{
    "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-mal0342400/",
    "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": "anger",
            "label": "Anger"
        },
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "charity",
            "label": "Almsgiving and charity"
        },
        {
            "id": "civil_war",
            "label": "Civil war"
        },
        {
            "id": "constitutional_government",
            "label": "Constitutional government"
        },
        {
            "id": "creation",
            "label": "Creation"
        },
        {
            "id": "death",
            "label": "Death"
        },
        {
            "id": "democracy",
            "label": "Democracy"
        },
        {
            "id": "desire",
            "label": "Desire"
        },
        {
            "id": "education",
            "label": "Education"
        },
        {
            "id": "ether_field",
            "label": "Ether and field"
        },
        {
            "id": "faith",
            "label": "Faith"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "fear",
            "label": "Fear"
        },
        {
            "id": "freedom",
            "label": "Freedom"
        },
        {
            "id": "friendship",
            "label": "Friendship"
        },
        {
            "id": "god",
            "label": "God"
        },
        {
            "id": "hope",
            "label": "Hope"
        },
        {
            "id": "judgment",
            "label": "Judgment"
        },
        {
            "id": "justice",
            "label": "Justice"
        },
        {
            "id": "law",
            "label": "Law"
        },
        {
            "id": "love",
            "label": "Love"
        },
        {
            "id": "mindfulness",
            "label": "Mindfulness"
        },
        {
            "id": "mode",
            "label": "Mode"
        },
        {
            "id": "peace",
            "label": "Peace"
        },
        {
            "id": "philosophical_training",
            "label": "Philosophical training"
        },
        {
            "id": "pleasure",
            "label": "Pleasure"
        },
        {
            "id": "political_union",
            "label": "Political union"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "repentance",
            "label": "Repentance"
        },
        {
            "id": "salvation",
            "label": "Salvation"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        },
        {
            "id": "slavery",
            "label": "Slavery"
        },
        {
            "id": "softness",
            "label": "Softness"
        },
        {
            "id": "time",
            "label": "Time"
        },
        {
            "id": "wisdom",
            "label": "Wisdom"
        }
    ],
    "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:mal0342400",
    "canonical_ref": "mal0342400",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "Woodbury Litchfield Co. Conn\nJuly 28. 1860.\n\nHon Abraham Lincoln Springfield Ill,\nDear & Respected Sir,\nIn the inscrutable wisdom of divine Providence the hearts\nof a large & respectable portion of the millions of the American\npeople are fixed upon you as the next  president of the\nUnited States.  Should you be raised to that high &\nexalted station may you prove worthy of the important\ntrust laid upon you, by so distinguishing yourself in the\ndischarge of your varied duties, as to be beyond a just\ncharge of criminal imputation from both friends & foes.\nYou have lived long enough to be sensible (though from\nreport five years younger than myself) that no station in\nlife however high or low is secure from, or free from care\nand anxiety; that prosperity & adversity, pain & pleasure\nare the common lot of all.\nThe high post of honor which we trust you are about to be\ncalled to fill is one of arduous duties and deep responsibilities.\nYou will have a host of admirers & flatterers who will\napplaud you in the hope to gain office & emolument\nunder your administration & patronage. You will\ntherefore need to discriminate closely that you be not\noverun  and imposed upon by unprincipled polititions who\nhave little regard for the free & sound principles on\nwhich the government was established and its future\nprosperity depends.\nThat the present state of affairs in our government is\nunhappy--and even alarming---and needs a change for\nthe better--no one who has a just view and appreciation\nof the subject will deny.  The present administration\nhas become woefully corrupt and black with crimes;\nand its most alarming feature is, that they are\n\n[*3424*]\n\nmultiplying and becoming popular---and instead of the\nperpetrators of them feeling shame and remorse,  They are proud of\nthat for which they should exercise the deepest repentance\nInsincerity and recklessness seem to be the peculiar\ncharacteristic of the American people. There are,\nvery few of them in whom we can put any trust\nor dependance.  Moral rectitude in public or\nprivate affairs is esteemed a question of small consequence.\nIt is fashionable to make high pretentions to\nsanctity and religion in the way of public\nprofession--yet to reduce that profession to a\nlife of harmonious and consistent action is sure\nto meet with obloquy and abuse even from those\nwho profess.  This is owing to religious teaching---that\nprofession is all---action nothing.  This is so much\nthe case, that men have become bold and hardened\niniquity---and what once they looked upon as high hand\nmisdemeanors in others they can now practise themselves\nwithout any compunction of conscience.\nI should be very much pleased to form an acquaintance\nwith you by a personal interview did my circumstances\nallow it---and it could be done without intruding\non your time & attention; but the former (at least)\nforbids the indulgences. Few are so favored with\nregard to candidates for the higher offices.  I have\nfelt a desire to avail myself of this means of expression\nto you a few thoughts in modest friendship & a sincere\ndesire for your election.\nI have been for some twenty five years a strong\nAbolitionist, and have cooperated with them---so far\nas I judged was not contrary to the Constitutional Law\nof the County, and in accordance with the revealed word\nof God.  The latter I am fully decided gives no support\n\nnor countenance to American slavery---and that vain is\nthe attempt to show it:--- and that if its principles were\ncarried out in practice the institution could no more\nexist on earth than in heaven.  That all arguments\ndrawn from the Old Testament scriptures to support it are\nfallacious & empty, as those scriptures on examination are\nfound to have application or reference to no other human\nservitude than that under the Mosaic dispensation.\nIt has if possible still less support from the broad\nmantle of universal love emanating from the Gospel.\nAnd as for its drawing support from the Constitutional\nlaw, it is only by a forced one-sided Construction of it\nthat it is ever attempted to be shown.\nLysander Spooner, Theodore Weld, Wm Goodell---\nand other Champions of Liberty have settled this question to\nthe satisfaction of the jury of the world. The fact is, the\nmajority of the Free Statesman have so long been accustomed\nto look at the Constitution in the interest and light (darkness)\nof Southern Chattelilism--for party purposes--and have so long\nrejected the true light and interpretation, that it is like\na work of new creation to convince them and bring them over\nto the true faith & practice.  We have been altogether too\nyielding & subservient in our intercourse with the South to their\ndemands---and they have taken the advantage of our weakness---\nand now bid us defiance---to help ourselves if we can, ####\nWe have now only to blame ourselves for want of forethought\nand descision.\nThe Liberty party was early organized, took the alarm,\nand was brought into the field---in season to have rescued the\nnation from the thraldom, disgrace & curse of American\nslavery.  But it was weak for want of numbers---and had to\ncontend against fearful odds.  The two belligerent parties---\nwhig & democratic were already in the field---set to destroy it\n\n[*3425*]\n\narrayed in defiance of the Southern institution---their idol god.\nThus they gave a new new honor & impetus to that oligarchy---while\nthey disorganized & trode under foot the infant party in its\naspirations & struggle to save the country.  Had the whig\nparty fallen in with it on its Commencement the country would\n[ere] this have been in a peaceful & prosperous condition.\nBut...\"Charity suffereth long.\"  At last the Republican party was\nformed and found to embrace all the essential elements of\nthe new party--which by the end of the democratic party it\nhad destroyed.\nNow comes a new trial. The Republican party\nembracing as it does the principles held forth by the Liberty\nparty, those who belonged to the Liberty party will of course\nfall in with the Republican party to achieve the great\nobject which was so dear to them in the days of their virginity.\nThe democratic party now being broken we have a\nchance for success.  Let us improve it!\nYours to reclaim and save the Country.\nDavid Wellman Jr.",
            "edition": "Library of Congress Abraham Lincoln Papers transcription dataset",
            "source_id": "loc-lincoln-by-the-people-2025-12-01"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "f126b36a5c68d907f89570822f8d6a7ae487712bb1f429626cf8e53256bbfbad"
}