Lincoln's Love Letters

The stumbling, awkward English in this exchange of letters would have horrified Abraham Lincoln, a master of prose with impeccable grammar. The letters are supposedly between Lincoln and his real-life clandestine love Ann Rutledge. In them, "Beloved Ann" professes, "if you git me the dictshinery...I no I can do both speeking and riting better...my hart runs over with hapynes when I think yore name..." While slightly more literate, "Lincoln's" letter to Rutledge is peppered with anachronisms and signed "yours affectionately, Abe"—a nickname the proper Mr. Lincoln abhorred.

Despite the crude nature of the forgeries, The Atlantic Monthly published a series of articles based on them entitled "Lincoln the Lover: The Courtship," in January 1929. As soon as the articles went to press, several Lincoln scholars, including biographer Carl Sandburg, identified the letters as outlandish fakes.