In 2011, an 1866 letter written by William Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner, was auctioned off for US $ 30, 000.

The subject is understandably controversial, but the contents of the letter is consistent with Lincoln's fairly lukewarm approach to organized religion.

After reading to his staff Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby, Marshall orders that Ryan be found and sent home immediately.

After reading Lincoln's letter to the governor of South Carolina, Toombs said memorably: " Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.

During the American Civil War, Wade was highly critical of President Abraham Lincoln ; in a September 1861 letter, he privately wrote that Lincoln's views on slavery " could only come of one born of poor white trash and educated in a slave State.

In response to a public letter issued at a meeting of angry Democrats in Albany, Lincoln's " Letter to Erastus Corning et al.

The inscription below the statue, taken from Abraham Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bixby, reads:

* Text of Lincoln's 1863 letter to Corning

* Mr. Lincoln and New York: Erastus Corning ( also contains text of Lincoln's 1863 letter )

Representative names include Ninian Wirt Edwards ( brother-in-law ), Kate Roby Gentry ( schoolmate ), Mentor Graham ( teacher ), John Hay, whose letter of 5 September 1866 discusses Lincoln's daily life in the White House and ends with the statement that he was " the greatest character since Christ ," John B.

Fessenden described Lincoln's action as " a weak and unjustifiable concession to the Union men of the border states " and Sumner writing in a letter to Lincoln how sad it was " to have the power of a god and not use it godlike.

It houses one of the five copies of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address ( 1863 )— the only such to be privately owned and the only one accompanied both by a letter from Lincoln transmitting the manuscript and by the original envelope addressed and franked by Lincoln.

One of her great-grandsons repeated his father's story that she angrily destroyed Lincoln's letter after receiving it.

Hamilton examined the facsimile of the Bixby letter and concluded that it was copied from a poorly executed forgery, citing elements of its construction incorrect for Lincoln's era as well as apparent pencil markings that were traced in pen.

Another factor involves Lincoln's letter writing habits, especially in November 1864 when the Bixby letter was composed.

Some have credited Hay with being the real author of Lincoln's Letter to Mrs. Bixby, consoling her for the loss of her sons in the war.

Mrs. Lincoln accompanied her wounded husband across the street to the Petersen House, where Lincoln's Cabinet was summoned.

In 1868, Mrs. Lincoln's former modiste and confidante, Elizabeth Keckley, published Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House.

Mrs. Lincoln's surviving son, Robert Lincoln, a rising young Chicago lawyer, was alarmed at his mother's increasingly erratic behavior.

Along the south wall of the burial room are four crypts containing the remains of Mrs. Lincoln and three of Lincoln's four sons ( his eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery ).

In addition to the anti-Mary Todd bias of many historians engendered by William Herndon ’ s ( Lincoln's law partner and early biographer ) personal hatred of Mrs. Lincoln, Baker discounts the criticism of the marriage as both a basic misunderstanding of the changing nature of marriage and courtship in the mid-19th Century and attempts to judge the Lincoln marriage by modern standards.

Elizabeth Woodbury Fox, the wife of Lincoln's naval aide, wrote in her diary for November 16, 1862, " Tish says, ' Oh, there is a Bucktail soldier here devoted to the president, drives with him, and when Mrs. L is not home, sleeps with him.

Other works include the well known Twenty Days, an account of Lincoln's assassination and the twenty days that followed, which she wrote with her son, Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr .; Tiny Animal Stories ; The Telephone Book ; Lucky Mrs. Ticklefeather ; Brave Mr. Buckingham ; Junket is Nice ( 1933 ); Wise Old Aard-Vark ( 1936 ); and Now Open the Box.

A follow-up to an earlier version called Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book, published by Mary J. Lincoln in 1884, the book under Farmer's direction eventually contained 1, 849 recipes, from milk toast to Zigaras à la Russe.

The rails deformed by fire were known to the soldiers of the Army of Tennessee as " Old Mrs. Lincoln's Hair Pins.

It is much less difficult now than in Lincoln's day to see that on both sides sovereign Americans had given their lives in the Civil War to maintain the balance between the powers they had delegated to the States and to their Union.

Lincoln's slow progress towards the several marking his achievement is even now unrecognizable as such, and loosely interpreted as the alternation of inconsistency with vision.

Thanks to Spoken Arts Records, history buffs may hear Lincoln's `` most memorable speeches and letters '' in a two-disc set, interpreted by Lincoln authority and lecturer Roy P. Basler.

As a contemporary bonus, the set includes Carl Sandburg's address at a joint session of Congress, delivered on Lincoln's birthday two years ago.

The beehive voices, for no one could bear silence, drowned out the sound of Mrs. Lincoln's weeping.

The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found, and the war came.

Under Lincoln's leadership, the Union set up a naval blockade that shut down the South's normal trade, took control of the border slave states at the start of the war, gained control of communications with gunboats on the southern river systems, and tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia.

Lincoln's assassination was the first assassination of a U. S. president and sent the nation into mourning.

Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Abraham, had moved his family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky, where he was ambushed and killed in an Indian raid in 1786, with his children, including Lincoln's father Thomas, looking on.

Lincoln's mother, Nancy, was the daughter of Lucy Hanks, and was born in what is now Mineral County, West Virginia, then part of Virginia.

After the death of Lincoln's mother, his older sister, Sarah, took charge of caring for him until their father remarried in 1819 ; Sarah later died in her 20s while giving birth to a stillborn son.

Thomas Lincoln's new wife was the widow Sarah Bush Johnston, the mother of three children.

While young Lincoln's formal elementary education consisted approximately of a year's worth of classes from several itinerant teachers, he was mostly self-educated and was an avid reader.

Lincoln's first romantic interest was Ann Rutledge, whom he met when he first moved to New Salem ; by 1835, they were in a relationship but not formally engaged.

A wedding set for January 1, 1841, was canceled when the two broke off their engagement at Lincoln's initiative.

In 1844, the couple bought a house in Springfield near Lincoln's law office.

Lincoln's father-in-law was based in Lexington, Kentucky ; he and others of the Todd family were either slave owners or slave traders.

From 1853 to 1860, another of Lincoln's largest clients was the Illinois Central Railroad.

Lincoln's most notable criminal trial occurred in 1858 when he defended William " Duff " Armstrong, who was on trial for the murder of James Preston Metzker.

The case is famous for Lincoln's use of a fact established by judicial notice in order to challenge the credibility of an eyewitness.

" The Rail Candidate "— Lincoln's 1860 candidacy is depicted as held up by the slavery issue — a slave on the left and party organization on the right.

Lincoln's followers organized a campaign team led by David Davis, Norman Judd, Leonard Swett, and Jesse DuBois, and Lincoln received his first endorsement to run for the presidency.