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Abraham Lincoln to Andrew Johnston, 25 February 18471
Springfield, February 25, 1847.Dear Johnston:
Yours of the 2d of December was duly delivered to me by Mr. Williams.2 To say the least, I am not at all displeased with your
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proposal to publish the poetry, or doggerel, or whatever else it may be called, which I sent you. I consent that it may be done, together with the third canto, which I now send you.3 Whether the prefatory remarks in my letter shall be published with the verses, I leave entirely to your discretion; but let names be suppressed by all means. I have not sufficient hope of the verses attracting any favorable notice to tempt me to risk being ridiculed for having written them.4
Why not drop into the paper, at the same time, the “half dozen stanzas of your own”? Or if, for any reason, it suit your feelings better, send them to me, and I will take pleasure in putting them in the paper here. Family well, and nothing new.
Yours sincerely,A. Lincoln.
1An image of the original document was not available. This transcription is taken from the earliest published transcription of the document, in John G. Nicolay’s and John Hay’s Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. The original document was written and signed by Abraham Lincoln.
2Andrew Johnston’s December 2, 1846 letter to Lincoln has not been located.
3In his letter to Johnston on February 24, 1846, Lincoln stated that his poem of four cantos was “almost done.” Lincoln sent the first canto, entitled “My Childhood-Home I See Again,” to Johnston enclosed in a letter dated April 18, 1846. On September 6, 1846, Lincoln sent the second canto to Johnston. A later poem, mentioned in the letter to Johnston on September 6, 1846, and titled “The Bear Hunt,” may represent the third canto of this piece. The fourth canto is unknown. The first two cantos were published anonymously in the May 5, 1847 Quincy Whig under the title “The Return,” with subtitles of “Part I--Reflection” and “Part II--The Maniac.”
4The two cantos were published with quotations from Lincoln’s letter of April 18, 1846, as prefatory remarks to the poetry.
Quincy Whig (IL), 5 May 1847, 1:2.

Printed Transcription, 2 page(s), John G. Nicolay and John Hay, eds., Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, new and enlarged ed. (New York: Francis D. Tandy, 1905), 1:298-99.