SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- Abraham Lincoln was almost buried beneath the U.S. Capitol rather than in Illinois because of a dispute between his wife and the state's governor, according to letters released Wednesday by the Illinois State Historical Library.
Lincoln's remains rest in an elaborate tomb in Springfield's Oak Ridge Cemetery. The tomb is a popular state historic site that attracts thousands of tourists each year. Sunday marks the 125th anniversary of Lincoln's death on April 15, 1865.
A collection of 12 letters donated to the library last week indicate that Mary Todd Lincoln was prepared to move the president's remains to a vault under the U.S. Capitol rotunda if Gov. Richard Oglesby had not abandoned plans to build a tomb for Lincoln in a site several miles away in downtown Springfield.
Lincoln told his wife before his death that he wanted to be buried in Oak Ridge. But Oglesby and other admirers who formed a monument association after Lincoln's assassination had picked another site for the tomb where the Illinois State Capitol now stands.
'They began to build a vault and had already inscribed the words 'Abraham Lincoln' over the door before Mrs. Lincoln finally convinced them Oak Ridge was the place where she wanted the body to be,' said David Blanchette, a spokesman for the state Historic Preservation Agency.
In a June 1865 letter to Oglesby, Mrs. Lincoln wrote: 'Unless I receive within the next 10 days an official assurance that the monument will be erected over the tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery in accordance with my oft-expressed wishes, I shall ... have the sacred remains deposited in the vault prepared for Washington under the dome of the National Capitol.'
Thomas Schwartz, the agency's foremost Lincoln scholar, is convinced that Mrs. Lincoln would have carried out her threat.
'They had made a a crypt for George Washington's body (at the U.S. Capitol) but he never used it,' Schwartz said. 'Mrs. Lincoln very much objected to the Oglesby plan, and this was kind of her bargaining chip -- having Lincoln buried in Washington.'
The 12 letters were donated to the state by the family of Ozias Mather Hatch, a Lincoln confidant who served as Illinois Secretary of State from 1857 to 1865 and engineered Lincoln's presidential nomination in 1860. The donation includes an 1827 letter from Kentucky congressman Henry Clay and will be added to the state library's collection of 1,400 other Lincoln documents and memorabilia.
Only one letter is written by Lincoln himself, an 1858 message urging Hatch and other members of the newly-formed Republican party to hold a GOP nominating convention instead of joining Democrat Stephen Douglas' anti-slavery campaign.
'We must never sell old friends to buy old enemies,' wrote Lincoln, who would hold his famous series of debates with Douglas later that year.
But Schwartz said the most historical value may lie in the other letters which may shed new light on the president's social and family life during the 16 years he practiced law in Springfield.
Most are invitations inviting Hatch to dine at the Lincoln's Springfield home. But Schwartz said in one case, Mrs. Lincoln used Hatch as courier to tell Lincoln of a family emergency.
'She urged Lincoln to return home immediately because she feared for (her son) Taddy's life,' he said. 'It shows the very personal side of that family and that relationship.'
The invitations are equally important because only 20 of Mrs. Lincoln's pre-presidential letters exist, Schwartz said.
Blanchette said photocopies of the collection would be placed in public files. Conservation work will be done on the original documents, he said.
