January - March 2015
O
Volume 15 Number 1
IRON MOUNTAIN ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH PAL
n April 1, Iron Mountain Incorporated, the storage
and information management company, announced
a new partnership with the Papers of Abraham Lincoln at
a press conference and luncheon at the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.
The partnership, a combination of financial
contributions and in-kind services, will help support the
Papers’ efforts to locate, digitize, transcribe, annotate,
and publish all documents written by or to Abraham
Lincoln. With Iron Mountain’s funds, the project will
add an additional researcher to the team in Washington,
DC, and add an additional editor in Springfield. This
contribution will also allow the project to migrate its
data from its current content management system to a
more flexible system that will enable direct publication
to the Internet. Finally, Iron Mountain will help build a
long-term archival solution to safeguard the project’s
image data in perpetuity.
“Iron Mountain’s support is meaningful for us
beyond just the financial commitment,” said Papers
of Abraham Lincoln Director Daniel W. Stowell. “It
is a true partnership, a union of two organizations
(from left) Brian Chisam (General Manager of the Great
Plains Territory, Iron Mountain), Ty Ondatje, and Daniel
Stowell during a panel discussion on April 1.
dedicated to preservation of and access to some of our
most important cultural items so that we can continue
to learn from, and be inspired by, the life and career of
Abraham Lincoln.”
The partnership is part of Iron Mountain’s Living
Legacy Initiative, which is dedicated to preserving
critical cultural and heritage information so that we
may better understand ourselves and the world around
us. Drawing from the company’s sixty-year history and
expertise in protecting, preserving, and managing the
critical information of more than 156,000 customers
the world over, the Living Legacy Initiative is able
to provide nonprofit agencies, museums, and other
organizations with critical support. It does so by offering
financial support and information management services
to help support key projects that match the company’s
commitment to preservation and accessibility.
“We launched the Living Legacy Initiative
because we believe that everyone deserves equal access
to the ideas and artifacts that compose our human
experience, regardless of economic or geographic
barriers,” said Ty Ondatje, senior vice president of
Corporate Responsibility and Chief Diversity Officer,
Iron Mountain. “Supporting projects and organizations
like the Papers of Abraham Lincoln allows us to fulfill
this mission, providing them with the expertise and
support they need to safeguard their collections and
advance their mission of preservation and education.
We’re proud to call them a partner and support the legacy
of Abraham Lincoln.”
Alisha Perdue, Manager of Community
Engagement for Iron Mountain, sowed the seeds for
this partnership last August when she reached out to
See IRON MOUNTAIN on page 2...
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PROJECT WELCOMES NEW INTERN AND VOLUNTEERS
arah Rollings, a December 2015 graduate of Eastern
New Mexico University, arrived in Springfield in
January for an internship with the project. A history
major who believes that people should understand
where they come
from, Rollings has
enjoyed spending
this time in her
mother ’s native
state. While working
as a full-time
intern, transcribing
Lincoln documents, she is living with her mother’s aunt
in Springfield. Rollings (pictured above) is interested in
the American Civil War, Medieval history, and British
History; and she reports that she is very much enjoying
learning about the transcription process.
The project also welcomed and trained two
new members of the volunteer transcription team in
Springfield. Mary Krallmann, a native of Nebraska who
attended school near the state capital of Lincoln, earned
her Bachelor’s degree at a Lutheran college in Seward,
Nebraska. Following her education, Krallmann settled in
Lincoln, Illinois, where for more than 35 years she worked
for newspapers,
processing material
for publication.
Krallmann (pictured
at left) has this to say
about her experience:
“In volunteering with
the Lincoln papers
project, I’ve been thinking what a difference 150
years makes; that an ordinary person like me can take
the last part of the route of Lincoln’s funeral train,
like a time machine back to the 1860s, and transcribe
correspondence to and from A. Lincoln.”
The project is also pleased to welcome Tom Myers
to the transcription team. A native of Waukegan, Illinois,
and a veteran of the Vietnam War, Myers attended the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he
studied history and political science and completed one
year of graduate work in transportation studies. Myers
(pictured below), who is now retired, was a manager of
the Transportation Division at the Illinois Commerce
Commission, where he
worked for twenty-three
years. Myers’s great
grandfather David D
Myers served with the
75th Illinois Volunteers
during the Civil War, so
Tom Myers has a deep
interest in the Civil War era, and he finds the transcription
work he is doing at the project “fascinating.”
U OF I OFFERS DIGITAL
STORAGE FOR MASTER IMAGES
T
hanks to a special appropriation by University
of Illinois President Robert Easter, the Papers of
Abraham Lincoln is now storing its archival digital files
at Campus Information Technologies and Educational
Services (CITES) at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. The pledge of $75,000 will provide funding
for CITES to support the project with online hosting and
storage for up to three years.
Through the efforts of Congressman Randy
Hultgren and his staff, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
provided a critical grant to the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
in 2013, when the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications shut down the server that had hosted the
files since 2007. This timely support from the University
comes at the end of the two-year grant from AWS, which
stored the project’s digital files from 2013-2015. These
short-term arrangements are essential in the absence of
a long-term digital preservation solution for the Papers
of Abraham Lincoln, a need the new partnership with
Iron Mountain promises to address in the year ahead.
The project is extremely grateful to President
Easter; Peg O’Donoghue, Special Assistant to the
president; Christopher Kuehn, Manager of UNIX
Operations at CITES; and Nicholas Haggin, UNIX
Systems Administrator at CITES. Haggin has been the
project’s point person for the electronic transfer of files
from AWS to CITES, and the project is appreciative of
his assistance in this regard.
IRON MOUNTAIN from page 1
the Papers of Abraham Lincoln. In October, Ondatje,
Perdue, and other members of Iron Mountain’s Corporate
Responsibility team had the opportunity to visit with
Papers of Abraham Lincoln staff at the National Archives
in Washington, DC, to see the research first hand. The
partnership has grown from those initial interactions, and
the Papers of Abraham Lincoln is excited and grateful
to have Iron Mountain as a partner.
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PROJECT AND STAFF NEWS
his quarter, two project editors published books.
Assistant Director Stacy McDermott published
Mary Lincoln: Southern Girl,
Northern Woman (New York,
Routledge Press) in January.
The book, which is part of the
press’s Historical Americans
series, is a short biography with
a lightly annotated documents
section and a companion
website. Since publishing the
book, McDermott has done
two book signing events. The
first one, which launched
the publication of the book
in January, took place at the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential
Museum in Springfield,
Illinois, and the other was in
March at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston.
In February, Assistant Editor Ed Bradley
published his first book, “We Never Retreat”:
Filibustering Expeditions into Spanish Texas, 1812-1822,
a narrative account
of private military
invasions in Texas
and an examination
of why American
men participated
in them. The
book is available
from Texas A&M
University Press
and is a revision
o f B r a d l e y ’s
dissertation at
the University of
Illinois.
York firms of Christie’s and Swann Auction Galleries,
and the Chicago firm of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers.
The project’s new office manager, Carolyn
Yates, resigned her position in early March. She
left to take a federal job at Camp Butler National
Cemetery outside of Springfield. Although the
staff was sad to see her go, the job at Camp Butler
was too good for her to pass up, and everyone
wishes her all the best.
In Janaury, Assistant Editor Christian
McWhirter started a blog entitled Civil War Pop.
In this forum, he explores music, film, games, and
literature from and about the American Civil War.
In February, Assistant Editor David
Gerleman published an article entitled “Will that
Thing Work? Civil War Naval Inventions,” in Civil
War Times. He also published in the February
issue of the Journal of Southern History a review
of Susannah J. Ural’s new book Don’t Hurry Me
Down to Hades: The Civil War in the Words of Those
Who Lived It.
Stacy McDermott published two reviews this
quarter. One was an assessment of The Mary Lincoln
Enigma: Historians on America’s Most Controversial
First Lady, edited by Frank J. Williams and Micheal
Burkhimer. The review appeared in the Winter 2015
issue of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.
The second review was published in the Winter 2015
issue of The Annals of Iowa and evaluated the scholarly
contributions of five books from the “Concise Lincoln
Library,” a series published by Southern Illinois
University Press. She also published an essay on the
political romance of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd
in Illinois Issues magazine in March.
In March, Christian McWhirter did a Q&A
session with Professor Don Oglesby’s music class at the
University of Miami via Skype. He talked about Lincoln
and Civil War music. McWhirter also published “The
Song that Drove Sherman Crazy” in New York Times
n February, the Disunion Blog, on March 9, 2015.
project obtained
a facsimile of a previously unknown Lincoln letter,
he project appreciates the generosity of the
which discusses two Lincoln legal cases. The facsimile
following donors:
is owned by Rosie C. Wilk-Davis, and we are grateful to
Abraham Lincoln Association
her for making us aware of this new Lincoln document.
Bonita Dickson Dillard
Manuscript dealers and auction houses continue
Joseph Duffy
to be an important source for learning about new Lincoln
Hon. Richard Mills
documents and for acquiring digital images of them.
Don R. Pitzen
Recently, the project obtained images from the New
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W
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN A WORD
hen new partner Iron Mountain sent a film
crew to Springfield to interview the staff of the
Papers of Abraham Lincoln, one of their questions
was most intriguing. If you had to describe Abraham
Lincoln in a single word, what would that word be?
Remarkably, editors, a graduate assistant, and one
volunteer all chose different words. What single word
would you use to describe Abraham Lincoln? Here
are our choices:
Awesome: Lincoln is awesome to me, not
necessarily for his character traits, but because he
inspires awe when you see how intimately he was
involved in so many wartime decisions great and
small. What is most striking is that when you sift
through the towering mass of Civil War archival
records, his distinctive handwriting appears on all
manner of correspondence, from both the powerful
and the powerless. The ability to formulate war
strategy, juggle prickly political egos, review court
martial transcripts weighing life or death, and still
deal with the never-ending petty claims and squabbles
over patronage and office is indeed nothing less than
awesome.
Empathetic: I see Lincoln’s empathy in many
documents but a poem he wrote, reflecting on his
childhood, particularly touches me. Remembering
“Poor Matthew,” who obviously suffered from mental
illness, Lincoln wrote as if he understood Matthew’s
“pangs that kill the mind.”
Funny:I value a good sense of humor, and I admire
people who use humor to cope with personal struggles,
navigate difficult social and political circumstances, and
put their lives into proper perspective. For me, Abraham
Lincoln epitomizes the ways in which humor can see us
through big and small struggles in our lives. Lincoln used
humorous stories as a way to understand people and to
connect with them, and he well understood that laughter
is, indeed, the very best of medicine, even during times
of war.
Goodness: Lincoln’s life is marked by goodness.
Whether repaying debts at New Salem, honoring old
friendships throughout his entire life, or treating his
opposition with respect and regard, Lincoln did not let
his ego get in the way of seeing good in others, and acting
with consideration of others’ feelings.
Integrity: Integrity has always meant to me
“doing what’s right when no one is looking.” I believe
Abraham Lincoln put integrity in action as a lawmaker
and later as president.
Interesting: While the word might seem a rather
bland choice to describe Lincoln, the word sums up
what I think about him. I find every aspect of his life
interesting, whether it be his presidency, his law practice,
his legislative career, his boyhood, or his family life.
Kind: I would use the word “kind” to describe
Lincoln because of his consideration for the feelings of
others. This is best captured in his December 23, 1862,
letter to Fanny McCullough, whose father had recently
died in battle. Lincoln, who had lost his son Willie earlier
that year, assures Fanny that she will feel happy again,
telling the young girl that “I have had experience enough
to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to
feel better at once.”
Open-Minded: Lincoln had many admirable
qualities, but for me, his greatness comes most from his
willingness to listen to the opinions of others and thus
allow his own views to evolve over time. Far from being
4
intractable, Lincoln recognized the need for intellectual
growth and purposefully surrounded himself with a wide
range of people and ideas. His open-mindedness allowed
him to adjust ably his positions on race and slavery and
to react thoughtfully to the trying events of the Civil War.
Principled: If ever there were circumstances
justifying the postponement of elections, the American
Civil War surely qualifies. So great was Abraham
Lincoln’s commitment to the Constitution and the rule
of law that he accepted the continued functioning of the
political process though certain at one point that he would
lose reelection. His principled use of power without
becoming dictatorial saved the nation and perhaps
republican self-government.
Sacrificial: Abraham Lincoln denied his own
predilection and sacrificed a lucrative legal practice,
friends, and the only home he ever owned to assume
the mantle of chief executive. Against his nature, he
surrendered his privacy, exposing himself and his family
to public scrutiny, ridicule, and censure. He gave up his
T
time, talent, health, and ultimately his life in defending
the Union and leading the nation through a civil war.
Wise: The word “wise” best represents Abraham
Lincoln because he possessed an innate wisdom that
governed the course of his life. When faced with any
situation—be it educating himself, pursuing a legal
career, entering politics, or leading the nation through its
greatest crisis—Lincoln was immediately able to view
each potential course of action and choose the one he felt
most effective. Sometimes he got it wrong (see: George
McClellan) but more often than not, he got it right,
demonstrating a true genius that enabled his spectacular
rise to prominence and possibly saved the country.
Wry: I chose “wry” to describe Lincoln,
who often saw the humor or the irony in situations.
He generally expressed his humor without sarcasm,
mockery, or meanness. His quirky, dry wit—employed to
poke fun at himself as well as others—defined his style
of interacting with others and with the world.
JAPANESE DIPLOMACY AMID CIVIL WAR
he wrote or signed,” said Daniel W. Stowell, director of
the Papers of Abraham Lincoln. “Lincoln’s documents
survive in many types of repositories and private
collections across the United States and around the
world. The virtual archive that the Papers of Abraham
Lincoln is creating will help preserve them and make
them available to researchers everywhere.”
The project especially wishes to thank Ms. Day
for her kind efforts in locating and obtaining images of
these documents.
he Papers of Abraham Lincoln has added three
more documents to its collection by obtaining
images of letters Lincoln wrote to the Shogun of
Japan in 1861.
Many historic documents were destroyed by
fire in the bombing of Tokyo during World War II, but
these letters survived. They are held in the Diplomatic
Archives of Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ms. Takako Day, a native of Japan who lives
in DeKalb, Illinois, contacted the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum regarding her research
on Lincoln’s 1862 meeting with Joseph Heco,
the only Japanese person Lincoln ever met. Day
agreed to help obtain copies of the diplomatic
documents, and she personally obtained the
digital images on a recent visit to Japan.
T h e l e t t e r s c o n c e r n A m e r i c a ’s
ambassadors to Japan. In one, Lincoln assures
Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi that Townsend
Harris would represent the views of the
Lincoln administration. The second and third
letters announce Harris’s resignation and the
appointment of Robert H. Pruyn as the new
Minister Resident to the Japanese government.
“These letters demonstrate the breadth of
Lincoln’s concerns during his administration, as
well as the worldwide dispersion of documents
5
O
A MOST UNUSUAL RESOURCE
purpose of causing that article to be imported into the
country at a reasonable price. Nothing will be omitted
on my part toward accomplishing this desirable end.”2
An impetus for federal action came in the fall of
1855, when a New England sea captain brought news of
guano deposits on Barker Island, located several hundred
miles south of Hawaii. This led a group of merchants
to form the American Guano Company, which soon
requested President Franklin Pierce to send a warship to
survey and declare title to the island for the United States.
On August 18, 1856, Congress passed a law providing
that any U.S. citizen who discovered an unoccupied and
unclaimed island containing guano deposits could claim
it for his country. Over the next thirty years Americans
filed claims for approximately seventy islands, including
one made in late 1862 by the New York Guano Company
(N.Y.G.C.) for the Swan Islands, which lie ninety miles
off Honduras’s Caribbean coast. Secretary of State
William H. Seward certified the company’s claim on
February 11, 1863, as per the act of August 1856.3
The company’s operations on the Swan Islands
became compromised with the release of a January 20,
1865, order from the Executive Mansion.
n July 27, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln
pardoned John Collins, a young man who had
been sentenced by the Criminal Court of the District
of Columbia to nine months in jail for stealing “several
bags of guano” —i.e., bird droppings. This most unusual
offense was grounded in the lucrative guano trade of the
second half of the nineteenth century, a commerce that
directly relates to a Lincoln document discovery by the
Papers of Abraham Lincoln at the National Archives in
College Park, Maryland.1
Guano deposits were formed over the centuries
when sea birds feasted on cold-water fish off the western
side of the South American coast. After gorging, the birds
would nest by the millions on dozens of small islands.
Their droppings, rich in phosphate, accumulated to such
a degree that when the the Prussian naturalist Alexander
von Humboldt
visited Peru in 1803,
some of its islands
had guano deposits
more than 100 feet
deep. Guano was
first promoted in the
United States as an
effective fertilizer
in 1824 by John S.
Skinner, editor of the
American Farmer,
and by the mid1840s it was prized
as an answer to the
Guanay Cormorants like the one country’s declining
above were the most common
“contributors” to guano deposits. a g r i c u l t u r a l
p r o d u c t i v i t y. I n
1850, President Millard Fillmore took notice, offering
in his first message to Congress that “Peruvian guano has
become so desirable an article to the agricultural interest
of the United States that it is the duty of the Government
to employ all the means properly in its power for the
Circular to Collectors of Customs4
20 January 1865
CIRCULAR TO COLLECTORS OF CUSTOMS.
EXECUTIVE MANSION,
Washington City, January 20, 1865.
Ordered, That no clearances for the exportation
of hay from the United States be granted until further
orders, unless the same shall have been placed on
shipboard before the publication hereof.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
TREASURY DEPARTMENT,
January 20, 1865.
The attention of Collectors is called to the above
Order of the President of the United States of this date,
prohibiting the exportation of hay.
Collectors are therefore directed to refuse
clearances for the exportation of hay until farther orders.
W. P. Fessenden5
Secretary of the Treasury.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln
Needs YOUR help!
Please donate and help sustain
our important work.
Because a ban on the export of hay—a war
matériel—would make it exceedingly difficult for the
N.Y.G.C. to conduct business, company vice president
George E. White asked Lincoln’s new Secretary of the
6
Treasury Hugh McCulloch for “permission to ship to
Swan Island three Tons Hay, for feeding Mules used in
working Guano.”
The Lincoln administration had a decision to
make—should it grant the request and run the risk that the
exported hay would be seized by Confederate forces? In a
newly discovered endorsement, President Lincoln passed
responsibility to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
Department consents to a clearance of three tons of hay
for the support of the mules of the New York Guano
Company working said islands
Edwin M Stanton
Sec of War
March 9, 1865
The New York Guano Company sold its rights
to the Swan Islands in 1870, the first of numerous
Endorsement of Abraham Lincoln
exchanges of title. Almost a century later the Central
6
to Edwin M. Stanton
Intelligence Agency. had a contingent on the islands that
9 March 1865
beamed coded messages to anti-Castro Cubans alerting
I made this order at the request of the Sec. of War, and them to the Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1972, the U.S. and
am willing to any exception to which he consents and to Honduras signed a treaty that granted sovereignty over
none other.
the islands to the latter. By this time the guano industry
A. Lincoln
as a whole had long been dormant, the victim of a rise
March 9. 1865.
in U.S. rock phosphate production and the exhaustion
of guano deposits.7
[Endorsement]
By Ed Bradley, Assistant Editor
The Great & Little Swan islands appearing to be
Guano islands under the protection of the United States
Notes on page 8...
pursuant to the Act of Congress of 18th Aug 1856, the
John Collins to Abraham Lincoln*
10 July 1861
To His Excellency
Abraham Lincoln
Prest of U.S.
The Petition of John Collins respectfully
represents that at at the March Term of the Criminal
Court of this District he was convicted of stealing
several bags of Guano, and was sentenced to nine
months imprisonment in the Jail of this County.
Your Petitioner has been confined in Jail
for three months, and is now in weak and declining
health, having had several hemorraghes during
his imprisonment, & believes that his continued
confined^ment^ will terminate in his death.
Your Petitioner is a youth of only fourteen
years of age, and on account of ^his^ youth, as well
as on account of the critical state of his health, he
humbly asks the interposition of your Executive
Clemency
John Collins
Washington DC.
John Collins to Abraham Lincoln, 10 July 1861, box 9, RG 204,
Entry 1a: Pardon Case Files, 1853-1946, National Archives,
College Park, MD. Image courtesy of the National Archives.
*
7
Notes:
1
Pardon of John Collins, 27 July 1861, Abraham Lincoln
Library and Museum, Lincoln Memorial University,
Harrogate, Tennessee.
2
Jimmy M. Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush: Entrepreneurs
and Overseas Expansion (NY: St. Martin’s Griffin,
1994), 1, 3-4, 9-10; Message to Congress, 2 December
1850, in James D. Richardson, comp., A Compilation of
the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897), V:83.
3
Larry Gara, The Presidency of Franklin Pierce
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 148-49;
Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush, 98-99; Certificate of
the Secretary of State, 11 February 1863, in George E.
White (vice president, New York Guano Company) to
Hugh McCulloch, 4 March 1865, box 14, RG 56, Entry
315: Records of the Division of Captured Property,
Claims, and Land, General Records, Letters received
by the Division, 1863-1887, National Archives, College
Park, MD.
4
Circular to Collectors of Customs, 20 January 1865;
George E. White to Hugh McCulloch, 4 March 1865,
both in box 14, RG 56, Entry 315.
5
William Pitt Fessenden was Abraham Lincoln’s
Secretary of the Treasury from July 5, 1864, to March
3, 1865.
6
Endorsement of Abraham Lincoln to Edwin M. Stanton,
9 March 1865; Endorsement of Edwin M. Stanton to
Abraham Lincoln, 9 March 1865; Circular to Collectors
of Customs, 20 January 1865, all in box 14, RG 56,
Entry 315.
7
Skaggs, The Great Guano Rush, 98-99, 150-51, 200,
208.
Lincoln Editor
The Quarterly Newsletter of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln
A Project of
(04-15)
How You Can Help:
• Find Lincoln: By advising project staff of known or reported
Lincoln documents in your locality. We are seeking copies of any
document, letter, or contemporary printed account that relates to
Abraham Lincoln’s entire life, 1809-1865.
Cosponsored by Center for State Policy and Leadership
at University of Illinois Springfield
Abraham Lincoln Association
ISSN 1537-226X
• Fund Lincoln: By making a tax-deductible donation to the
Papers of Abraham Lincoln in support of the project. Such gifts
provide crucial support in furtherance of the project’s objectives.
(a Founding Sponsor of the Lincoln Legal Papers)
Project Staff:
Daniel W. Stowell, Director/Editor; Stacy Pratt McDermott, Assistant Director/
Associate Editor; Ed Bradley, Assistant Editor; David Gerleman, Assistant Editor;
Christian L. McWhirter, Assistant Editor; R. Boyd Murphree, Assistant Editor;
Daniel E. Worthington, Assistant Editor; Kelley B. Clausing, Research Associate;
Marilyn Mueller, Research Associate; Caitlin Haynes, Research Assistant; Greg
Hapke, Research Assistant; Carolyn Yates, Office Manager; StaLynn Davis,
Graduate Assistant.
Please address inquiries and gifts to:
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln
112 North Sixth Street, Springfield, IL 62701-1512
Phone: (217) 785-9130 Fax: (217) 524-6973
Website: http://www.papersofabrahamlincoln.org
This project has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for
the Humanities, an independent federal agency, and the National Historical
Publications and Records Commission.
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