Source Information

Ancestry.com. Abraham Lincoln Papers [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2009.
Original data: Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Washington, D.C.: American Memory Project, [2000-02]), http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alhome.html, accessed 2009.

About Abraham Lincoln Papers

This database contains the papers of Abraham Lincoln, consisting of approximately 20,000 separate documents. The collection comes from the U.S. Library of Congress and is organized into three General Correspondence series:

  • Series 1: 1833-1865

  • Series 2: 1858-1865

  • Series 3: 1837-1897

The majority of the papers date from the 1850s to 1865. They consist of correspondences, memos, notes, drafts of speeches, and other such documents.

Many of the documents, primary those written by Lincoln himself, have been annotated by the Lincoln Studies Center. The annotations provide explanations and bring historical context to the documents.