(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- By now, you know that Abe Lincoln’s life was not 100 percent success. A newly discovered letter to a friend -- going on display at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield -- makes that quite clear.
Losing out on a Whig Party nomination to Congress in 1843, Lincoln was frustrated in his drive to get from Springfield to Washington.
"Less than a week after they had made that decision," says library director Ian Hunt, "Lincoln is writing to a friend in Menard County by the name of Martin Morris, whom he had known from his New Salem days."
Lincoln, Hunt continues, wrote that "even though the people of Sangamon County had cast him off, it was good to know that the people in Menard County, who knew him the longest and the best, were still supporting him."
The letter is part of a new display in the museum’s Treasures Gallery. The exhibit spotlights Lincoln’s attempt to move from the Statehouse to Congress and other aspects of his young adulthood: Lincoln the husband, the father and the homeowner.
Morris held onto the letter, and it's been in the family until now. His great-great-grandson has donated it.
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