Lincoln’s Letter and the Kid’s Trunk

The National Archives announced last week that they had discovered a long-lost letter from Abraham Lincoln. It is a true national treasure -- a note from America's greatest president about America's greatest battle – and it had been misfiled for nearly a century.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070608/ap_on_re_us/archives_lincoln

I’m proud to say I had a hand in this discovery, however small. I’m currently producing a documentary about the Civil War, and I’d called the National Archives to see about shooting some of the original telegrams between generals. I was sent to speak to Trevor Plante, the the go-to-guy on old war records and probably one of the world’s greatest experts on Civil War documents (though he’s too humble to admit it).

Apparently one of the telegrams I’d asked for was so obscure, that Trevor couldn’t find it in the normal records. So he began searching in the more unusual places and the forgotten corners of the vast archives. And there, in a battered, water-stained, torn-covered bound collection of the papers of General Henry Halleck… he found a hand-written note from Abraham Lincoln about the most important battle in American history.

It’s like finding George Washington’s wooden teeth in a dentist’s back-office… or like finding a million dollars in cash in the pages of a library book. That last metaphor is literal – another handwritten Lincoln letter was discovered last year in London, and Sotheby’s valued it at over a million dollars.

So I was there when Trevor Plante first revealed he had found a long-lost Lincoln letter. I saw the actual signature, looked at the incredible document in its battered, water-stained home, and would have loved to have held it, but Trevor – in his wisdom – refused to let any grubby video crew handle a national treasure.

This discovery is the latest in a string of similar tales. In London last month, a battered filing cabinet in a basement turned out to contain love letters from Napoleon and a hand-written note from Queen Elizabeth I. Earlier this year, a forgotten trunk in a Virginia bank vault turned out to contain unknown letters and personal mementos of Robert E. Lee.

These are amazing stories, and for those of us with a love of history, it bring visions of each of us finding a similar trove, somewhere in an attic or basement, jammed under grandpa's old bed, or buried in a remote ghost town.

The legend of Billy the Kid is also filled with stories about lost trunks. In several different books and memoirs there are references to this iconic concept -- "the trunk" that contains Billy's revolver, his photos, and his personal reminiscences -- all the missing artifacts and detailed proof that either a) solve all of Billy's mysteries, b) prove his survival after his reported death, or c) reveal his genetic relationship to the discoverer.

This trunk has never been found, of course. Or at least not yet. But the idea crops up again and again in books about Billy the Kid.

I even went so far as to try to track down one of these trunks when I produced BILLY THE KID UNMASKED for the Discovery Channel. John Miller -- the Arizona claimant to Billy's title -- was supposed to have sent a trunk of material from his deathbed to his last surviving relative in the 1920s. (The story is detailed in WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BILLY THE KID by Helen Airy). Did this trunk contain Billy the Kid’s guns, his memoirs, and solid proof that Miller really was the Kid? I made several calls, tried to find John Miller's surviving relatives, tried to find the actual post office building where the trunk was last seen... all to no avail.

I eventually decided the trunk simply doesn't exist. Just like similar trunks -- filled with letters from Jesse James, or Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday – simply do not exist. It’s a cool idea… too cool to actually be true.

But now... I'm not so sure.

I've seen a letter from Abraham Lincoln letter -- misfiled for over a century. The letter... the filing cabinet of Napoleon’s love notes... the trunk of Robert E. Lee... they all prove that such discoveries can actually be made.

Maybe that trunk of Billy the Kid’s really IS out there somewhere.

If you find it, drop me a line.