In the case of Abraham Lincoln, the contents of his pockets on the night of his assassination on April 14, 1865, are both revealing and mysterious. There is nothing unusual about some of the things Lincoln carried with him: two pairs of eyeglasses, a lens polisher, a pocketknife, a linen handkerchief, a watch fob and a brown leather wallet. But in the wallet was a $5 Confederate note and nine newspaper clippings. No one can say for sure why Lincoln would have carried a Confederate note, but perhaps he wanted it as a souvenir of an institution that had died in America three days earlier, with the April 11, 1865, surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Va. |
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There are materials relating to the 16th president and the Civil War through the Library of Congress Web sites. The contents of Lincoln's pockets is from the exhibition American Treasures of the Library of Congress, which features on a rotating basis some of the most important materials in the Library, as well as some of the items most often asked for by the public, such as these Lincoln artifacts. There is also an exhibition dedicated to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which he delivered on Nov. 19, 1863. The Library has two of the five known drafts in Lincoln's own hand. You can also see the only known photograph of President Lincoln at Gettysburg. |
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