The Shapell Manuscript Foundation in Conjunction With the Library of Congress Presents: With Malice Toward None: The National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition

INDIANAPOLIS, March 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --

The Grace Bedell Letter on growing a beard

Lincoln's condolence letter to Miss Fanny McCullough

Lincoln's physician's record of the President's deathbed and autopsy

With Malice Toward None: The National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition is a landmark exhibit of letters, photographs, documents, and artifacts, which opened at the Library of Congress on Lincoln's 200th birthday, February 12, 2009.  Exactly one year later, on Lincoln's 201st birthday, the Library's traveling exhibit is slated to open at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis.

The Shapell Manuscript Foundation is pleased to announce the loan of several rarely seen autographed letters, manuscripts and photographs from its Lincoln Collection for this important exhibition.

The exhibition will include the first public pairing of 11-year old Grace Bedell's letter to Lincoln suggesting that he grow a beard, together with Lincoln's reply, just four days later.  Also on exhibit is his famous condolence letter to Miss Fanny McCullough on the death of her father at the battle of Fredericksburg.  An extraordinary assassination-related piece from the collection will also be featured: the blood-stained notes of Lincoln's family physician describing the President's tragic final hours - his decline, death, and autopsy.

While the scope and outreach of the Shapell Manuscript Foundation has included the lending of manuscripts to international exhibitions, this will be the first time that so many of its Lincolniana treasures are being publicly displayed in one place.

With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition has already traveled to the California Museum in Sacramento, California and the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois.  After the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, the exhibition will travel to the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia (Sept. 4–Nov. 6, 2010); and the Durham Western Heritage Museum in Omaha, Nebraska (Jan. 8–Mar. 5, 2011).

www.shapell.org

SOURCE The Shapell Manuscript Foundation