In his letter of 17 August 1863, Lincoln told the actor James H. Hackett: “Some of Shakespeare’s plays I have never read, whilst others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are ‘Lear,’ ‘Richard Third,’ ‘Henry Eighth,’ ‘Hamlet,’ and especially ‘Macbeth.’ I think nothing equals ‘Macbeth.’” This book […]

When the English traveler George Borrett met the president in 1864, he recorded that Lincoln was “a great admirer of Pope, especially of his ‘Essay on Man;’ going so far as to say that he thought it contained all the religious instruction which it was necessary for a man to know.” Lincoln began reading Pope’s […]

Born in czarist Russia in 1899, Marcus Feinstein attended a high school where he read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. He was forced to enlist in the army during the Russian Revolution and fled Russia to immigrate to America in 1921. In later years, he inscribed this book to his daughter with the explanation “He is why […]

The Emancipation Proclamation was shaped by both pragmatic considerations and Lincoln’s lifelong disdain for slavery. As a legal document, it aspires to precision rather than eloquence. Lincoln’s use of county-specific terminology identified areas in rebellion, securing his proclamation as a wartime measure that would not be subject to judicial overthrow.

At the greatest moment of his presidency—the fall of the Confederate capital, Richmond—Lincoln chose to write to his wife before writing to any public official. “Last night Gen. Grant telegraphed that Sheridan with his Cavalry and the 5th Corps have captured three brigades of Infantry, a train of wagons, and several batteries, prisoners amounting to […]

In what is believed to be Lincoln’s earliest formulation of his “House Divided” doctrine, Lincoln identifies slavery as a moral and political issue that threatens the survival of the United States. Invoking the famous biblical phrase from Mark 3:25, “A house divided against itself can not stand,” he declares, “I believe this government can not […]

This letter, written on customary mourning stationery less than two months after her husband’s death, begins with an expression of Mrs. Lincoln’s gratitude for the letter of condolence she had received from the wife of Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts. It provides a vivid insight into Mrs. Lincoln’s emotional state early in her widowhood. She […]

These notes were composed for Lincoln’s 1858 debates with his Democratic rival, Stephen Douglas, in the race for the United States Senate. In this fragment, Lincoln forcefully asserts a politician’s obligation to provide moral leadership: “In this age, and this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. […]

News of Lincoln’s assassination took eleven days to reach London. This letter, by British actress and author Fanny Kemble, was written the day after she was told of Lincoln’s death. Through her marriage to Pierce Butler (1807–1867), heir to vast plantations in the Carolinas and Georgia, Kemble had witnessed the atrocity of slavery firsthand. Her […]

This letter reveals Lincoln’s determination to retain the original meaning of his Cooper Union Address. While accepting grammatical correction, Lincoln had been deliberate in his choice of words and so told Nott: “I do not wish the sense changed, or modified, to a hair’s breadth.” Even the smallest change in text would diminish the power […]