Manuscript: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

The conclusion of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address in Lincoln's own hand.

The conclusion of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in Lincoln’s own hand. Click to see a larger version.

This is the famous conclusion of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address from the only known manuscript in Lincoln’s handwriting. This is a photo of the bottom of page four.

From the Library of Congress:

“The only known manuscript of Lincoln’s famous Second Inaugural Address, this document appears to be a fair copy, rather than a composition draft. Its large lettering and well-spaced lines suggest it was copied out fair as a reading copy. This is confirmed by the revision he made to the address’s ending, which could have been effected by inserting additional words between the lines. Instead, he made the revision by pasting a slip of paper, or tab, over the last two lines of his text and writing the revised version on the tab.

“At some point it was decided to make printed copies available to the press. The name written in pencil in the top margin of the first page of the manuscript, “Flynn,” is almost certainly that of the typesetter assigned by the printer to set the manuscript into type. After proofreading the galleys of what would become a three-page printed handout for the press, Lincoln seems to have retained a set of uncorrected galleys and fashioned this into his reading copy. He did this by cutting the printed galleys up into smaller segments (mostly consisting of one sentence), arranging them into two columns, and pasting them onto a larger sheet. The text of this reading copy shows two verbal changes, which are present also in the manuscript copy, and many punctuation changes, which are not. This is presumably the text that Lincoln read from at the inaugural ceremony at the Capitol on March 4, 1865.

“For more details on the manuscript, the three-page printed press handout, and the reading copy, see David C. Mearns and Lloyd A. Dunlap, Library of Congress Press Release, Feb. 8, 1965. Both manuscript and reading copy were presented by the president to John Hay and were in turn presented by his family to the Library of Congress in 1916.”

Links to the Library of Congress

The full transcript with annotations.

Photos of all four pages of the address plus Lincoln’s endorsement on page 5.