The Lincoln Legal Papers is a project to locate, edit, and publish documents and other records pertaining to the 25-year law practice of Abraham Lincoln, 1836-1861. The effort will produce a definitive collection of non-presidential records associated with Lincoln, arguably the most important lawyer-statesman in American history. The collection consists of an estimated 100,000 documents (over 250,000 pages) that describe the almost 5,000 cases of his active and varied legal career. Both the massive quantity of records and the legal nature of the documents warrant publication in two separate but complementary versions: a complete facsimile edition on CD- ROM and a highly selective four-volume letterpress edition with transcriptions and annotations. The former, entitled The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, is scheduled for release in 1999. It will contain facts about all of his cases and images of all of the documents in the collection, accessible through a comprehensive index. The latter, to be called The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Documents and Commentary, is expected to be completed in 2004. This book edition will present a discussion of 70 or so of his most representative cases along with document transcriptions and annotation.
Together these two publications will enable scholars to assess, for the first time, Lincoln's career as an attorney, and also reinterpret antebellum legal history and American social and economic history. They will correct a serious omission in Lincoln historiography, fill the last large gap in documenting his life and work, and contribute a major new source to the study of American legal and social history. Its aggregate and enduring achievement will be to provide historians and biographers with a rich corpus of previously inaccessible source materials for the reinterpretation not only of Lincoln and his contemporaries, but also nineteenth century American history generally.
The publications will include non-litigation materials in addition to his extensive caseload on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, the Illinois Supreme Court, and U.S. courts within and beyond Illinois. The documents were gathered during a six-year search through 88 Illinois county courthouses, several federal record depositories, and more than 25 other libraries and manuscript repositories. The Lincoln Legal Papers, inaugurated in 1985, is a project of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and receives support from the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Center for Legal Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
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This page updated 11 November 1999 by mep@sc.edu
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