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William Springer (William Springer File, OU Archives and Special Collections)
The William Springer Lincoln and Civil War collection consists of some 2,000 volumes, pamphlets, manuscripts, newspapers, graphic materials, artifacts and other materials that celebrate and document President Lincoln's life, career, and assassination.
William Springer, a lifelong collector of Lincolniana, and founder of the gathered these materials over several decades, from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Many of the materials date back to the Civil War era, while others correspond to later commemorations and studies related to President Lincoln, covering the period from 1866 through the 1950s.
The collection is rich and varied, with many noteworthy and rare materials.
The collection holds hundreds of scholarly and popular books from the 1830s to the 1960s, covering Lincoln's life and assassination, John Wilkes Booth, the investigation and trial, and many aspects of Civil War history. Some books are quite rare.
There are books on Lincoln’s ancestry, parentage and childhood, boyhood and young manhood. There are Lincoln’s own writings and speeches, as well as books dealing with his political and executive life. There are also books on slavery, the Union and Confederate armies, the military and strategic aspects of the war, as well as Michigan and Detroit history of the mid 19th century.
Many books present rumors about John Wilkes Booth, such as Finis Bates' Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth (1907), which claimed that Booth had lived in hiding under the pseudonym of David George or John St Helen.
Hundreds of pamphlets document Lincoln's life and career as well as U.S. political history. The earliest pamphlets are from 1854, including an essay on the Nebraska question by abolitionist Theodore Parker.
A few pamphlets from 1860-1865 document Abraham Lincoln’s political career and the politics of the time, including 1860 and 1864 election material, the extension of slavery in the territories, and pro- and anti-slavery views.
The collection also includes numerous pamphlets published across the U.S. and around the world immediately following the President's assassination. These cheap pamphlets were designed to meet American citizens’ thirst for information regarding the life of the president, the plot to assassinate him, and the fate of the conspirators.
Later pamphlets commemorate Lincoln's assassination or revisit the flight and capture of John Wilkes Booth.
Of note are the papers from Captain George H Starr (Company D, 104th New York Infantry), with different versions of a 1863-1864 diary about his time in confederate prisons and later autobiographical notes. Also of interest is a unique handwritten copy of a newspaper, The Arkansas Post, dated Saturday, March 22, 1864, and official documents signed by President Lincoln.
Sets of 12 Civil War era newspapers are included in this collection. Large runs of The Crisis and The World cover the years 1861-1862. Several April 1865 issues of The New York Herald document the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination.
Hundreds of lithographs, drawings, and other graphic representations of President Lincoln, cabinet members and other contemporaries, as well as places, events and other subjects related to President Lincoln's life and career.
Posters, postcards, stamps, commemorative objects, maps and other memorabilia document Americans' fascination with Abraham Lincoln and the places he lived in, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.
Springer was an amateur historian who researched everything about Lincoln.
He amassed a large collection of antiquarian booksellers' catalogs and bibliographies such as Lincoln Lore, a weekly publication from the Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, starting in 1929. Springer himself produced Lincolnnook Memories, a series of 32 papers published weekly in his own newspaper, New Center News, in 1953.
William Springer (left) at the founding of the Lincoln Civil War Round Table of Michigan in 1952
(William Springer File, OU Archives and Special Collections)