The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a documentary editing project dedicated to identifying, imaging, transcribing, annotating, and publishing online all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime (1809–1865). Directors Dr. Daniel Worthington, 2018–present Dr. Samuel Wheeler (acting), 2016–2018 Daniel W. Stowell, 2000–2016 Dr. Cullom Davis, 1988–2000 (Lincoln Legal Papers) Abraham Lincoln's papers Abraham Lincoln is one of America's most famous politicians and is consistently ranked as one of the greatest presidents ever to occupy the White House. Any scholarly study of his life is reliant on his written words to understand his thoughts, motives, and actions. After his father's death, Robert Todd Lincoln gathered a large collection of papers and entrusted their organization to David Davis, who was assisted by Lincoln's private secretaries John G. Nicolay and John Hay. Nicolay and Hay subsequently drew upon these nearly 20,000 documents to write their ten-volume Lincoln biography published in 1890. Robert Lincoln deposited this collection of papers at the Library of Congress in 1919 and formally deeded them to the library in January 1923, with the stipulation that they remain sealed until 21 years after his own death. The records were finally opened to the public in 1947. While the Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress is the largest single repository collection of Lincoln documents, thousands of other items are located in public and private repositories around the world. Previous attempts to locate and publish Lincoln documents include Nicolay and Hay's 1905 Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, consisting of 12 volumes; Gilbert A. Tracy and Francis H. Allen’s 1917 Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln; Rufus Rockwell Wilson’s 1947 Uncollected Works of Abraham Lincoln: His Letters, Addresses and Other Papers; and Paul Angle's 1930 New Letters and Papers of Lincoln. In the 1930s, the Abraham Lincoln Association began collecting photostats of Lincoln documents and by 1945 began drafting plans that eventually culminated in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap. It was published in 8 volumes (plus an index) between 1953 and 1955, with two supplemental volumes published in 1974 and 1990. Basler’s Collected Works has become a standard resource for Lincoln and Civil War scholarship, but it suffers from limitations and omissions. Collected Works did not include incoming correspondence to Lincoln, which denies the reader important context. New technology and the