The Library of Congress contains one of the largest collections of Lincolniana in the world, with two of the five copies of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's own hand. The Library's connections with the assassinated 16th president extend much further, however and lead in some surprising directions.
The beginnings of the relationship were not promising. On May 24, 1861, newly elected President Abraham Lincoln ignored the advice of the Joint Committee on the Library of Congress and named a political supporter, Indiana physician John G. Stephenson, as the new Librarian of Congress.
Not particularly interested in the job, Stephenson had the wisdom to hire an ambitious bibliophile, Ainsworth Rand Spofford, as his assistant. After Stephenson resigned in 1864, the talented Spofford was appointed as Librarian of Congress, but only after he had demonstrated his political support to Lincoln. This he accomplished by posting a petition in the Library (then in the Capitol building) for members of Congress to sign. Between March 1861 and April 1865, when Lincoln was assassinated, approximately 125 books were charged out to the president. However, it is likely that most of them were for the use of his family or staff.
LC's Lincolniana collections began to grow in 1870, when that year's new copyright law began bringing in floods of published tributes, reminiscences and attempts at biography and historical assessment. As a result, Lincoln collectors and bibliographers were impressed by George T. Ritchie's A List of Lincolniana in the Library of Congress, which was published in 1903, long before LC acquired its major Lincoln collections.
The tale of how Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, finally deposited his father's papers in the Library is well told in Merrill Peterson's Lincoln in American Memory (1994). The papers -- in seven trunks -- had been delivered rather suddenly on May 6, 1919, under an injunction of secrecy. Soon Robert Todd Lincoln deeded the papers to the Library on the condition that they remain closed for 21 years after the date of his death -- which occurred in 1926.
On July 26, 1947, at one minute past midnight, with great fanfare and after a gala dinner with Lincoln scholars hosted by Librarian of Congress Luther H. Evans, the safe was opened. To the disappointment of many, including Evans, the 20,000-item collection of Lincoln papers did not contain any bombshells. New scholarly paths were opened, however.
Moreover, the Library's reputation as an important center for Lincoln scholarship was enhanced in 1953 by the acquisition of the 11,000 item Alfred Whital Stern collection of Lincolniana.
The Library's close involvement with Lincoln was reinforced in the middle decades of this century by the personal interest of two Lincoln enthusiasts and scholars: David C. Mearns and Roy P. Basler. Mearns held many administrative positions as an LC staff member from 1918 until his retirement in 1967. As director of the Reference Department from 1943 to 1949, he presided over the 1947 opening of the Lincoln papers.
His books, The Lincoln Papers (1948) and Largely Lincoln (1961) evoke the Library-Lincoln connection and the cultural climate of the '40s and '50s. Basler became executive secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Association in 1947 and was editor-in- chief of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953). He came to the Library in 1952 and served in several posts in the Reference Department before retiring in 1974.
Lincoln and the Library of Congress also reinforce each other as symbols of American democracy. Lincoln and his words are depicted in several ways in the Jefferson Building, which was bebun in 1886 and completed in 1897. Librarian of Congress Spofford, for example, chose the words from the Gettysburg Address that are inscribed on the ceiling of the second floor Northeast, or "Government," Pavilion; the same quotation ("government of the people, by the people, for the people. . .") is featured in the central panel of artist Elihu Vedder's mural "Government" above the entrance door to the Main Reading Room. Artist Edwin Blashfield's "Evolution of Civilization" mural in the collar of the dome of the Main Reading Room uses Lincoln as the model for the face of "Science," which was depicted as America's major contribution to civilization and culture.
Lincoln continues to capture the public imagination -- and to "live" at the Library of Congress. In 1975, in a safe in the Librarian's Office, then Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin discovered the contents of Lincoln's pockets on the night he was murdered. A donation from Robert Lincoln's daughter to the Library in 1937, the two pairs of eyeglasses, penknife, watch fob, cuff link, monogrammed handkerchief and wallet (containing newspaper clippings and a Confederate $5 bill) were put on public display on Feb. 12, 1976.
For three days in January 1995, the Library exhibited one of its two handwritten copies of the Gettysburg Address -- the so- called "first draft" copy that Lincoln gave to his secretary John Nicolay. Plans are under way to exhibit its other copy, the so- called "second draft" that Lincoln gave to John Hay (his other secretary) in 1996 or 1997.
