{
    "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-mal0091200/",
    "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": "impressions_and_assent",
            "label": "Impressions and assent"
        },
        {
            "id": "messiah",
            "label": "Messiah"
        },
        {
            "id": "political_union",
            "label": "Political union"
        },
        {
            "id": "recollection",
            "label": "Recollection"
        },
        {
            "id": "slavery",
            "label": "Slavery"
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time"
        }
    ],
    "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:mal0091200",
    "canonical_ref": "mal0091200",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "From John L. Scripps to Abraham Lincoln, June 23, 1858\n\nChicago June 23rd 1858\n\nMy Dear Sir\n\nThe Chicago Times\n of this morning contains a violent attack upon you, charging you with having voted against a bill for supply the American Army in Mexico with medicines and nurses — and, without saying so in as many words, — striving to fasten the impression upon the public that you uniformly voted in Congress against supplies for the Army in Mexico.\n\nI have not been able to get the Congressional Globe of that session, and shall therefore deny the charge generally tomorrow morning, upon the my recollection of the facts in the case. Will you please furnish me with proper date for setting the matter at rest, or will you see that the State\nJournal publishes what will supply us with the requisite materials for making a defence.\n\nSheahan expresses his determination privately of making the contest a personal one as between yourself and Douglas. He and the packs he leads should be met promptly at every point.\n\nRespectfully and Truly Your Friend\n\nJno. L. Scripps\n\n[Endorsed on Envelope by Lincoln:]\n\nJ. L. Scripps.",
            "edition": "Library of Congress Abraham Lincoln Papers transcription dataset",
            "source_id": "loc-lincoln-knox-2025-12-10"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "825f9b46d7fe03c0cd703d62c824beedbf6c1e37889f63c155538eaffdec8c4b"
}