{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "abraham_lincoln.papers_context",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/abraham-lincoln-archive-correspondents/incoming-mail-and-context/reference-mal0024400/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "Abraham Lincoln Papers: Incoming and Contextual Documents",
    "author": "Correspondents and archival record",
    "date": "1833-1916",
    "summary": "Incoming letters, petitions, and administrative records preserve the voices of people who petitioned, informed, or challenged Lincoln. The archive reveals the pressures of a wartime presidency without attributing his correspondents’ words to the president.",
    "learning": "Reconstruct the requests, conflicts, and information reaching the presidency without confusing a filed record with Lincoln’s own writing.",
    "long_summary": "Soldiers, governors, diplomats, relatives, office seekers, and ordinary citizens write to Lincoln to request a favor, report a crisis, or defend a political course. Their correspondence restores the concrete texture of a presidency caught between administration, war, and public opinion.\n\nThese records illuminate the circumstances to which decisions responded, but archival proximity does not turn them into Lincoln’s words. They show what could be addressed to him, not what he necessarily read, believed, or decided. This distinction makes it possible to study a network of power without confusing received context with personal testimony.",
    "historical_context": "The collection preserves voices reaching Lincoln: military officers, governors, diplomats, relatives, office seekers, and ordinary citizens. This documentary mass conveys the material scale of a wartime presidency, but it remains context received by Lincoln, not his own testimony.",
    "material_world_label": "Industrial world of the 19th century",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Steam, coal, factories, steel, machine tools, railways, and telegraphy concentrate unprecedented mechanical power.",
        "science": "Laboratories, journals, precision instruments, and professional institutions accelerate physics, chemistry, geology, and life science.",
        "medicine": "Anaesthesia, germ theory, vaccination, and antisepsis gradually transform care, with sharp inequalities of access.",
        "transport": "Rail and steamship shrink distances; horses, walking, and carriages remain ordinary in town and country.",
        "agriculture": "Machinery, fertilizers, breeding, and rail transport expand output and markets without eliminating manual labour or food crises.",
        "communication": "Telegraphy, mass newspapers, photography, post, and the emerging telephone speed news and business.",
        "clothing": "Dark suits, shirts, and hats dominate bourgeois menswear; long dresses, corsets, and layers shape women’s fashion, with more functional working clothes."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/24-1876-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Steam, coal, factories, steel, machine tools, railways, and telegraphy concentrate unprecedented mechanical power. Laboratories, journals, precision instruments, and professional institutions accelerate physics, chemistry, geology, and life science. Anaesthesia, germ theory, vaccination, and antisepsis gradually transform care, with sharp inequalities of access."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/24-1876-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "Rail and steamship shrink distances; horses, walking, and carriages remain ordinary in town and country. Telegraphy, mass newspapers, photography, post, and the emerging telephone speed news and business."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/24-1876-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Machinery, fertilizers, breeding, and rail transport expand output and markets without eliminating manual labour or food crises."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/24-1876-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Dark suits, shirts, and hats dominate bourgeois menswear; long dresses, corsets, and layers shape women’s fashion, with more functional working clothes."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "political-thought",
        "label": "Political thought and democracy"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "modern",
        "label": "Modern era"
    },
    "languages": [
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "coverage": "complete_for_attribution_partition",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/abraham_lincoln/papers_context/representations/en.ndjson",
            "language": "en",
            "records": 19210,
            "role": "archival_transcription",
            "sha256": "bdbd1855fd6c5d06c6e133d2235d2b74ded80136e4afc372369148b15f54c546",
            "source_id": "loc-abraham-lincoln-papers-complementary-datasets-2025"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "source_attested_item_level_including_transcription_attested_french",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/abraham_lincoln/papers_context/representations/fr-source-attested-items-v1.ndjson",
            "language": "fr",
            "language_evidence": "LOC item title or item transcription attests French; exact source transcript is reused, including English archival annotation or Latin motto where present.",
            "records": 26,
            "role": "archival_transcription_source_attested_french",
            "sha256": "c643f4aa00eda5a82d465db4e082648321a8def6684ae841b1da224fcefe22d5",
            "source_id": "loc-lincoln-by-the-people-2025-12-01",
            "publication_year": 2026,
            "publication_year_basis": "source_metadata"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "civil_war",
            "label": "Civil war"
        },
        {
            "id": "constitutional_government",
            "label": "Constitutional government"
        },
        {
            "id": "democracy",
            "label": "Democracy"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "friendship",
            "label": "Friendship"
        },
        {
            "id": "judgment",
            "label": "Judgment"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "political_union",
            "label": "Political union"
        },
        {
            "id": "roles",
            "label": "Roles and relationships"
        },
        {
            "id": "slavery",
            "label": "Slavery"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "abraham_lincoln.papers_context"
    ],
    "passages": 19210,
    "word_count": 7989852,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 7989852,
        "fr": 8149
    },
    "editorial_status": "curated_semantic_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "loc-abraham-lincoln-papers-item-v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "archive_item",
                "label_fr": "Document d’archive",
                "label_en": "Archive item"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Document",
        "leaf_en": "Document"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:abraham_lincoln.papers_context:mal0024400",
    "canonical_ref": "mal0024400",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "From Buckner S. Morris to Abraham Lincoln, April 12, 1849\n\nChicago April 12, 1849\n\nDear Sir (in confidence)\n\nAt the request of Mr. Wright — I write you this — stating that he has on the other side of this sheet correctly stated to you, the feelings & wishes of the Whig friends here so far as I know them in relation to the applicants for the Post office— In relation to preferences for that office among the Whigs here, there is of course some for one & some for another of the three — to wit — Dole — Boone & Wright but certainly it is, that any other appointment will greatly displease (in my opinion) a large most respectable & influential portion of the Whigs of this City — for one I certainly shall think it will result in much injury to the Whigs & the Whig cause here, if one of these men above named are not appointed.\n\nIf we are to judge from the habits of our friend Wilson and from the habits & conduct of certain men hereabouts who are to be in his employ as it is said as clerks thereof, I should not be surprised of complaints made against the appointment thereof — but I may be mistaken in my view of the matter — and it may turn out that the more a may man disppates &c the better his chances are for office & favour — but with me it is not so—\n\nYours truly\n\nB. S. Morris",
            "edition": "Library of Congress Abraham Lincoln Papers transcription dataset",
            "source_id": "loc-lincoln-knox-2025-12-10"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "2295b16af5622cd3d1e479815c32b87168f0465d8ee724e625391d1a74c16fa9"
}