The Washington Post reported that the Abraham Lincoln Papers might be forced to cease its search for Lincoln documents at the National Archives, due to funding shortages. The article focuses on the impact that the funding shortage will have on the Lincoln Papers’ Washington team, headed by Assistant Editor David Gerleman, and includes quotes from Gerleman and Editor Daniel Stowell.

From the article:

[Daniel] Stowell said a five-year, $1.4 million charitable grant ran out last month, and the project’s Illinois state funding has been more than halved. The Papers, which has an annual budget of $775,000 to gather all things Lincoln, gets funding from federal and other private sources, he said, which make up only about 60 percent of its budget.

“We need to replace that [charitable] funding . . . and the now-missing portion of our state funding,” Stowell said. If not, “we would have to say come June of next year, ‘We can’t go on.’” He said the project would retrench, and focus mainly on its work in Springfield.

Discussing the need for completing the Lincoln Papers, Daniel Stowell remarked:

“We’re building a new Lincoln Memorial,” he said. “We’re building it not out of granite and marble, we’re building it out of the words of Abraham Lincoln and all of his contemporaries.”

Best of luck to the Lincoln Papers in meeting their shortfall.