Lincoln scholar, Harold Holzer, once called the Cooper Union address “Lincoln’s watershed, the event that transformed him from a regional leader into a national phenomenon. Here the politician known as frontier debater and chronic jokester introduced a new oratorical style: informed by history, suffused with moral certainty, and marked by lawyerly precision.”
This period allows you to see Lincoln becoming the icon we know today. But it allows us to see Lincoln grappling with the weight that comes with national attention. We think of Lincoln as simply an iconic, even emotionless figure, but in fact, as this newly discovered letter demonstrates, that is not the case. This letter is unpublished, was not known to have been written, and has only recently been discovered.
Very few letters survive from his Cooper Union visit, which lasted just around a couple weeks. Records show only one other has ever come up for sale.
This letter was acquired from the family of the recipient. Each year, The Raab Collection represents countless heirs in the disposition in their historical family treasures. View the letter here.
