New addition to the presidential museum in Springfield

Posted on May 2, 2024
The document will be on display in the museum’s Treasures Gallery for the next year. (Photo courtesy Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum)

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – Something new – or, rather, something more than 160 years old – will be on display at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.

Gov. JB Pritzker and First Lady MK Pritzker have donated an important document, which the couple purchased at auction.

“The ‘Order to Affix Seal of the United States to a Proclamation of a Blockade’ was an order that President Lincoln issued in April of 1861,” the governor said before the document’s unveiling Tuesday, “just days after the attack on Fort Sumter that is said, oftentimes, to have begun the Civil War.”

It was also about a month into the Lincoln presidency.

ALPLM executive director Christina Shutt picks up the story from there.

“This is the document that begins the sort of Anaconda Plan, trying to figure out how to suppress the insurgency that’s going on in the South,” Shutt said after the ceremony.

The previous owner of the document is anonymous. The document will be on display in the museum’s Treasures Gallery for the next year.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]

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