Primary Sources: U.S. Presidents

From the Illinois Digital Archives

Presents historical materials from Abraham Lincoln's Illinois years (1830-1861), including Lincoln's writings and speeches, as well as other materials illuminating antebellum Illinois. (a Northern Illinois University Libraries' digitization project)

"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. "

"The papers of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), lawyer, representative from Illinois, and sixteenth president of the United States, contain approximately 40,550 documents dating from 1774 to 1948, although most of the collection spans from the 1850s through Lincoln’s presidency (1861-1865). Roughly half of the collection, more than 20,000 documents, comprising 62,000 images, as well as transcriptions of approximately 10,000 documents, is online. Included on this website in their entirety are Series 1-3 of the Lincoln Papers and the original materials in Series 4. Excluded from this online presentation is a sizeable portion of Series 4, which consists of printed material and reproductions of government and military documents made from originals in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration."

"In 1953, the Abraham Lincoln Association published The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, a multi-volume set of Lincoln's correspondence, speeches, and other writings. Roy P. Basler and his editorial staff, with the continued support of the association, spent five years transcribing and annotating Lincoln's papers. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln represented the first major scholarly effort to collect and publish the complete writings of Abraham Lincoln, and the edition has remained an invaluable resource to Lincoln scholars. Through the efforts of the Abraham Lincoln Association, the edition is now available in electronic form."

"Drawn from the Library’s collections, the presentation that follows gathers the key documents linked to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address."

Lincoln Miscellaneous Manuscripts 1587-1924
University of Chicago
Provides links to digitized content from the collection

By Abraham Lincoln. Available in: America: II. (1818-1865). Vol. IX. Bryan, William Jennings, ed. 1906. The World's Famous Orations from Bartleby.com

"Here you'll find more than 95,000 digital images that are available for research, with more added every week. The Preservation Imaging Lab scans materials covering a variety of subjects and formats. These digital images constitute only a small percentage of the more than 1.7 million photographs in our collection. "

Available from American Historical Documents, 1000-1904. The Harvard Classics from Bartleby.com

"These records relate to the investigation of persons suspected of involvement in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (April 14, 1865). They contain copies of correspondence received and sent by the military commission investigating the assassination; summaries of evidence of possible use in the trial; proceedings of and exhibits used in the court martial (May 9-June 29, 1865); and a record of the trial published in the newspaper Daily National Intelligencer (May 16-June 30, 1865). "

"Books contributed from the Lincoln Financial Collection held in the Lincoln Library, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana."

This site contains the full text of 57 sermons published on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's assassination. The original copies of the sermons have been drawn from the Pitts Theology Library (Candler School of Theology, Emory University). Both TIFF images and searchable text files are available.Description from site

The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a long-term project dedicated to identifying, imaging, and publishing all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime (1809-1865).
From the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency

By Abraham Lincoln (1863) Available in American Historical Documents, 1000-1904. The Harvard Classics from Bartleby.com