Lost-and-Found Letter Shows Lincoln's Terse Side

A handwritten note dated just a few days before Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address has finally made its way back to the National Archives, the Washington Post reports. The terse communication from the president to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase addressed corruption charges against a Lincoln appointee. "Even though this item is seemingly routine, it is in fact very important," said an Archives official.

The letter reads in full: "Mr. Stevens, late Superintendent of the Mint at San Francisco, asks to have a copy, or be permitted to examine, and take extracts, of the evidence upon which he was removed. Please oblige him in one way or another." Robert Stevens' father-in-law, an Oregon senator who died in battle in 1861, was a close friend of the president's.
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