Lost Lincoln Letter Revealed
Only months after President Obama called for transparency in the White House, one of Abraham Lincoln’s lost letters is being returned to the public. A note the president drafted four days before the Gettysburg address has been donated to the National Archive by a private collector. In it, Lincoln takes a minute away from thinking about the Civil War to address a minor annoyance: Robert Stevens, superintendent of the San Francisco Mint and the son of his good friend, had been investigated for corruption and removed from his position. In his letter to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, Lincoln kept it short and sweet: “Mr. Stevens, late Superintendent of the Mint at San Francisco, asks to have a copy, or be permitted to examine, and take extracts, of the evidence upon which he was removed. Please oblige him in one way or another. Yours truly, A. Lincoln.”
