Photoessay #706 - Lincoln Letter Redux

This item caught my eye on the CNN website today Long-lost Lincoln letter back in federal hands

with the lead:

Few items are more highly prized among collectors of historical artifacts than a handwritten letter from President Lincoln.

Apparently this letter's been missing from a government collection for over 80 years. The person who has it has turned it over to the feds.

We own a handwritten letter by Abraham Lincoln. I've written about it here and here and here. But not for about two years.

Pictured is scan done of the letter by Abraham Lincoln Museum staff. Museum staff traveled several hours from Springfield to my parents' house in Rockford to help take it out of it's old frame and scan it. The scan puts the letter in the 'Abraham Lincoln letter' canon available for scholars. We hadn't done any restoration at the time of this scan.

The provenance of this letter is unclear. It belonged to Dennis' grandmother Eleanor. Jim and Lanaya had it displayed in their living room and Jim would take it to schools for show and tell. How did Eleanor come to have it? The letter is addressed to the Secretary of State William Seward so possibly it came from a collection owned by that family? We don't know.

After Jim's death, I decided to find out more about it. I contacted a commercial dealer from the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop in Chicago and also the Abraham Lincoln Museum in Springfield IL. Though there are many fake Lincoln letters around, from the beginning nobody I contacted doubted the letter's authenticity. However all parties wanted the letter out of it's current cheap frame as soon as possible.

If you look at other verified Lincoln letters, you can see that the handwriting and signature match. Plus the letter neatly fits into an historical context. Congress had passed a resolution asking William Seward, Secretary of State to make quarterly reports to Congress about the state of the war with the Confederacy. Apparently Seward declined to do so, citing security risk. However, this is the note from Lincoln to Seward asking him to comply with the congressional resolution. This little piece of the puzzle was previously unknown. The Abraham Lincoln Museum people immediately knew what the letter referred to.

We also consulted Daniel Weinberg of the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop recently featured on NPR

I've also included a picture of Daniel Weinberg looking at the letter in it's partially disassembled state in the Abraham Linoln bookshop, a fascinating place. My sister and niece met us there. Mr. Weinberg arranged for us to bring the piece to a conservation firm to get it properly taken care of.

One big mystery to me was why Jim never looked into the context or facts of the letter. He loved reading American history. Yet, he never researched anything about it. Very surprising because he had a curious inquiring mind. and would have been fascinated by the historical contest of the letter. He would have loved being involved with the Abraham Museum and the Abraham Museum Bookshop. Even my father, in his withdrawn difficult state was pretty darn interested in the Abraham Lincoln Museum people. "Sure", he said "they can come here and look at the letter".