OCRed data provided
for searching only. editorial note
The doubled dash, which resembles an equal sign, is rendered as a regular dash; the double underline is treated the same as a single underline and rendered in italic type. Raised letters are lowered to the normal position. Words that have been stricken by the writer are not usually shown, but where considered signi‚cant they are either shown as stricken in the text or commented on in the notes.
Square brackets are used to present material absent from the text or unable to be transcribed. When enclosing matter in roman type, square brackets indicate words or letters that the editors believe were originally in the document but have since been obliterated through stain or mutilation. To aid in the deciphering of mutilated documents, bracketed asterisks are used to indicate an estimated num‚ber of missing words, so that [*] indicates a single missing word, [*/**] indicates an estimate of one or two missing words, and [*/?] indicates an indeterminate number of missing words. Doubtful readings are given in square brackets in ro‚man type, followed by a question mark. Bracketed material in italic type (such as [illegible] for illegible matter) represents editorial insertions.
Format
In the interest of a consistent format, certain elements of the documents are al‚ways treated in the same way. In letters, the place and date of the document, where present, are given at the beginning of the text, regardless of where they appear in the document itself. Place and date are given exactly as written, except that the county, when added to the city, is usually ignored. Thus place and date for a letter headed "Charleston, Coles Co. Ills.î with the date given at the end of the letter as "Friday, Oct. 25th 1865î is rendered at the beginning of the text as "Charleston, Ills. Oct. 25th 1865.î The salutation is always given on the next line. The closing line, such as "Yours truly,î and the signature are always printed at the end of the text. The inside address, if any, is omitted, as is the docketing, unless it is the source of the date or is cited in the notes.
Sources
The majority of documents presented here are reproduced from originals in the Herndon-Weik Collection at the Library of Congress. These are marked at the end of the entry by the designation LC, followed by HW and the foliation numbers: for example, LC: HW2991¬94. The texts of considerably more than half of these originals exist in transcriptions made for William H. Herndon in the fall of 1866 by John G. Springer, now in the Ward Hill Lamon Papers in the Huntington Li‚brary. These are indicated by the designation HL, followed usually by LN and the volume and foliation numbers. Thus the designation LC: HW2105; HL: LN2408, 2:361¬64 signi‚es that the text is taken from an original document at the Library
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