Library of Congress Magazine May/June 2026

America 250: From our collections, milestone moments in American history

Inside

A New Exhibition:
‘Declaration’s Promise’

Lincoln’s Original Draft
Of the Gettysburg Address

Plus

Home of Liberty

The Founders’ Footnotes

Last Men of the Revolution

May/June 2026

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▪ On the cover: Fireworks light up the night sky over the U.S. Capitol, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial in celebration of Independence Day in 2008. Carol M. Highsmith Archive/Prints and Photographs Division

▪ The Library’s Jefferson Building is lit in patriotic colors to celebrate the opening of “The Two Georges: Parallel Lives in an Age of Revolution” exhibition in March 2025. Shawn Miller

Features

6

‘Star-Spangled’ Roots

The Music Division preserves the history of our national anthem.
8

Drafting ‘Gettysburg’

The Library holds the original drafts of Lincoln’s most famous speech.
12

A Revolutionary Idea

A new exhibition explores the enduring impact of the Declaration.

Six individual 19th-century portraits of aged Revolutionary War survivors, titled "The Last Men of the Revolution."

Portrait of Susan B. Anthony superimposed over the 1876 "Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States."

Angled close-up of a 3D relief map of Normandy, France, showing the textured green landscape and hedgerows.

Formal portrait of Senator John Thune in front of a bookshelf, flanked by the U.S. flag and the South Dakota state flag.

May / June 2026
Vol. 15 No. 3
Mission of the Library of Congress
The Library’s mission is to engage, inspire and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity.
Library of Congress Magazine is issued bimonthly by the Office of Communications of the Library of Congress and distributed free of charge to publicly supported libraries and research institutions, donors, academic libraries, learned societies and allied organizations in the United States. Research institutions and educational organizations in other countries may arrange to receive the magazine on an exchange basis by applying in writing to the Library’s Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-4100. All other correspondence should be addressed to the Office of Communications, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington DC 20540-1610.
news@loc.gov
loc.gov/lcm
ISSN 2169-0855 (print)
ISSN 2169-0863 (online)
Robert Randolph Newlen
Acting Librarian of Congress
William Ryan
Executive Editor
Mark Hartsell
Editor
Ashley Jones
Designer
Shawn Miller
Photo Editor
Contributors

Barbara Bair
Kaley Harman
Patrick Hastings
Jane A. Hudiburg
Michelle Krowl
Josh Levy
Lena Mattson
Robert R. Newlen
Elizabeth A. Novara
Ryan Reft
Loras Schissel
Sherri Sheu
Meagan Snow
John Thune
Neely Tucker

Connect On

loc.gov/connect

Trending

Small metal DNA archive vial, U.S. quarter, and engraved metal 1GB archive block for Library of Congress, shown for scale.

▪ The small metal pellet at left holds synthetic DNA encoded with digital copies of Library collection items. Shawn Miller

America’s Time Capsule

Molecular data storage device carries digitized items from the Library’s collections.

The nation’s oldest federal cultural institution is using some of the newest technology to preserve digital copies of historical collection items for the next 250 years.

As part of America’s 250th anniversary celebrations, the Library of Congress is making a trailblazing contribution to America’s Time Capsule in Philadelphia in July: a tiny metal pellet holding synthetic DNA encoded with digital copies of items from the Library’s collections.

The Library initiated a molecular data storage feasibility study in response to a request from Congress in 2024. As a result, the Library has been examining the storage capabilities of a new medium, synthetic DNA. An entirely manufactured molecule, synthetic DNA is designed to replicate the exceptional information density of nature’s best storage medium: DNA itself.

ONLINE OFFERINGS

▪ Brothers Nelson and Roswell Moore made these images of Revolutionary War veterans in 1864, when all of the men were at least 100 years old. Prints and Photographs Division

Last Men of the Revolution

Photos capture the last living faces of the War of Independence.

The palm-sized photographs capture their weathered faces: six men with flowing silver hair and deeply etched wrinkles, clutching canes for support — the last survivors, perhaps, of the Revolutionary War.

Beginning in the early 1800s, the U.S. government established a pension system for veterans of the Revolution. As the years passed, federal budget reports showed an ever-dwindling number of them to be still alive and receiving payments.

By 1864, eight decades after the Revolution’s end, only a dozen or so veterans survived. That realization sparked another: The time to record the firsthand stories of these men was now, before they, like their comrades, passed into history.

So, two Connecticut brothers — photographers Nelson and Roswell Moore — tracked down the known survivors, by that time down to six: William Hutchings, Daniel Waldo, Adam Link, Alexander Millener, Lemuel Cook and Samuel Downing.

▪ Thomas Jefferson’s copy of “The Federalist,” inscribed at the top of the title page by Alexander Hamilton’s wife, Elizabeth. Rare Book and Special Collections Division; photo by Shawn Miller

The Founders’ Footnotes

The Library holds Jefferson’s and Madison’s heavily annotated, personal copies of ‘The Federalist.’

The Library has within its collections two fascinating copies of “The Federalist” with deep personal ties to three Founding Fathers.

The Federalist Papers originally were published in New York newspapers as 85 stand-alone essays advocating for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. These foundational texts appeared under the pseudonym “Publius” but were written by an authorial tag team of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (with John Jay contributing only five essays due to illness).

In an incredible feat of writerly productivity, Hamilton and Madison published multiple essays each week, releasing an avalanche of arguments for why the proposed Constitution would ensure the new nation’s survival and prosperity.

‘By the Dawn’s Early Light’

Library collections chronicle the creation story of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’

A historic printed broadside titled "Defence of Fort McHenry" containing the lyrics to the Star-Spangled Banner.

▪ This broadside of Francis Scott Key’s “Defence of Fort M‘Henry” — soon to be known as “The Star-Spangled Banner” — was published just days after he wrote it. Only two copies are known to exist. Music Division

It was September 1814, and British warships were unleashing a fierce bombardment on Fort McHenry, the American fortress guarding Baltimore Harbor. Rockets streaked across the night sky, shells burst in flashes of light, the city’s fate hung in the balance.

A few miles away, Francis Scott Key watched anxiously from a British ship, where he had gone to secure the release of a captured friend. Key feared the fort had fallen — until, by dawn’s light, he saw a large American flag still waving over McHenry’s ramparts.

Inspired, Key composed a poem, “Defence of Fort M‘Henry,” about what he’d witnessed — with the tune of an 18th-century British song, “Anacreon in Heaven,” in mind for it. Key’s creation, when set to that music, forever after would be known by another name: “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The Library’s Music Division today stands as the principal center for research about the national anthem, thanks in large part to the visionary work of Oscar G. Sonneck.

In 1902, Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam hired the young, New Jersey-born musicologist to establish a music department and transform it into a world-class research center. By Sonneck’s resignation in 1917, he had elevated a collection of modest parlor songs into one of the finest, most comprehensive music libraries in the world.

‘Four Score and Seven Years Ago …’

Lincoln’s handwritten draft of the Gettysburg Address.

On Nov. 2, 1863, Gettysburg lawyer David Wills wrote to Abraham Lincoln, officially inviting the president to attend the dedication of a new military cemetery on Nov. 19 and provide “a few appropriate remarks” at the ceremony. Despite his heavy workload, Lincoln agreed to participate. In addition to honoring the fallen soldiers to be interred in this cemetery, the dedication ceremony would allow him to explain to their loved ones, and all Americans, why the cause of the union was worth fighting and dying for.

Handwritten second page of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, ending with the famous "government of the people" phrase.

▪ The first page of the Gettysburg Address (below), written by Abraham Lincoln in pen on Executive Mansion stationery. He wrote the second page (above) in pencil on ordinary paper. Manuscript Division

Handwritten first page of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on "Executive Mansion" stationery, beginning "Four score."

Lincoln’s “few appropriate remarks” would later become famous as the Gettysburg Address and continue to resonate with people around the world.

For a document as iconic as the Gettysburg Address now is, many details about its creation and delivery have been lost to time or clouded by conflicting memories of witnesses. Lincoln began working on the address in Washington, drafting his opening lines in ink on Executive Mansion stationery. Harkening back to the Declaration of Independence 87 years earlier (“four score and seven years ago”), Lincoln noted that the Revolutionary generation had founded a new nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men are created equal.’” That nation was now being torn apart by civil war, Lincoln continued, and the question of “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure” remained to be answered. But at that ceremony, they gathered to dedicate a burial ground honoring those who gave their lives so that the nation would survive.

PAGE FROM THE PAST

Portrait of Susan B. Anthony superimposed over the 1876 "Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States" document.

▪ An original copy of the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States, passed out by Susan B. Anthony (shown above) during a centennial celebration of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Manuscript Division, Prints and Photographs Division

A Declaration for Women

From Seneca Falls to the centennial, women claimed the promise of 1776.

The Declaration of Independence inspired many American women to demand their rights.

The most famous instance is likely the nation’s first women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. At this meeting of over 300 persons, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her now-famous “Declaration of Sentiments” protesting women’s inferior legal status and listing 11 resolutions for the moral, economic and political equality of women, the most radical of which demanded “the elective franchise.”

Fast forward to 1876, when the nation celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with the Centennial Exposition, a massive world’s fair held in Philadelphia that drew nearly 10 million visitors for an exuberant six-month celebration of American progress and patriotism.

The fair’s patriotic symbolism culminated on July 4, 1876, with a staged reading of the Declaration of Independence by a descendant of signer Richard Henry Lee, held in front of Independence Hall.

Members of the National Woman Suffrage Association, however, disrupted the event by pushing their way to the platform to give Susan B. Anthony the opportunity to present a “Declaration of Rights” for women to Thomas W. Ferry, acting vice president of the United States. Hurrying from the building, the women distributed copies of the document to the assembled body.

library in history

President Calvin Coolidge and others viewing the Declaration of Independence and Constitution at the Library of Congress.

▪ President Calvin Coolidge (third from left) dedicates a shrine for displaying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the Library’s Great Hall on Feb. 28, 1924. Prints and Photographs Division

Home of Liberty

For decades, the Library served as guardian of the Declaration and Constitution.

In its early history, the Declaration of Independence faced multiple threats: damage from rolling and unrolling, light exposure, insects, flaking signatures, the hazards of frequent travel. Before settling in Washington, D.C., the Declaration moved with each shift of the nation’s capital.

In 1921, the parchment found refuge in the Jefferson Building in response to an executive order by President Warren G. Harding:

“It is hereby ordered that [the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and other papers] be transferred from the Department of State to the possession and custody of the Library of Congress, to be there preserved and rendered accessible for historical and other legitimate uses …”

For the next three decades, successive Librarians honored that charge, first by constructing a shrine for secure display, and later, as the Library’s 1952 annual report noted, by having the “courage” to support the documents’ departure.

Abstract geometric design featuring triangles, stars, and diagonal stripes in red, white, blue, and teal.

‘The Declaration’s Promise’

New exhibition explores the
foundational principles of the
Declaration of Independence.

By Ryan Reft

A colorized engraving depicting the signing of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress.

▪ The signing of the Declaration of Independence, a lithograph by N. Currier. Prints and Photographs Division

Following the trauma of the American Civil War, Walt Whitman published “Democratic Vistas,” a tough but ultimately optimistic appraisal of America’s democratic promise. In it, Whitman reminisced about the nation’s founding and the echoes of the past from his youth: “The old men, I remember as a boy, were always talking of American independence. What is independence?”

Throughout the work, Whitman explores this question as well as the social and political fissures that needed to be traversed after the war. Amidst that wreckage, Whitman held firm to his belief in the United States’ adherence to a democratic ideal and to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration gathers the political thought borne of the Enlightenment and combines it with the activism of the American revolutionaries. It emphasizes ideas such as freedom of speech and religion and equality between people. Those principles redounded in surprising ways throughout the nation’s history from the 18th century to the 21st. This is the major theme of the upcoming exhibit based on the language and ideals of the document itself: “The Declaration’s Promise: A Revolutionary Idea.”

Curator’s Picks

Fave Five

Manuscript Division historian Sherri Sheu selects favorite items from the new ‘The Declaration’s Promise’ exhibit.

Title page of Noah Webster’s 1787 "An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking," third edition.

Rare Book and Special Collections Division

Noah Webster’s Lesson Book

While most of us recognize Webster’s name from ubiquitous dictionaries, it might surprise visitors to find out that he saw language as a way for Americans to assert their independence. Through his books, dictionaries, spellers and other educational materials, Webster promoted American spellings, grammar and pronunciations to encourage a distinctive American language.

Oval portrait of a young Alexander Graham Bell, featuring his characteristic sideburns and mustache.

▪ Alexander Graham Bell, as he appeared at the time of the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. Prints and Photographs Division

Inventing Telephones at the Centennial

A very American, and messy, story of innovation and progress.

In June of 1876, two weeks before the nation’s centennial, a young Alexander Graham Bell arrived in Philadelphia. He was staggered by what he saw. He had come to demonstrate his inventions at the Centennial Exposition, the first world’s fair hosted on American soil, with exhibits stretched massively across more than 200 buildings in Fairmount Park. “It grows upon one,” Bell wrote his soon-to-be wife, Mabel. “It is so prodigious and so wonderful … just think of having the products of all nations condensed into a few acres of buildings.”

Like any of the era’s world’s fairs, the exhibition was a breathless celebration of progress, a spectacle of industry and commerce, art and culture. Nearly 10 million visitors attended. Those visitors may easily have passed by Bell’s telephone, but the impression of the nation’s burgeoning industrial power was unmistakable. On the grounds stood the colossal Machinery Hall, enclosing 14 acres of exhibits and a three-story Corliss steam engine that powered every noisy machine inside. There, according to one account, one found “fire, smoke, sweat, and labor; whirring and whizzing, banging and clanging, pounding and puffing, tinkling and jingling” and machines that produced everything from “a tooth-brush to a locomotive.”

extremes

Overhead view of a square D-Day relief map showing the Normandy coastline, blue water, and gridded inland fields.

▪ Naval officers in Virginia used rubber-on-foam backing to make this raised relief model of Utah Beach and Normandy’s hedgerow countryside. Geography and Map Division

D-Day in Miniature

3D model trained troops for the assault on Utah Beach.

The Library’s Geography and Map Division holds many treasures from critically important moments in American and global history — maps that chronicle exploration, discovery, war, peace and progress.

One such map is a raised relief model created in early June 1944, showing an area largely known to the world by its World War II code name: Utah Beach.

U.S. naval officers at Camp Bradford, Virginia, produced the map — a unique three-dimensional object made of rubber-on-foam backing — mere days before the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, that helped change the course of the war toward Allied victory.

The mapmakers painstakingly compiled it from stereo photographs taken by low-flying American pilots that April and May, noting information critical for amphibious landings: tide lines, the slope of the beach, the location of hedgehogs — metal beams German forces welded together in a jack-like shape and hid underwater to tear open the hulls of landing craft coming ashore.

Off the Shelf

Typewritten draft of the prologue to "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, featuring several handwritten edits in blue ink.

▪ Ralph Ellison marked edits on this typed draft of “Invisible Man.” Manuscript Division, Prints and Photographs Division. Used by permission.

A Literary Landmark

Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ is a reflection on race and humanity.

Ralph Ellison’s masterpiece novel, “Invisible Man,” was greeted as a sensation in both content and style when it was first published in 1952. The surreal first-person bildungsroman tale of a young man seeking affirmation of his identity as a Black citizen in America continues to be ranked among the best works of American literature of the 20th century. Ellison became the first African American writer awarded the National Book Award for Literature when he won the prize for the novel in 1953.

“Invisible Man” is a reflection on race and humanity in an era of Jim Crow repression and Black urban migration. It charts the challenging and often-nightmarish experiences of an unnamed narrator’s physical and metaphysical travel from the American South to New York City, where he becomes deeply immersed as a witness-participant in the complex politics and cross-cultural life of Harlem. Ellison’s improvisational approach to the novel’s structure reflects his love of blues and jazz, and his incorporation of parody, puns and wordplay honor the richness of black humor and the vernacular tradition.

PAGE FROM THE PAST

Excerpt from the Brown v. Board of Education decision with blue underlines on key phrases like "inherently unequal."

▪ Chief Justice Earl Warren underlined phrases to emphasize in his reading copy of the Brown v. Board of Education opinion. Manuscript Division

Architectural view of the U.S. Supreme Court building facade, featuring the "Equal Justice Under Law" inscription.

▪ The U.S. Supreme Court building. Carol M. Highsmith Archive/Prints and Photographs Division

▪ “This is a day that will live in glory,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote in this note to Warren. Manuscript Division

‘A Day That Will Live in Glory’

With Brown v. Board, court ends school segregation.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education on May 17, 1954, was one of the most momentous decisions in American history and is exhaustively documented at the Library. A unanimous court emphatically ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling — the basis for legalized segregation in the United States — was a false premise and always had been.

“We conclude that in the field of public education ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in his opinion, underlining the last phrase in his reading copy. Then he delivered the hammer blow, underlining the entire next sentence: “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

The case, though focused on public schools, would apply to every facet of American life. No more “Colored Only” water fountains. The nation was entering a new era.

extremes

A large 1962 USAF Lunar Wall Mosaic map detailing the topography, craters, and maria of the Moon's visible hemisphere.

▪ The Lunar Wall Mosaic, a map of the moon’s surface. Geography and Map Division

To the Moon

This lunar map helped guide Apollo astronauts to a safe place to land.

For thousands of years, the moon was an object of fascination across time, space and cultures. In 1610, Galileo Galilei first turned it into an object of scientific study, pointing his telescope to the moon and revealing a rugged world of mountains, valleys, craters and ridges.

Some 350 years later, in a 1961 speech to Congress, President John F. Kennedy committed America to landing on the moon within a decade. Thus began an intense mobilization across government agencies to make it happen. Landing a man on the moon successfully was a challenge not just of technology but also of geography: Given the moon’s uneven topography, choosing a good landing site was of utmost importance.

1933 Goudey Big League Chewing Gum trading card featuring a color illustration of baseball legend Babe Ruth.

▪ A Babe Ruth baseball card, published by the Goudey Gum Co. in 1933. Prints and Photographs Division

America’s Most Powerful Export?

From music to movies to sports, U.S. popular culture rules the globe.

Baseball, basketball, football, blues, jazz, rock, Hollywood, Broadway, comic books — what would the planet look like without the great spewing fountain of American pop culture?

Never mind the economic, dance floor and movie theater impact of America’s entertainment industry. When the Cold War came down to it, the United States had what Soviet kids wanted most: blue jeans and rock ’n’ roll. Who could compete with Levi’s and Elvis?

Likewise baseball, first codified in New York in 1845, was America’s much beloved national pastime — but then became a cultural mainstay in nations as diverse as Castro’s Cuba and post-World War II Japan.

Around the Library

Five dancers in flowing blue silk costumes perform a synchronized routine under purple stage lighting.

The Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company celebrates the choreography of Michio Itō on March 26 in the Coolidge Auditorium.

A large cherry blossom tree in full pink bloom on the grounds of the Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C.

A Yoshino cherry tree blooms outside of the Jefferson Building on March 25.

A researcher looks down at a massive, room-sized relief map of Europe spread across a large wooden table.

Travis Thieme of Seattle looks over a large-scale map of Europe made by his great-great grandfather in the late 19th century during a visit to the Geography and Map Division on March 9.

Three people lean in with expressions of awe and curiosity while viewing historical documents on a display table.

Cast members of “Operation Mincemeat” look over a special collections display in the Whittall Pavilion on March 9.

A soprano in a teal gown performs on stage accompanied by a string quartet and a pianist at a grand piano.

Grammy-winning mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges performs with the Catalyst Quartet and pianist Terrence Wilson on April 1.

Musicians perform on a stage with vibrant lighting; a woman in gold pants dances while a man plays a double-neck guitar.

Yilian Cañizares blends her native Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz and classical music in the Coolidge Auditorium on April 9.

ALL PHOTOS BY SHAWN MILLER

News Briefs

Library to Hold Latest Edition Of Book Festival in August

The Library will host the 2026 National Book Festival on Aug. 22 at the Washington Convention Center.

The 2026 festival is part of the Library’s celebration of the nation’s semiquincentennial, America 250: It’s Your Story. The festival will feature expanded programming to celebrate the 250th anniversary and to showcase the Library’s offerings beyond books to include film, music, veterans history and American folklife.

The festival is free and provides a full day of conversations with dozens of authors, poets and illustrators from a variety of genres about their latest books and book signings with each writer. The festival offers readings, giveaways, and activities for children and young adults, as well as the opportunity to purchase books from the festival’s official bookseller.

Updates on plans for the National Book Festival will be shared at loc.gov/bookfest.

MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-26-016
Sze Appointed to 2nd Term As Poet Laureate of U.S.

The Library recently appointed Arthur Sze to serve a second term as the nation’s 25th poet laureate consultant in poetry for 2026-27.

Sze was named poet laureate in September 2025 and began working to expand appreciation of poetry through his focus on translating poetry originally written in languages other than English.

His newest book, “Transient Worlds: On Translating Poetry,” features translations from 13 languages and provides a personal guide to poetry in translation. The book was published by Copper Canyon Press in association with the Library.

In his second term, Sze is crafting his signature project, “Words Bridging Worlds,” and will embark on a U.S. tour to host public events — readings, moderated discussions and workshops focused on poetry and translation. Queens College of the City of New York is partnering with Sze to support the workshops through the college’s MFA program in creative writing and literary translation.

MORE: loc.gov/item/prn-26-031

Graphic for the 2026 Library of Congress fashion exhibition featuring a collage of historical photos and a fringed glove.

Discover what unfolds at loc.gov/fashion

Shop

Historic Calligraphy Set in a wooden box featuring ink bottles and a quill, decorated with portraits of Founding Fathers.

Founding Fathers Calligraphy Set

Product #21509557
Price: $17.95

Re-create the Declaration of Independence or just practice writing with this calligraphy set. Includes parchment paper, quill and four ink bottles.

Set of four stone coasters printed with the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Civil Rights Act, and Declaration of Independence.

Founding Documents Coasters

Product #21505544
Price: $54.95

Marble tiles keep the documents of America’s founding ready to serve. Includes the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and Civil Rights Act.

Aged parchment reproduction of Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence with visible edits.

Rough Draft of Declaration

Product #21601028
Price: $5.95

This re-creation of Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration offers wonderful insight into its creation. Two 14-by-16-inch pages.

support

Visitors in the Rubenstein Treasures Gallery at the Library of Congress viewing exhibits on the Declaration of Independence.

▪ A rendering of the new “The Declaration’s Promise” exhibition at the Library. Exhibits Office

Shining a Spotlight on Collections

‘The Declaration’s Promise’ exhibition comes to life.

During a historic year for our nation, the Library will unveil an exhibition that invites us to think about who we are, where we’ve come from and where we are headed together, thanks to the generous support of The Boeing Company and The James Madison Council.

“The Declaration’s Promise,” opening in July in the David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery, will guide visitors through the ideological roots, drafting process and enduring impact of the Declaration of Independence, exploring the document’s origins and the impact of its principles on American life over the last 250 years. Drawing on the Library’s unparalleled collections, the installation will combine rare manuscripts and artifacts with immersive digital kiosks, interactive displays and related public programming.

last word

Official U.S. Senate photo by Dan Rios

Leader John Thune

This year our nation celebrates a significant milestone, and in celebrating America’s 250th birthday, we might wonder how the founding generation did it. What gave them the courage and wisdom necessary at that pivotal moment in our history? For at least part of that answer, I think we need to look only as far as the nearest bookshelf.

Those first Americans were courageous, and they were daring. They were also thinkers and readers. Abigail Adams drew from her extensive reading in letters to her husband, John, throughout the war. Benjamin Franklin is credited with founding the first lending library. And I don’t need to tell any reader of this publication of the vast personal libraries amassed by Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson, whose collection of books is the cornerstone of the Library of Congress. Our founders were familiar with the accumulated wisdom of the past, and the great ideas of both past and present.

Books — the written word — played a key role in the founding of our country. What did George Washington do before he received his commission to lead the Continental Army? He ordered military books. Henry Knox, a bookseller by trade, read anything he could find about military strategy and put that knowledge to use from the war’s early days to its finish at Yorktown. And we cannot underestimate the impact of writers like Thomas Paine and Phillis Wheatley on the patriot cause.