Lincoln's public works, such as the Gettyburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation, are well-known, but he did hundreds of unknown acts of kindness for the obscure and friendless. In this book, thirty-five such acts, never cataloged or published before, see the light of day. The stories of these mostly under-age soldiers, amplified with family and genealogical background, tell yet one more aspect of the legendary president, whose myths are largely reality. Each story carries a note in Lincoln's own hand. The author concludes with an essay on the emergence of unstable electronic records, which are now substituted for the durable rag paper and iron-based ink which carries the Lincoln corpus.