Lincoln Editor

              July - September 2004 Volume 4   Number 3
PROJECT RECEIVES WE THE PEOPLE DESIGNATION FROM NEH
The  National  Endowment  for  the  Humanities
(NEH)  recently  awarded  the  Papers  of Abraham
Lincoln a three-year grant for $170,000, which the project
reported in the previous newsletter. Last month, NEH
Chairman  Bruce  Cole  named  the  Papers  of Abraham
Lincoln as one of its We the People projects.
In  September  2002,  President  George W.  Bush
announced the new We the People initiative to  explore
significant events and themes in our nation s history and
share these lessons with all Americans  and to improve
the teaching, learning, and understanding of American
history and culture. Applicants to NEH do not specifically
request We  the  People  status.  The  NEH  chairman
determines  which  grants  the  funding  agency  will
designate.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln was one of ten
scholarly editing projects to receive this recognition. The
project falls within one of the We the People missions:
to  preserve  our  nation s  historic  documents,  such  as
newspapers  and  presidential  papers,  and  to  support
scholarly  research,  while  expanding  access  to  these
important documents.
The major objective of the Papers of Abraham
Lincoln is to preserve all of Lincoln s correspondence
and speeches with digital images, to provide authoritative
transcriptions  of  those  documents,  to  offer  historical
context for each document through annotation, and to
make the images and transcriptions freely available over
the Internet.
PREVIEW OF THIS YEAR S DONOR PREMIUM
At the end of the year, The Papers of Abraham Lincoln
will offer another booklet for donors who make a
minimum  contribution  to  the  project.  Previous
booklets From  Log  Cabins  to  Temples  of  Justice:
Courthouses in Lincoln s Illinois, Judging Lincoln: The
Bench in Lincoln s Illinois, and Stovepipe Hat and Quill
Pen: The Artifacts of Abraham Lincoln s Law Practice 
have received rave reviews, and the upcoming booklet
promises to be a hit as well.
The new 200-page booklet will contain biographies,
photographs of people and gravestones, and documents
of Lincoln contemporaries who are buried at Oak Ridge
Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, the site of Lincoln s
tomb. The booklet will feature friends and neighbors of
the Lincoln family, Lincoln s colleagues at the bar and
in politics, and local business people with whom Lincoln
interacted.
Inside this quarter s newsletters are two sneak
previews of the upcoming booklet. In the Lincoln Editor,
there is an entry for Robert Irwin, a Springfield merchant
and Lincoln s friend. An entry for Henrietta Ulrich, a
proprietor of a Springfield lumber company and a client
Previous Premiums of Lincoln s, is located in the Lincoln Legal Briefs.