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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.

[Copy of a letter to President Abraham Lincoln regarding colonization of the Isthmus of Chiriqui]

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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC03619.01.14 Author/Creator: Place Written: s.l. Type: Manuscript document Date: circa 1863 Pagination: 2 p. : Height: 31.8 cm, Width: 20.5 cm Order a Copy

An unknown author informs Lincoln of the problems of colonizing Africans and African Americans on the Isthmus of Chiriqui (in what is now Panama). States that colonization alone will not solve the racial prejudices existing both in the United States and Chiriqui. One edge of this document appears to be burned, obscuring text. Contains a pencil sketch and a poem at the bottom of the second page written in a different hand than that of the author.

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

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