) 785-9130 Fax: (217) 524-6973
Website: http://www.papersofabrahamlincoln.org
This project has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, an independent federal agency.
LINCOLN EDITOR
The Quarterly Newsletter of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
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