Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation Owes Big $$$

[davg2000]

This is a good, thorough article, full of information which is not generally known. However, the author makes one enormous mistake. In discussing ALPLM's original relative scarcity of three-dimensional Lincoln artifacts, Smith states:

"In lieu of [ALPLM's] owning major artifacts relating to the life of Lincoln, and not content with a show of paper signatures, Dr. Schwartz secured two of Taper’s most prized possessions for loan as the museum opened: Lincoln’s stovepipe hat and a copy of Lincoln’s handwritten Gettysburg Address."

He is correct about the hat, which was indeed on loan for some time before the purchase of the Taper Collection. But unless the author is referring to a heretofore unknown sixth handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address, Illinois has owned one of the five known copies--the Everett copy--since 1944, when Illinois school children, and Marshall Fields, famously purchased it for the state. It goes on display usually twice a year at ALPM.