During a trip back to Hartford Connecticut I scheduled a visit to the Wadsworth Atheneum to see President Lincoln’s famous letter he wrote to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862.
Words from this letter are etched in American History;
My paramount object is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery…
The historian Phillip Shaw Paludan wrote about the importance of the letter;
If there is one document that is more often quoted than any other in the argument, debate, or conversation about Lincoln it is the letter that Lincoln wrote on August 22, 1862 to Horace Greeley.
On Friday, August 22,1862 Lincoln sent his famous Greeley letter not to Horace Greeley but a rival editor, Dr. James Clarke Welling, the managing editor of the National Intelligencer who published the letter the following day.
During the Civil War, and early in the war Dr. Welling often advised President Lincoln and his Cabinet members.
Dr. James Clarke Welling, retained the original letter his entire life. In 1880, Welling wrote the Emancipation Proclamation in North American Review stating:
This letter appeared for the first time in the National Intelligencer on August 23, 1862 and the letter came into my hands from the fact I was one of the editors.
In his 1880 article Dr. James Clarke Welling included a facsimile of the letter ‘for editorial curiosity’.
Why is this American treasure at the Wadsworth Atheneum ? Why was I allowed to handle the original?
In 1923, almost 100 years ago, my family donated the Greeley Letter to the Wadsworth Atheneum. It is the oldest art museum in the country.
It was the wish of our great grandfather, Dr. James Clarke Welling that the Greeley Letter be placed in a public museum preserved for others in the future.
He believed the Greeley Letter was an American masterpiece. Since it’s inception in the 1840s, the Wadsworth Atheneum has served the community as both public art museum, historical society and public library. There the letter resides in perpetuity.
LOST + FOUND HISTORY 