Collection
Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
Articles and Essays
Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation
The Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment brought about by the Civil War were important milestones in the long process of ending legal slavery in the United States. This essay describes the development of those documents through various drafts by Lincoln and others and shows both the evolution of Abraham Lincoln’s thinking and his efforts to operate within the constitutional boundaries of the presidency.
Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln
On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin," President Abraham Lincoln was shot. Accompanying him at Ford's Theatre that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancée, Clara Harris. After the play was in progress, a figure with a drawn derringer pistol stepped…
Editors' Preface to the Transcriptions
How did the editors choose which documents to transcribe and what editorial rules to follow? This essay provides answers to those questions and also includes a brief bibliography of sources consulted and basic background information on Lincoln’s writing style, penmanship, and preservation practices.
Provenance of the Abraham Lincoln Papers
How did the Abraham Lincoln Papers come to the Library of Congress and when were they opened to the public? This essay, originally written for the Index to the Abraham Lincoln Papers (Washington, D.C., 1960), pp. v-vi, tells the story. (Brief references in the original text to the use of the microfilm collection are omitted here.)
Timeline
A chronology of key events in the life of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), lawyer, representative from Illinois, and sixteenth president of the United States. For a more detailed chronology, consult The Lincoln Log External or the three-volume Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809-1865, edited by Earl Schenck Miers (Washington, D.C., 1960) and available online through HathiTrust External.
Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation The Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment brought about by the Civil War were important milestones in the long process of ending legal slavery in the United States. This essay describes the development of those documents through various drafts by Lincoln and others and shows both the evolution of Abraham Lincoln’s thinking and his efforts to operate within the constitutional boundaries of the presidency.
Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln On the evening of April 14, 1865, while attending a special performance of the comedy, "Our American Cousin," President Abraham Lincoln was shot. Accompanying him at Ford's Theatre that night were his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, a twenty-eight year-old officer named Major Henry R. Rathbone, and Rathbone's fiancée, Clara Harris. After the play was in progress, a figure with a drawn derringer pistol stepped…
Editors' Preface to the Transcriptions How did the editors choose which documents to transcribe and what editorial rules to follow? This essay provides answers to those questions and also includes a brief bibliography of sources consulted and basic background information on Lincoln’s writing style, penmanship, and preservation practices.