“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressor.”

An unusual and possibly unique Lincoln portrait above patriotic banners and a quotation from his first inaugural address.

This anti-Lincoln cartoon features two Lincolns sitting back-to-back on a stump. The Lincoln on the left, captioned “Honest old Abe on the Stump. Springfield 1858,” says, “Nobody ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any Cabbages were sprouting out.” The Lincoln on the right, captioned “Honest old Abe on the Stump at the ratification Meeting of Presidential Nominations. Springfield 1860,” says “I come to see, and be seen.” The implication is that he is a two-faced politician.

“Every slave … who shall come or be brought, or be involuntarily in this state shall be free.”

An anti-slavery Republican Party campaign record ledger from Woonsocket, Rhode Island, 1856 to 1864, including the handwritten “Wide Awakes” constitution and minutes from the 1860 election.

Lincoln’s spot resolution and speech condemns the pretexts for starting the war with Mexico. He requests proof from President Polk that American blood was shed on American soil and that the enemy provoked the Americans, and he asks if those Americans present were ordered there by the United States Army.

A list of stockholders, entirely in Lincoln’s hand, filed as evidence in his first significant railroad case. Lincoln’s own appearance in the shareholder list represents only the second known instance of a stock purchase by the future president. The Illinois Supreme Court’s ultimate ruling in favor of Lincoln and the railroad set an important legal precedent, upholding the binding nature of a stockholder’s contractual and financial obligations. “The decision, subsequently cited in twenty-five other cases throughout the United States, helped establish the principle that corporation charters could be altered in the public interest, and it established Lincoln as one of the most prominent and successful Illinois practitioners of railroad law” (Donald, p.155).

Just before setting off to begin his presidency, Lincoln stored his personal effects in this trunk.

A week before embarking on his historic rail journey from Springfield to the nation’s capital, President-elect Lincoln filled this much-used trunk with his and Mary Todd Lincoln’s personal effects. He delivered it for safekeeping to Mary’s favorite cousin, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Todd Grimsley.

Lincoln and John Todd Stuart, cousin of Lincoln’s future wife Mary Todd, had served together in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1834-1836. They formed Stuart & Lincoln on April 12, 1837.

“Write back as soon as you get this, and if possible say something that will please me, for really I have not been pleased since I left you.”

Here, Lincoln perfectly demonstrates what Owens later described as deficiencies “in those little links which make up the chain of a woman’s happiness.”  Rather than expressing his feelings for Owens, Lincoln complains about his health and discusses political issues swirling in the Illinois General Assembly. Although inept at love, the letter offers rare insight into the young representative’s thoughts on a variety of political issues. In this highly important letter to Mary Owens, a self-absorbed Lincoln complains to his potential spouse of his health, both physical and mental, and discusses political issues to the point that he describes his own letter as “dry and stupid.” Perhaps more revealing than he realized, it illustrates the tension in Lincoln’s early life between matters of the head, with which he was comfortable, and matters of the heart, with which he clearly was not.