[This is not an image of the actual letter]
The letter appears to be the only one Lincoln wrote to a child while in office that survives as an original document, he said.
“There was a letter sent to youngsters Clara and Julia Brown, the original of which has been lost, and this letter to young [George] Patten,” Raab said. The letter to the Browns also was written while Lincoln was president.
Patten, who was about 8, had proudly informed his classmates and teacher that he had met Lincoln, but they laughed at him and were so skeptical that his teacher wrote the president in an attempt to verify what her student said.
Lincoln responded directly to the boy from the White House on March 19, 1861, about two weeks after his inauguration.
