From the year baseball stepped forward as the national sport: Lincoln, the ‘Rail Splitter,’ is depicted as a victorious player, with candidates Bell, Douglas and Breckinridge looking on. This not only is the first identified reference of baseball as the “national game,” but also can be considered the start of the tradition of sports metaphors in American politics.

A politically re-energized Lincoln shrewdly plots to stop the spread of slavery after the infamous 1857 Dred Scott case.

Lincoln asks Illinois’s future governor to plant an anonymous endorsement for Congressional candidate James Matheny in local newspapers. Though Matheny was not a Republican, Lincoln explains, “he is with us” in opposing the Dred Scott decision. Broadening the base of the Republican Party, Lincoln argues, is essential to defeating pro-slavery forces.

“…It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the refinished work that they have thus so far nobly carried on….

A rare first day of publication newspaper, with Lincoln’s timeless embodiment of American ideals prominently placed.This printing from November 20, the day after the Address, contains Lincoln’s speech on the front page. This original issue also includes Edward Everett’s speech, a report on the ceremonies, and a map of the “Great National Soldiers’ Cemetery at Gettysburg.”

After announcing his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction on December 8, 1863, Lincoln paid close attention to two Arkansas groups both aiming for reunion. Here, the president is concerned about potential conflicts with his plan, but in the end, both plans coincided in the key detail of ending slavery.

To raise money for Union soldiers, the former Illinois First Lady requests an autograph for the sanitary fair to sell.

“Robert Binnix was young and inexperienced at the time when he committed these offenses, and ...was affectionate to his mother and assisted her to maintain his younger brothers and sisters; And ...she can no longer properly provide for without the assistance of her son Robert...I Abraham Lincoln ...have granted and do hereby grant...a full and unconditional pardon.”

President Lincoln signs his authorization to affix the Seal of the United States to a politically important appointment: American minister to Pope Pius IX. The appointee later served as Postmaster General under Andrew Johnson.

Kimball served General Patrick, and fought at Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. He later became Director of the U.S. Mint.

Lincoln pardons Alfred Ryder, a prisoner in New York’s Sing Sing prison. Ryder promptly enlisted in the Union navy, only to desert a year after the war ended.

One of a handful of surviving battlefield-issued copies of the Gettysburg victory message that infuriated Lincoln.

Important letter to the chair of the Senate Finance Committee on how to pay for new conscripts and volunteers following Lincoln’s call for an additional 300,000 troops. Chase’s final version went to Fessenden on 11 January 1864. Fessenden’s “infernal tax bill” was introduced in May. After more than 300 amendments, it passed in June only one vote shy of unanimity. 

“I would respectfully recommend John A. Rawlins for the appointment of Brig. Gen. & Chief of Staff under the Bill which has just passed the two Houses of Congress. Will you please do me the favor to endorse this recommendation favorably?”

            A day before Lincoln’s second inauguration, Grant requests that Secretary of War Stanton recommend that Lincoln appoint Rawlins his Chief of Staff. Unbeknownst to Grant, Lincoln had already appointed Rawlins “major-general by brevet … for faithful and meritorious service.” Nevertheless, on March 9th, Lincoln did as Grant wished.

Others saw madness, but Douglass saw the clarity of a martyr’s vision.

Douglass pens a phrase from his “Lecture on John Brown,” delivered at Storer College in Harpers Ferry on Memorial Day, 1881. Among the platform guests was the district attorney who prosecuted Brown.

“Your unconditional submission to the Government and laws is all that I demand: and the great & magnanimous Nation that I represent have no desire for revenge upon you, but they will never allow you to again enslave those, who have been made free by your rebellion.”

In this albumen print, Lincoln’s youngest son Thomas is erroneously called “Thaddeus,” because of nickname “Tad.” An unfinished Washington Monument rises in the background, perhaps referencing the funerary monument motif of a broken column as symbolic of a life cut short.