Abraham Lincoln and John Hay

A collection comprising 30,000+ items in various media, of materials by and about Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States, and about the historical and political context of his life and career, chiefly the U.S. Civil War and its causes and aftermath. The collection of Charles Woodberry McLellan (1836-1918), one of five great Lincoln collectors at the turn of the 20th century, was acquired for Brown University in 1923 by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Class of 1897, and others, in memory of John Hay, Class of 1858, one of Lincoln's White House secretaries. Mr. Rockefeller also outfitted a special room to house the collection in Brown’s new library building, named for John Hay. In the ensuing years, further acquisitions have expanded the collection to more than five times its original size, and the original Lincoln Room expanded into adjacent space.

The books and pamphlets include 85-90 percent of the titles in Jay Monaghan's Lincoln bibliography, 1829-1939 (many in multiple editions and variant copies), as well as many thousand volumes of contemporary and later publications relating to the Civil War and the slavery controversy. In conjunction with the Harris Collection, the John Hay Library holds probably the largest collection anywhere of poems about Lincoln. There is also a good selection of representative titles of books that Lincoln read.

The manuscript collection includes original letters, notes, and documents, over 950 written or signed by Lincoln; material relating to Lincoln's family and associates; and facsimiles of manuscripts held by other institutions. The broadsides include song sheets, political sheets, ballots, and posters; also 27 of the 52 printed editions listed in Charles Eberstadt, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (New York: Duschnes Crawford, c1950). There is a selection of newspapers for 1860-1865; an index to the 11,300+ entries for Lincoln items in all existing files of Illinois newspapers to the end of the Civil War; and photocopies of the clipping files of the Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum, Fort Wayne, Ind.

The prints, arranged according to Meserve numbers, include most of the known photographs of Lincoln, engravings, and Currier & Ives prints. There are also original oil portraits by artists of Lincoln's day, most notably the portrait by Peter Baumgras, 1827-1903; some original drawings, as well as a scrapbook of Thomas Nasts's Civil War sketches. The statuary includes two Rogers groups, an original Truman Bartlett plaster statuette, and replicas of Leonard Volk's work. The sheet music comprises every known piece relating to Lincoln, including funeral marches, memorial songs, and campaign songs. The museum objects include over 550 medals, mourning and campaign badges, coins, postage stamps, etc.

The Center for Digital Scholarship’s Lincolniana at Brown provides a digital portal into the many facets of the McClellan Lincoln Collection. The collection comprises Broadsides, Graphics, Manuscripts, Objects, Sheet Music and Newspapers.

The Lincoln Manuscripts portal provides access to the digitized manuscripts maintained in the Brown Digital Repository. The Lincoln Manuscripts have been digitized in their entirety. The digitized manuscripts do not include materials from Maury Bromsen.

Researchers requesting access to the physical manuscripts in the Special Collections Reading Room will need to provide the date of the manuscript.

Existing transcriptions of Lincoln manuscripts held by the Hay can be found in Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (9 volume set)

Supplements, comprising items missing from the original set, were published in 1974 and 1990. Brown users working remotely can access Basler via HathiTrust (link provided in the Brown catalog record shown above). Non-Brown remote researchers can be referred to the Internet Archive for access to Basler volumes.

Digital access available through the Brown Digital Repository (as Lincoln Graphics)

Digital access available through the Brown Digital Repository (as Lincoln Broadsides)

Digital access available through the Brown Digital Repository (as Lincoln Sheet Music)

Only a few selected objects from the collection have been digitized. 

Digital access available through the Center for Digital Scholarship (as Museum Objects)

The McLellan Collection includes a range of newspaper issues from across the country that detail aspects of Lincoln’s presidency, but the focus of this portion of the collection is on reactions to Lincoln’s assassination.  

Digital access available through the Center for Digital Scholarship (as Lincoln Newspapers)