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At the Institute’s core is the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the great archives in American history. More than 85,000 items cover five hundred years of American history, from Columbus’s 1493 letter describing the New World through the end of the twentieth century.

Shifflet, Hillary, 1823-1863 to Jemima Shifflet

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC02174.06 Author/Creator: Shifflet, Hillary, 1823-1863 Place Written: Nashville, Tennessee Type: Autograph letter signed Date: December 22, 1862 Pagination: 4 p. : Order a Copy

Shifflet was unhappy to hear that his wife is "striping tobacco for I donte want you to hav to work for noboddy but your self." He has "but one oald shirt and hit [it] is full of holes and no socks a tall." He asks for descriptions of the children and about how things are going at home. He tried to get home for Christmas but he "will hav to take sowbelly and hav a crackers for my Chrismas dinner." He reports that "our men had a mity hard fight in virginia" and claims that "the war wood bin over if oald lincoln had let the negro question alone." He continues "if he [Lincoln] were "in hell and a negro tide to him I wood be glad thar is whar he ont [ought] to be for he is a oald Abolishingist."

Shifflet, Hillory, 1823-1863
Shifflet, Jemima Cox, 1822-1881
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

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