Library of Congress's Blog, page 125

Welcome Carla Hayden!

Library of Congress employees gathered for a photo op to share today to welcome 14th Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on her first official day at the institution. Posing for photos were staff from the Library’s main campus on Capitol Hill, Taylor Street Annex in Northwest D.C. (which is home to the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped), the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Va., and the Fort Meade facility in Maryland.

“Library of Congress staff members are considered to be the ultimate in terms of professional librarianship,” Hayden said in an interview for the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. “So I’m really excited about getting their input and taking advantage of their experience as we work together to chart a course to the future.”

We invite you to welcome the Librarian in the comments below!

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Library staff gather in the Great Hall to pose for a photo for the new librarian. Photo by Shawn Miller. 

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Library staff at the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped campus at Taylor Street gather to welcome Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. Photo by Shawn Miller. 

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Library staff at the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation pose for a welcome photo. Photo by Shawn Miller.

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Staff members at the Library’s Fort Meade facility pose for a photo in honor of the new Librarian of Congress. Photo by Steve Herman. 

First Word: The 14th Librarian of Congress

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Carla Hayden, 14th Librarian of Congress. Photo by Shawn Miller.

(The following is a feature in the September/October 2016 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM.)

Carla Hayden discusses her decision to become a librarian and her plans as the new Librarian of Congress.

You are about to be sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress. How does that feel?

It’s such an honor to be nominated by the president and sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress. As a career librarian it’s really almost a dream come true. The confirmation process was really an eye-opener for me in so many ways, because I got to meet legislators that are committed to not only the nation’s history, but making information available. So many of the legislators were historians. There were a few that were actually musicians and that really had an interest in the Library of Congress. It was just a wonderful thing that made me very pleased that I was confirmed, and that I’ll have an opportunity to work with people who understand the importance of the Library of Congress.

When did you decide to become a librarian?

Librarianship really has been an adventure for me. To find out that there was a profession that was dedicated to making books, reading and knowledge available to people, that just seemed ideal. When I discovered that librarianship was a profession, I was coming out of undergraduate studies and thinking about what I was going to do next. I saw a colleague who had just graduated and they said, “They’re hiring people at the Chicago Public Library.” So I went and became a library associate. Within a week I was assigned to a small storefront library on the south side of Chicago, working with a young lady who was going to graduate school. She was on the floor, in jeans, having story time with children with autism. I thought, “Wait a minute. This is a different type of profession. You’re bringing things right to people.” I was hooked. Seeing what libraries could do in communities and how they could help people just opened my eyes.

So, at this point in my career, to be part of an institution like the Library of Congress is the ultimate in terms of what started with getting hooked on the profession back then.

How do you think your perspective will be reflected in the institution during your tenure?

As the first woman and the first African American to hold the position of Librarian of Congress, I think my perspective will be part of a continuum of the past librarians who came from different professions and backgrounds. There have been lawyers. There have been librarians. There have been publishers and authors and historians and scholars. So I think that I will be adding on to their different perspectives. While being a caretaker, I’ll be someone who is carrying the torch, too.

What do you see as the biggest challenges for the library?

The biggest opportunity for the Library is to make its wonderful treasures available to people in various formats using technology as a tool. So many collections are already digitized and available online. The opportunity to work with potential donors and those who are interested in seeing these treasures made available to everyone will be a wonderful adventure.

We also must make sure that while this is happening we’re taking care of the basic responsibilities of the Library as well—serving Congress, maintaining a robust Copyright Office that makes sure that creators and the users of content are served effectively and making sure that everyone has access to the Library’s collections.

What is your vision for the nation’s library under your stewardship?

My vision for the Library of Congress is to make people aware that it is part of their national heritage and that everyone can find something in the Library of Congress—or produced by the Library—that relates to them, their classroom curriculum or where they want to go in life.

“Librarians are,” as the t-shirt slogan says, “the original search engines.” Library of Congress staff members are considered to be the ultimate in terms of professional librarianship. So I’m really excited about getting their input and taking advantage of their experience as we work together to chart a course to the future.

What I hope to accomplish with the dedicated staff of the Library in the next 10 years of my appointment is to make more of the collections accessible in various formats. If we can make an increasing number of collections available digitally—especially those that are heavily used or tied in with school curriculums around the country— I think would be quite an accomplishment.

More from Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden:

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You can read this issue of the LCM in its entirety, along with past issues, here.

World War I: Conscription Laws

(The following is a guest post by Margaret Wood, a legal reference librarian at the Law Library of Congress.)

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Six weeks after the declaration of war against Germany on April 6, 1917, ch. 1, 40 Stat.1, Congress passed the Selective Service Act. Initially, President Woodrow Wilson and Congress had hoped the needed 1 million men would volunteer for the army. But when by May only about 73,000 men had signed up, it was clear other measures needed to be taken.

The United States had experimented with conscription laws during the Civil War. The Confederacy had passed the first such law () on . The Union followed by passing a conscription law on March 3, 1863, ch. 75, . Both Union and Confederate subscription laws allowed for a number of exemptions as well as including the very unpopular measure of “substitutes,” which allowed wealthy men to pay for someone to serve in their stead.

However, the World War I Selective Service Act, ch. 15, 40 Stat. 76, specifically forbade the use of substitutes. This law, which was passed on May 18, 1917, applied to all “male citizens, or male persons … who have declared their intention to become citizens, between the ages of twenty–one and thirty.” The law directed that quotas for each state should be established based on the state’s population. The law also addressed the issue of exemptions based on moral objections, as well as occupation. Those exempted from the draft included federal and state officials and judges, religious ministers, seminary students and any person who was found to be a “member of a well-recognized religious sect or organization … whose existing creed or principles forbid its members to participate in war in any form.” However as the law went on to state, “no person so exempted shall be exempted from service in any capacity that the President shall declare to be noncombatant.” The law also exempted persons in certain classes or industries, including workmen in armories and those in agriculture whose work was “necessary to the maintenance of the Military Establishment.”

Ultimately the regulations issued by the president divided up the men subject to conscription into five classes. This law directed the president to create local draft boards in each county that were to consist of three or more members who were to determine all questions of exemption in their jurisdiction. The law further set up district boards that could hear appeals from the county draft boards.

Between Aug. 6-19, 1918, the House Committee on Military Affairs held hearings to consider expanding the ages between which men should be drafted.  Secretary of War Newton D. Baker testified at the hearing that, “There are two ways of fighting this war. One is to make every possible effort and win it soon, and the other is to proceed in a somewhat more leisurely fashion and win it late.” Congress appears to have preferred the first method, and a little less that two weeks later amended the Selective Service Act (ch. 166, 40 Stat. 955). This law made all men between the ages of 18 and 45 subject to the draft. The penalties for evading the draft remained the same. The evader would be charged with a misdemeanor and subject to a year of imprisonment unless the evader was subject to military law, in which case they would be tried by a court-martial. Congress anticipated a shortage of “manpower” and directed that soldiers’ wives should not be disqualified from working for the government because they were married women.  Indeed, 10 years after the war, Congress held hearings about the effect of the universal draft and conscription in times of war.

World War I Centennial, 2017-2018: With the most comprehensive collection of multi-format World War I holdings in the nation, the Library of Congress is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about The Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

New Day for “Today in History”

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September 6 entry in the Library’s “Today in History” web feature

(The following post was written by Peter Armenti, literature specialist in the Library’s Digital Reference Section and a regular contributor to the poetry and literature blog, “From the Catbird Seat.”)

For nearly 20 years, the Today in History feature has been one of the most popular areas of the Library of Congress website. Drawing heavily from our digitized content in order to highlight people, events and activities associated with each day of the year, Today in History is an important portal for educators, students and lifelong learners interested in learning about American history and culture.

In August, Today in History received its first major redesign in nearly a dozen years, and the redesigned collection can now be accessed from the Library’s home page. In addition to a streamlined look that allows easier navigation among Today in History’s 542 essays, the collection also offers an email alert service where you can subscribe and receive daily notices about the day’s featured items.

When Today in History launched in 1997, the Library’s digitized content was limited primarily to some two-dozen collections that then formed our American Memory collections. During the years, the number of those collections grew, and they provided content for new entries and for existing entries to be enhanced. Those collections are now being fully integrated into the larger Library website, while additional digitized collections are regularly added to our online offerings.

We hope you’ll subscribe to this daily feature and look forward to a historical highlight each day in your inbox. We’ll also promote Today in History on our Twitter feed and on our Facebook page, so watch for us there.

Carla Hayden Swearing-In To Be Broadcast on YouTube

Carla D. Hayden will be sworn in as the 14th Librarian of Congress in a historic ceremony in the Thomas Jefferson Building Wednesday, Sept. 14 at noon. The ceremony will be broadcast live on the Library of Congress YouTube channel. The YouTube broadcast will be captioned.

The ceremony marks two milestones: Hayden will become the first woman and the first African-American to serve as Librarian of Congress. She plans to take the oath using a book, drawn from Library collections, with historic connections of its own: the Lincoln Bible.

Hayden has recently overseen the renovation of the central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, a four-year, $112 million project, and has also led $40 million in renovations to other units within the 22-branch Pratt system. The system is named for the businessman and philanthropist who financed its founding in 1886.

Longtime chief executive of the Enoch Pratt Free Library system in Baltimore and a former president of the American Library Association,  Hayden took the helm of the Baltimore system in 1993, winning strong praise for her work to ensure that the city’s library system offers a broad array of services to assist citizens from all walks of life, from access to books and other learning materials to computer access and job information. A program of outreach into neighborhoods served by the Pratt libraries included after-school centers for teens, offering homework assistance and college counseling; a program offering healthy-eating information for residents in areas with insufficient access to high-quality food; programming in Spanish; establishment of an electronic library, and digitization of the Library’s special collections.

Hayden first served as a children’s librarian in the Chicago Public Library system, eventually rising to the post of deputy commissioner and chief librarian in that system. She also taught Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She received Library Journal’s 1995 Librarian of the Year Award, and served as president of the American Library Association 2003-2004.

New Online: Presidents, Newspapers and Mobile Apps

Crowds fill the Walter E. Washington Convention Center during the 2014 National Book Festival. Photo by Colena Turner.

(The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division.) 

National Book Festival

The Library’s 16th Annual National Book Festival takes place on Saturday, Sept. 24, at the Washington Convention Center in Washington D.C., and we’ve updated our Mobile App and website with all the details. The app, available at no charge for iOS and Android users, contains the complete schedule of the dozens of author presentations, book-signings, special programs and activities. Users can plan and build their full day’s personalized schedule in advance, find their way around the center to their chosen activities, rate each presentation and more. The app also includes detailed information on updated security and safety procedures now for entry into the Washington Convention Center.

We’ve also launched a new podcast that features interviews with some of the award-winning authors from the 2016 National Book Festival. Episodes featuring Kristin Hannah, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Joyce Carol Oates and Kwame Alexander are already available. You can also hear these interviews on iTunes.

Chronicling America

New on Chronicling America are 18th-century newspapers from the three early capitals of the United States: New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Nearly 15,000 pages have been added from The Gazette of the United States and related titles (New York, N.Y. and Philadelphia, Pa., 1789-1801); the National Gazette (Philadelphia, Pa., 1791-1793); and the National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C. 1800-1809). They have been added to the site in an expansion of the chronological scope of materials covered by the National Digital Newspaper Program. Check out the post from the Library of Congress blog for the full details.

Library Exhibitions

Eva Turner as Turandot. Photo by Fernand de Gueldre, 1936. Music Division.

On display in the Library’s Performing Arts Reading Room until Jan. 21, 2017, is “#Opera Before Instagram: Portraits, 1890-1955.” The photographs on exhibit in and in the companion online presentation represent a cross section of important singers who performed in the United States. Some artists are presented in formal attire, which would have been used for general publicity and concert appearances, and others are costumed as characters from their operatic repertoire. The photos are drawn from the Charles Jahant Collection in the Library’s Music Division, which contains nearly 2,000 photographs of opera singers from the 19th and 20th centuries, many of which are inscribed to him. Jahant began donating his collection to the Library in 1980, and it remains the largest iconographical collection held by the Music Division.

Presidential Papers

The Library continues to add to its online collection of presidential papers. Also new this month are presentations on John Tyler and Zachary Taylor.

Engraved portrait of President John Tyler, 1863. Manuscript Division.

John Tyler, the 10th president of the U.S. (1841-1845), was acutely conscious of the legacy he would leave upon his death, carefully collecting papers documenting his life and work. Following his 1862 death, the Tyler home – Sherwood Forest in Charles City County, Virginia – was entered by Union soldiers and others. Papers that were reported to be present in the house were subjected to ransacking, looting and destruction. Tyler’s son Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853-1935) sought out materials that might still be extant, contacting family friends and known recipients of Tyler correspondence. He recovered part of an autograph collection and letters, or copies of letters, written by his father to friends and political contemporaries, and sold the original documents and copies he had collected to the Library of Congress in 1919. The online collection is made up primarily of correspondence, including letters and copies of letters to or from Tyler (1790-1862), a governor and U.S. representative and senator from Virginia, who served as vice president under William Henry Harrison before becoming the 10th president of the United States upon Harrison’s death in 1841.  Also included are letters to and from Julia Gardiner Tyler, Tyler’s second wife, and members of the Gardiner family, and “autograph” letters by others, which were collected by Tyler. Also included in the presentation is an illustrated chronology of key events in Tyler’s life.

The Zachary Taylor Papers Collection contains approximately 650 items dating from 1814 to 1931, with the bulk from 1840 to 1861.  The collection is made up primarily of general correspondence and family papers of Taylor (1784-1850), with some autobiographical material, business and military records, printed documents, engraved printed portraits and other miscellany relating chiefly to his presidency (1849-1850); his service as a U.S. Army officer, especially in the 2nd Seminole Indian War; management of his plantations; and settlement of his estate. The online presentation also includes an illustrated timeline of Taylor’s life.

Pershing and Patton Papers

The John J. Pershing Papers Collection features the diaries, notebooks, and address books of John Joseph Pershing (1860-1948), U.S. army officer and commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I. Part of a larger collection of Pershing papers available for research use onsite in the Library’s Manuscript Reading Division, the entire collection spans the years 1882-1971, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1904-1948. It consists of correspondence, diaries, notebooks, speeches, statements, writings, orders, maps, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, picture albums, posters, photographs, printed matter and memorabilia.

This page from Patton’s diary of June 22, 1917 describes his first bi-plane flight, piloted by William Mitchell. Manuscript Division.

The George S. Patton Papers: Diaries, 1910-1945 online collection features the diaries of U.S. army officer George S. Patton (1885-1945). Like Pershing, the Patton diaries are part of a larger collection of Patton papers available for research use onsite in the Manuscript Division. The entire collection spans the years 1807-1979, with the bulk of the papers concentrated from 1904 to 1945. The collection documents Patton’s military career, including his attendance at West Point, 1904-1909; his service on the Mexican border as a member of John J. Pershing’s Mexican Punitive Expedition, 1916-1917; his service as an aide-de-camp to Pershing and later as a tank commander in World War I, 1917-1919; and his military career from 1938 to 1945. The majority of the papers chronicle Patton’s World War II service and his success as one of America’s most skillful combat commanders of armored troops.

Collection Upgrades

Finally, we continue to gradually upgrade and migrate older collections to new presentations – the latest upgrade from our legacy American Memory project is Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820 to 1910. The collection portrays the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin from the 17th to the early 20th century through first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, colonial archival documents and other works drawn from the Library’s general collections and Rare Books and Special Collections Division. The collection’s 138 volumes depict the land and its resources; the conflicts between settlers and Native peoples; the experience of pioneers and missionaries, soldiers and immigrants and reformers; the growth of local communities and local cultural traditions; and the development of regional and national leadership in agriculture, business, medicine, politics, religion, law, journalism, education and the role of women.

Headlines from America’s Earliest Days

Coverage of the inauguration of George Washington. Gazette of the United-States., May 02, 1789. Chronicling America.

Want to read how an 18th-century newspaper covered the inauguration of George Washington? How about learning what issues divided Congress in the early 1800s?

Going back into early American history is now possible due to new digital content that has been added to Chronicling America, the open access database of historic U.S. newspapers that is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

The newly available digital content is from 18th-century newspapers from the three early capitals of the United States: New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. At nearly 15,000 pages total, these early newspapers from the earliest days of the country are part of the database because of an expansion of the chronological scope of NDNP. The program is expanding its current time window of the years 1836-1922, to include digitized newspapers from the years 1690-1963. The expansion will further the program goal of capturing the richness and diversity of our nation’s history in an open access database, which anyone can use.

Two of the early newspapers were established as national political publications. The Gazette of the United States (1789-1800) advocated a strong monarchical presidency and loyalty to the federal government. In opposition, the National Gazette (1791-1793), as the voice for the Republicans or Anti-Federalists, promoted a populist form of government.

The National Intelligencer (1800-1809) was the first newspaper published in the City of Washington and the first to document the activities of Congress. It recorded in great detail the actions of the young national legislature.

NDNP is a partnership among the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress and participating states. NEH awards grants to state libraries, historical institutions and other cultural organizations that allow them to select historic local newspapers to be preserved in digital form. The states contribute information on each newspaper title and its historical and cultural context. To date, more than 11 million pages of historic newspapers are available on Chronicling America.

Only public-domain newspapers may be selected—that is, either those published before 1923 or those published between 1923 and 1963 and not under copyright. Henceforth, all state and territorial partners will be able to select newspapers from the expanded date scope, provided they can prove the publications are in the public domain.

Chronicling America presents pages from the past full of stories that provide historic glimpses of American life, culture, government, politics and more. Read up on widely covered topics of their time or check out previous blog posts highlighting the collection.

World War 1: Bad Romance — Gibson’s Chilling Personification of War

(The following is a guest post by Katherine Blood of the Prints and Photographs Division.)

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“And the Fool, He Called Her His Lady Fair,” by Charles Dana Gibson. 1917. Gift of Charles D. Gibson and Kay Gibson, 2013. Prints and Photographs Division.

Illustrator Charles Dana Gibson was already a celebrity when tapped in April 1917 to lead the federal government’s Division of Pictorial Publicity — an arm of Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information. He was enlisted by Committee head George Creel, who believed that visual art could provide a unique service in winning the hearts and minds of the American public. And not just any art — nothing less than the best art by the best artists was sought to bolster recruitment, fundraising, service by women and civilians and troop support in myriad forms including contributions for camp libraries. When Gibson famously urged fellow artists to “Draw ‘till it hurts!” in support of America’s war effort, he was addressing such luminaries as James Montgomery Flagg, Howard Chandler Christy and Edward Penfield, to name just a few of the division’s more than 300 participants.

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The weaker sex. By Charles Dana Gibson, 1903. Prints and Photographs Division.

Among Gibson’s most enduring creations was the iconic Gibson Girl, who began appearing in the 1890s. She embodied the “New Woman” who was active and independent, intelligent and beautiful. But a very different kind of Gibson woman commanded my attention when I had the chance to co-curate the exhibition “World War I: American Artists View the Great War” with my colleague Sara W. Duke. In a vivid satire called “And the Fool, He Called Her His Lady Fair,” Gibson presents war as a woman who is an unsettling hybrid of menace and allure, the seeming antithesis of the fresh, youthful and wholesome Gibson Girl ideal. At the same time, her casual dominance over a male companion echoes a recurring theme in Gibson’s work in which women are anything but the weaker sex. Here, she is a bored femme fatale, dripping with disdain. Contemporary audiences would have recognized her would-be partner as a sardonic incarnation of Germany’s Supreme War Lord Kaiser Wilhem II. Gibson presents him as a kind of visual double-entendre, clutching his chest in a way that might suggest amorous suitor or heart attack victim. His neglected gifts of roses, pearls and coins are strewn around the room. Among them, an Iron Cross medal lies ignored on the couch — suggesting that Wilhelm has lost or squandered his valor.

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Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Prints and Photographs Division.

The lady is richly-dressed and thin to the point of emaciation. Her skeletal hand, raised in a gesture of languid rejection, might prompt viewers to expect a cigarette. Instead, the smoke evokes the sinister presence of poison gas in a parlor that is also a battlefield. In case we were in any doubt, a bottle of wine on a small table near her knees bears a skull and crossbones, underscoring that this lady is a deadly creature. The wine drips from the table in a viscous, blood-like way and pools at her feet.

Martha Kennedy, curator for the Library’s 2013 exhibition “Gibson Girl’s America” and an aficionado of the archetype’s evolving persona points out that this theme must have haunted Gibson during the interwar years: “He appears to have re-worked it in a World War II era painting in which he depicts a harlot holding a mask in one hand while raising the other to reveal her gaunt, sunken face, causing Hitler, like Kaiser Wilhelm II, to jump back in consternation.” Variations on this theme can also be connected more broadly back to 15th-century “Dance of Death” traditions in which Death confronts the living regardless of rank or merit. Gibson’s razor-sharp allegory still packs a punch — offering today’s viewers a hall-of-mirrors meditation on the nature of power, gender dynamics, war, and wisdom.

World War I Centennial, 2017-2018: With the most comprehensive collection of multi-format World War I holdings in the nation, the Library of Congress is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about The Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

Rare Book of the Month: “I am Anne Rutledge…”

(The following is a guest blog post written by Elizabeth Gettins, Library of Congress digital library specialist.)

“Anne Rutledge.” [words by] Edgar Lee Masters; music for voice and piano by Sam Raphling. 1952. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

This week, we not only celebrate the birthday of author Edgar Lee Masters (Aug. 23, 1868) but also observe the untimely death of Ann Rutledge (Aug. 25, 1835), who figured in his best-known work.

Masters spent his childhood in Lewistown, Illinois, a town near Springfield where Abraham Lincoln lived from 1837-1847. Initially, Masters practiced law for a living, but in 1898 he branched out, realizing his true life’s calling by publishing his first work, titled “A Book of Verses.” He then went on to draw from his childhood experiences of life with people in a small Illinois town for his most beloved work, “Spoon River Anthology,” published in 1915. It is a collection of monologues from the dead in an Illinois graveyard in the fictional town of Spoon River. The characters that Masters chose to draw on for his inspiration are all located in the general area that Lincoln inhabited for much of his young life, including Lincoln’s “first love,” Anne Rutledge.

Master’s entry for Ann Rutledge speaks of unrealized love between her and Lincoln. She is generally referred to as Lincoln’s first love, although many debate whether the two were actually ever a pair. The story goes that Rutledge was betrothed to John MacNamar and that Rutledge and Lincoln met and fell in love while he was away. Purportedly, she made plans to break her engagement to MacNamar upon his return. The plans never came to fruition, as a typhoid outbreak hit in 1835 killing Rutledge at age 22.

Edgar Lee Masters. July 30, 1924. Prints and Photographs Division.

Rutledge’s actual burial site is in Petersburg, Illinos, and her gravestone features Master’s work:

Out of me unworthy and unknown

The vibrations of deathless music:

“With malice toward none, with charity toward all.”

Out of me the forgiveness of millions toward millions,

And the beneficent face of a nation

Shining with justice and truth.

I am Ann Rutledge who sleeps beneath these weeds,

Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,

Wedded to him, not through union,

But through separation.

Bloom forever, O Republic,

From the dust of my bosom!

This songsheet, titled “Anne Rutledge,” is part of a larger work inspired by “Spoon River Anthology.” The music for this item was composed by Sam Raphling and was published by Musicus around 1952.

Ann Rutledge grave, Petersburg, Illinois. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

The songsheet, as well as the photograph of Rutledge’s gravesite, are items from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana. Alfred Whital Stern of Chicago presented his collection to the Library in 1953. Begun by Stern in the 1920s, the collection documents the life of Abraham Lincoln through writings by and about Lincoln, contemporary newspapers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, stamps, coins, autograph letters and a large body of publications concerned with slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and related topics. The collection includes Lincoln’s own scrapbook of the 1858 political campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, numerous campaign biographies prepared for the 1860 presidential election, printed materials relating to the assassination and funeral, and a Lincoln life mask in bronze by Leonard Volk.

Probably the single most famous Lincoln manuscript in the collection is the letter to Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, dated Jan. 26, 1863, placing him in command of the Army of the Potomac. Since Stern’s death, the collection has continued to grow through the provisions of an endowment established by his family and it now numbers over 11,100 pieces.

Letters About Literature: Dear Anne Frank

We wrap up our Letters About Literature series with the second tie-winning National Honor Award letter for Level 3 (grades 9-12). The national reading and writing program asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives. Winners for 2016 were announced in June.

Research shows that students benefit most from literacy instruction when they are engaged in reading and writing activities that are relevant to their daily experiences. Nine students were given national recognition and come from all parts of the country. You can read all the winning letters here, including the winning letters from previous years.

This letter comes to us from Violet Fearon of New York, who wrote to Anne Frank, author of “The Diary of a Young Girl.”

Dear Anne,

There are some books you read that you like, and some that love, and some that you adore. And then there are books that are separate from the rest – books that burrow down deep into your consciousness and stay there, festering. Books that change the way you think, the way you act, the way you see the world, that change who you are. You don’t come across too many of these books in a lifetime. The rare few that you do, I believe, are typically read early in life. The young mind is more open to suggestion. And your book, Anne, is even more unusual. Because you never really intended to write a book, did you? Let alone one that would shape the world. Then again, I suppose I never really intended to read your book, let alone be shaped.

It begins at age seven. I found you on my parent’s bookshelf. I remember running my hands across all the spines – I’d just read a fantasy novel where the girl did that, and the one that stuck out taught her how to cast spells. All the other books were big and serious, no pictures, no colors, just thin pages and tiny text. Yours was small – it could almost fit in a coat pocket. It had a picture of you on the cover. You were pretty. Not pretty in a Marilyn Monroe, Scarlett Johansson, Hollywood way – that would’ve scared me. You were pretty in the nice kind of way. You smiled with your eyes. I looked behind me, pretended I was committing some unspeakable crime for the sake of excitement, then stuffed your little book under my shirt and ran upstairs to my bedroom.

Let me preface this by saying: I didn’t know. Almost everyone who reads your diary, I think, goes into it with some knowledge of how it all ends, some sense of foreboding. They interpret every word in that context, tense up at every sign of something going wrong. I didn’t know what was waiting in the last few pages. But this is what I did know: You had dark hair, just like me. You wanted to be a writer, just like me. You felt frustrated by the way people thought of you as some frivolous little girl, just like me. On the back of your book, it said you were Jewish; my Mom was Jewish, but my Dad wasn’t. We hardly ever went to temple, and I was starting to feel like I didn’t believe in God. Did that count? I wasn’t sure. You had one older sister, though, just like me – and she was three years older than you, just like mine. Given that I was emerging from an age when having the same color shirt on the playground was enough reason to make a new best friend, these correlations fascinated me. So I read on.

You were older than me-thirteen. It seemed very exotic – even Lily, my sister, was only ten. The cover said “The Diary of a Young Girl,” but that didn’t make any sense to me; a young girl was a girl younger than me – three, four, five. Once you added “teen” to your age, which meant you were like an adult. You became six feet tall and looked like Barbie and were in control – “teen” meant you knew things.

Your diary is touted as a historical document, as a cultural landmark, as a fresh perspective – and it is. But it is also engrossing. All the little private victories and failures, the speeches about mothers and sisters and friends – it amazed me. It amazed me that the people in history were real people. That everyone, everyone who had ever lived, had feelings and thoughts just like mine. This still amazes me. I had a vague idea of Hitler and the Nazis, faded tidbits I’d picked up here and there. A few elderly relatives on my mother’s side had bad things happen to them in The War – I could hear the capitals, when people talked about it, the slight emphasis on “the.” I knew it was impolite to ask them about it, though I was dying to. I had never considered that when they’d lived through The War, they weren’t old. The thought of my grandparents as teenagers made me uncomfortable, like some immutable law of the universe was being broken.

But you weren’t my grandparents. You were like me. I wondered if you were old now. I kept on reading. It was sometimes a struggle – most of the books I read at that age involved talking animals or friendly orphans. I would read a few entries every night, a private ritual before I went to sleep. I noticed the history behind the stories – the mentions of Hitler, of fighting, of death. But my main focus was on the drama: disputes over rations, arguments over whose turn it was to use the bathroom, musings about cats. The Secret Annex seemed almost magical to me, something terrifically exciting. If I ever had to live in an attic, I decided, I would start a diary. You’d started yours before going into hiding, though – so I began one just in case. As I continued, I kept track of how much I had left. The pages held down by my right thumb dwindled – The War , I thought , must almost be over. I wondered how you were going to end it. I imagined what it must be like – to step outside for the first time in three years, to breathe in fresh air, to feel the sun. I hoped you would come back to make a final entry talking about all that – but then, I reasoned, there would be so much more to do, and less time to write , once you got back to normal life.

I don’t really need to tell you how it ends, do I? But I will. There is no end. Not really. The last entry talked about your duality – the flippancy you show around others, the more pensive person you could be without society. Then, “Yours, Anne M. Frank,” and that was it. There was an afterword; it was just a page long. It traced the paths of the eight in the Secret Annex – from Amsterdam, to Westerbork, to Auschwitz. I didn’t know how to pronounce “Auschwitz” – in my head, it was an ugly word, Ayoo-skah-wizz. Van Daan, gassed; Peter, the death march; Edith, starvation and exhaustion. You and Margot went to Bergen Belson, where you both died of typhus. Typhus. It wasn’t Mengele or firing squads or Zyklon B – it was disease. You were buried in a mass grave. For some reason, I fixated on that – to not even have a grave seemed a minor injustice that, on top of all the others, brought the whole situation to a breaking point. Back then reality and fiction were intertwined , but I knew enough to know that you had existed in a way that the girl that found the magic spell book hadn’t. I hunched over in bed, and I stared at your eyes, and I cried for a long time. I think that must have been the first time I ever cried about something other than scraping my knee or going to school or being cranky. The enormity of non-fiction, of reality, pressed down on me; this had happened. It had happened before I was born, and it will keep on “having happened” after I die, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. The past is the past. There was no use telling my parents. Maybe there are some things even parents can’t solve. I don’t know.

Then I forgot. Well, not forgot, as such – but life happens. Things slip from the conscious, if not the subconscious. I woke up the next day still upset, but not in tears; I ate breakfast. Over the course of a week or so, your book found its way back to my parent’s room, and I went to school and came home and brushed my teeth twice a day and started reading Harry Potter.

The next time I remembered you was brief – I was twelve, in sixth grade. We read a picture book about you on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Before we began, the woman reading the book told us all, this is a very sad story, and we all have to learn about it so it never happens again. All the pictures were watercolors, painted in blacks and whites and browns – a girl standing in the rain, a girl staring out a window, a girl in a train cart. I remember thinking that wasn’t right at all, was it – your life was many things, but it was never colorless.

At the end, the inevitable happened, as I knew it would. The woman said you were fifteen when you died. She and my teacher exchanged a glance. It was only three years away, but fifteen seemed just as far away as when it did when I was seven – thirty-six long months was time enough to get taller and know everything. I realized, though, that I was now almost at the age when you went into hiding. It was like two paths were splitting.

I came home and re-opened your book. It was the same copy. There you were, on the cover, still smiling, still unchanged. This time I read the introduction and skimmed the pages, quickly flipping past months and years. Now I understood what represents the lost potential meant. “Lost potential” means that when you died, all the novels you might have created, all the articles you might have written, all the people you might have touched with even more words, died with you. “Represents” means that this loss, this story, is just one of millions; more than millions – every child, every adult, every person ever killed before they got to do what they should have been able to.

I understood, then, that your book, the one you never meant to write, is one of the most widely-read pieces of nonfiction in the world. Everyone from John F. Kennedy to Eleanor Roosevelt has referenced you; you are the poster child of the Holocaust, of all holocausts; you are probably the most influential teenager to ever live. I know all this, and it all is true – you’re a symbol. You are, but you’re also just Anne, who spent her days looking out attic windows and wishing she could play hopscotch with the Christian girls. These two identities seemed to conflict in my mind – I thought some more, then put away your book once again. Is it possible to be an international symbol and human being at the same time? I don’t know.

But all that is over. Your story is long gone. I am sixteen now. I haven’t thought of you much in four years – I can’t. But last night, I was lying in bed, surfing online, and I came across your Wikipedia page- little numbers beneath your picture: June 1929 – February 1945. I counted in my head, then I counted again. I have passed the point. You were younger than me when you died. I’m sixteen, and I’m still short, and I still don’t look like Barbie. I still don’t know everything.

I closed the computer and lay in the dark. I couldn’t fall asleep because it was too loud in my head, a single thought, repeating: I am not a grown-up. I am not a grown-up. I am not a grown-up. That look the woman and the teacher exchanged – that is the look adults give each other when they talk about children dying. I am not a grown-up. Is this how getting older works? That you have this fantastic idea of what you will be like at 10, at 16, at 30 – but when you arrive, you still feel the same? I don’t know.

Let me tell you something: when asked about reading your diary, your father said, “I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.” Some people say, She was his daughter. They were locked together for years. How could he not have known? But that is not unusual. We all have our innermost selves, the ones we keep deep inside us that we hide from prying eyes. Everyone-you taught me that.

You taught me that for each of the 12.5 million Africans shipped to this country in the Triangular Trade, there was a story. That every Armenian killed under the Ottoman Empire had innermost musings. They tell us we learn about you so it never happens again – but it has already happened again. Every child murdered in Darfur, in Rwanda, in Cambodia, is a lost adult, a lost world, a lost universe. It’s like that video, the one narrated by Carl Sagan that shows you that vastness of the galaxies, then zooms in on a picnicker’s hand and shows you the vastness of cell walls and protons and quarks. You can zoom in however far you can take. I’m not aware of this all the time. I’m not aware of it most of the time. But sometimes – sometimes I am able to look up from the textbook, from the statistics and body counts – and remember you. 

Remember that every human being is, essentially, a human being; that there is so much two eyes can say. Maybe you wouldn’t have written novels or articles, or anything of more importance than your diary. Who can say? Maybe you would’ve just lived a quiet life and had a little cottage and two children, and turned into an old woman around whom seven years olds have to remember not to ask about The War. That would’ve been enough. More than enough. I don’t know. 

Let me tell you something else: the man who discovered you, the SS officer – his name was Karl Silberbauer. He died a long time ago, too. HIs Wikipedia picture is grainy; he had deep set eyes and puffy cheeks. Your father testified at his trial in defense of him, telling the disciplinary hearing that he had simply been doing his job as a policeman. Otto said, “The only thing I ask is not to have to see the man again.” I don’t think I can even imagine the strength that took. When Silberbauer found the Secret Annex, he told your father: “You have a lovely daughter.” After reading this, my first thought was, “Lovely enough to kill, apparently.” But after that I just felt a little bad for him. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe there are enough people out there to feel bad for without looking up long-gone Nazis. Still – did he have innermost thoughts, too? I don’t know.

This is what I do know: I will be seventeen soon. From then on, the gap between us will just keep on widening. One day I will think about you again, and I really will see you as a “young girl.” I guess that’s a good thing. I can’t be like you – forever an adolescent, frozen in old photographs, timeless. We age. This has gotten long, longer than I planned, longer than it has to be. Because this is all I need to say: thank you.

Violet Fearon