For The People

by Dr. James M. Cornelius Was Abraham Lincoln a rube or a well-read man? His brief meeting with one of England’s wealthiest and oldest aristocrats casts an interesting light upon this debate. The young Marquis of Hartington, heir to the Duke of Devonshire and representing a cotton-manufacturing district, held a junior post in Lord Palmerston’s … Read more

by Thomas F. Schwartz In the autumn 1999 issue of this newsletter I published an excerpt from the diary of Solomon Wieder Hagerty (February 28, 1842–January 29, 1867) who served in the United States Marine Corps, from 1864 through 1866. The following entry vividly describes the events of March 4, 1865, for Abraham Lincoln’s second … Read more

By Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White In April 2016, several members of the board of directors of the Abraham Lincoln Association joined the mayor of Springfield, Illinois, for a visit to U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which was undergoing repairs in Newport News, Virginia. The presence of a vessel named after the nation’s 16th president … Read more

Illinois’s 42nd governor, Bruce Rauner, delivered spontaneous and personal remarks at the Abraham Lincoln Association 208th Birthday Banquet. Before his remarks, the audience watched a video about the Spirit of Lincoln Youth Leadership Academy, featuring Antonio Neal’s “I Am America.” The Governor was introduced by former ALA president Don Tracy. [embeddoc url=”http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/newsletters/spring2017.pdf” download=”all”]

Governor Bruce Rauner will be the 2017 ALA Banquet Speaker. Rauner, an Illinois native, was born in Chicago and grew up in Deerfield, Illinois, a suburb north of Chicago. His mother, Ann, was a nurse, and his father, Vincent Joseph Rauner, was a lawyer and senior vice president for Motorola. [embeddoc url=”http://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/newsletters/winter16.pdf” download=”all”]

By Kathleen Heyworth William Freeman, born a slave in 1840 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, made his es-cape to freedom when the 1st Illinois Cavalry came through in 1861. Although not allowed to enlist in the U.S. Army that summer, he became “contraband” and a personal servant to Capt. John McNulta. Late in 1862, McNulta, who … Read more

In May of this year, James Cornelius, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Presidential Library, and Ian Hunt, its new chief of acquisitions, learned that an unknown 3-volume set of Isaac Arnold’s The Life of Abraham Lincoln would be sold at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago. The set bears the bookplates of Frank O. … Read more

By Jason H. Silverman Ellison Capers Palmer, Jr. Professor of History Winthrop University Lost in the media and scholarly attention to the sesquicentennial was one of President Lincoln’s signature pieces of legislation, The Act to Encourage Immigration, July 4, 1864 — the first and only major law in American history to encourage immigration. As immigration … Read more

Bernice A. King is the Chief Executive Officer of The King Center, which was founded by her mother in 1968. Born the youngest daughter of the late Coretta Scott King and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bernice began her oratorical journey when she spoke in her mother’s stead at the United Nations at age 17. … Read more

By Michael Burlingame ALA Director Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies University of Illinois Springfield In 1840, thirty-one-year-old Abraham Lincoln became engaged to Mary Todd but later that year he broke the engagement in large part because he had fallen in love with Matilda Edwards, the beautiful, “very bright” eighteen-year-old cousin of Mary’s … Read more