Charles W. Moores (1862–1923) was a life-long Lincoln scholar and collector. He began his study of Lincoln at a time when many of Lincoln’s friends and foes, neighbors, and associates were still alive. Moores published several works about Lincoln, most notably an address read first before the meeting of the American Bar Association in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on September 1, 1910. This address was subsequently published in the American Law Review and as a separate printing. The collection contains not only the printed text as well as the author’s profusely annotated typescript of The Career of a Country Lawyer: Abraham Lincoln, but also Moores’s ensuing correspondence with other Lincoln scholars and collectors.

The collection was augmented through materials from Donald C. Durman’s library, mostly about Lincoln portraits in stone, bronze, and wood, and recently through many scholarly Civil War titles from the library of Dr. David M. Silver, who established a special fund for the support of the Lincoln and Civil War collections.

The collections include nineteenth-century and later rare books and pamphlets about the life and times of Abraham Lincoln. The pamphlet collection is of special importance. Subjects range from eyewitness accounts of the Republican Convention of 1860 to sermons and eulogies of 1865; from arguments about the suspension of the Writ of Habeus Corpus during Civil War times to foreign policy matters; from gossip to statesmanship. The collection also includes such treasures as an early legal manuscript by Lincoln and a first printing of Edward Everett’s oration at Gettysburg. The pamphlet collection is described in a printed catalog, available on-site