Hundreds of Rare Lincoln, Civil War Images Added to Online Collection

Hundreds of rare posters, handbills and other printed materials related to Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War are now available to view online through the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum’s Picturing Lincoln project.

The latest addition includes 882 historical broadsides digitized by the presidential library’s audiovisual team, bringing the online collection to 2,367 images. Broadsides generally include posters, handbills and other materials printed on one side, many of which were originally produced for temporary use and were not expected to survive.

The newly available materials provide a look at political, military and everyday life during the Civil War era. Among the items are a Southern newspaper declaring the end of the United States, promotional posters for Army units, notices offering rewards for the capture of freedom-seeking enslaved people and a satirical “death certificate” for the Confederacy.

Materials involving Lincoln range from historically important documents to unusual pieces of popular culture. The collection includes versions of the Gettysburg Address in multiple languages, poems and stories about Lincoln, programs from Ford’s Theatre on the night of his assassination and a schedule for the funeral train that carried his body back to Springfield.

Other items show the ways Lincoln’s image and presidency were used in advertising and political debate. Those include a Lincoln-themed soap advertisement and a political poster criticizing what it described as Lincoln’s “tyranny.”

“These images offer an incredible look at the America of the 1860s,” said Christina Shutt, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. “A nation honoring its military, a nation holding elections while at war, a nation mourning its lost leader, all that and more can be found here.”

The Picturing Lincoln collection is hosted through the Illinois Secretary of State’s Illinois Digital Archives, where the materials have been made available as high-resolution images that can be viewed by the public online.

The project was supported by a $100,000 grant funded through the Illinois State Library. The latest additions required presidential library staff to digitize the original materials and prepare the resulting files for online access.

“This latest addition to Picturing Lincoln represents many hours of digitizing the original material and preparing the resulting files so they can be accessed by anyone visiting the project website,” said Frederik Heller, the ALPLM’s director of library services. “Most broadside materials were intended to be discarded after they had served their purpose, so the collection offers viewers a chance to spend some time with hundreds of items that they might not find elsewhere.”

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum maintains a collection of roughly 13 million items covering all eras of Illinois history. Its mission includes preserving and sharing materials related to Illinois history and Lincoln’s life and legacy while encouraging civic engagement.

The Picturing Lincoln collection can be viewed at PresidentLincoln.Illinois.gov/PicturingLincoln. Additional information about the presidential library and museum is available at PresidentLincoln.Illinois.gov.