The Block Collection includes numerous documents written and signed by American Presidents. In this triptych panel, a signed Lincoln order is surrounded by portraits and signed documents front Presidents James Buchanan and Franklin Pearce.
Recent acquisitions
Generosity has never been a shortcoming of Illinois State Historical Society members. But a recent gift from the estate of Joseph and Lucille Block of Chicago surprised and delighted the Society's Board and staff. Joseph Block, former CEO of Inland Steel Corporation, was a serious collector of Lincoln documents and books, as well as autographs of other U.S. Presidents. It was the couple's desire that, after their deaths, the collection would be given to the Society and, if possible, displayed as the "Lucille and Joseph L. Block Collection."
The collection includes several signed Lincoln documents—all of which are documented in the (lollected Works of Abraham Lincoln—as well as signatures of U.S. Presidents from James Madison to Calvin Coolidge. More than a dozen original Courier and Ives lithographs related to Lincoln and the Civil War are also part of the gift.
Signed Lincoln documents include handwritten notes to Generals Grant and Meade, a stay of execution for a condemned soldier, and a paper signed by Lincoln and all members of his second-term cabinet.
The documents, which had been mounted in the walls of the Block's Chicago penthouse, were carefully transported to Springfield in July and are now housed in a climate- controlled vault. A complete catalog of the collection will be printed in a lorthcoming edition of Illinois Heritage. SJ
—William Furry
Among the several Lincoln documents in the Block Collection was this February 1865 note the President yenned to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, inquiring into allegations that the Union Army was forcing African Americans into the army.
Another Lincoln document donated by the Block family is this "stay of execution," sent to General George Gordon Meade, on behalf of a New York soldier in the "Irish Brigade."
Illinois Heritage 17
