Gettysburg Address
The Bancroft Copy of the Gettysburg Address was written by President Lincoln in February 1864. The famous historian George Bancroft, the "father of American History", who wrote History of the United States, had asked him to write it for him. Bancroft wanted to put this copy in Autograph Leaves of Our Country's Authors and sell it at a Soldiers' and Sailors' Sanitary Fair in Baltimore. But Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, so he could not use it for this purpose. Therefore, Bancroft was allowed to keep it. This copy was kept by the Bancroft family for many years. Then, it was sold to different dealers and bought by Nicholas and Marguerite Lilly Notes. They donated it to Cornell in 1949. It is now kept by the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections in the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University. Among the five copies, it is the only one to be privately owned.