Summer intern discovers new Lincoln documents

David Spriegel, a rising senior at St. Mary's University in Minnesota, made a discovery of a lifetime just two weeks into his internship at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois.

According to the Chicago Tribune:

He [Spriegel] turned up two previously unknown documents written in 1844 by then-up-and-coming lawyer Abraham Lincoln in Springfield.

“I have to say that this discovery has piqued my interest in Lincoln as an individual and in his early career,” said Spriegel, who will is interning at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield this summer. “This will give me new purpose to explore the life of a great man.”

Spriegel was organizing a four-inch tall stack of documents in the library’s manuscript’s department when he made the discovery. The intern had noticed the previously overlooked small inscription on the documents that read: “The above memorandum is in the inscription of Abraham Lincoln. — M. Hay”

Milton Hay had clerked in the Stuart and Lincoln Law Office as a young man and would have recognized Lincoln’s script.

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