"When an eleven year-old girl advised Abraham Lincoln to grow some whiskers, the great man humbly took her suggestion to heart":
"I am a little girl only 11 years old, but want you should be President of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President." The rest is history.
Click here to read an 1862 review about the Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady.
Callously torn from the binding of the 1949 inaugural program were these pithy paragraphs describing the somber moods of both Lincoln inaugurals. The anonymous author noted that
"when Lincoln delivered his Inaugural Address, four future Presidents of the United States stood on the platform near him: Hayes, Garfield, Arthur and Benjamin Harrison."
To read the text of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, click here . Attached is a schematic drawing depicting the theater box occupied by the President and Mrs. Lincoln the night of his assassination.
Featured in the image is the dark hallway leading to the President's Box, the footlights and the stage by which Booth was able to make good his escape.
Click here to read about a dream that President Lincoln had, a dream that anticipated his violent death. Shortly after Abraham Lincoln's assassination, William H. Herndon (1816 - 1891), Lincoln's law partner, devoted much of his life to collecting as much original source material on the man as he could possibly find. Indeed, scholars have pointed out that there never would have been an accurate word written about Lincoln if not for the efforts of Herndon. The following description of Lincoln is from a lecture delivered by Herndon in 1865.
Before his 1860 address at the Cooper Institute (presently known as Cooper Union) Abraham Lincoln "was known in the East chiefly as a rather obscure western lawyer who had gained some prestige a little over a year earlier in the debates with Douglas during the Illinois senatorial contest. The day after the address Horace Greeley's NEW YORK TRIBUNE remarked:
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"No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience".
"This speech put within Lincoln's grasp a chance for the Presidency".
Attached, you will find his very powerful conclusion to the address.
Click here to read about the Confederate conscription laws.
These four paragraphs first appeared on the pages of THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE and were written by a reporter named of Horace White at the conclusion of Lincoln - Douglas debates of 1858. The journalist did a fine job in describing the excitement at the debates and the spirit of the participating candidates. "Douglas ended in a whirlwind of applause...and Lincoln began to speak in a slow and rather awkward way. He had a thin tenor, or rather falsetto voice, almost as high pitched as a boatswain's whistle".
The debates resulted in a close election that returned Douglas to the U.S. Senate and Lincoln to his law practice. | 
