The Time Capsule: Returned Home to Springfield, Illinois
by Abraham Lincoln: His 1858 Time Capsule’s story begins in Springfield, Illinois. 1858’s election day is barely three weeks away. To help friend and fellow candidate James N. Brown stump on “Negro Equality” – the “Paramount Issue” of the day – Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln creates a campaign “scrapbook”.

Huntington Library
Kept in Brown’s family, in 1901 Abraham Lincoln His Book; A Facsimile Reproduction of the Original is published.
In 2021 a battered Facsimile surfaces and the original 1858 scrapbook is traced to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California; scan-able and filled with 29 more pages of notes, news clips and ephemera added by campaigner Brown but omitted in 1901.
Later, a further discovery, a 1901 First Edition with “some letters.” Dated, descriptive, handwritten correspondence by the Facsimile’s key players; authoritatively telling its detailed publishing history.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum