in 1999 from southern illinois university at carbondale under the direction of john y. simon. his dissertation was on the care, treatment, and use of civil war cavalry horses. now, i'd like to tell you just a little bit about the work that david does with the papers of abraham lincoln. david and his fellow editors are doing an incredibly lab-intensive but extraordinarily important job with the papers of abraham lincoln. the editors are traveling the country looking for any letters or documents sent to or by abraham lincoln. and there are many editors working at the national archives every day, 40 hours a week, going through millions of documents. every piece of paper that was generated by the federal government or sent to the federal government from the civil war years that is held at the national archives will be looked at by one of the editors of the papers of abraham lincoln. and they are daily finding new insights about our nation's 16th president. this work is extraordinarily important, and it's shedding new light on someone who we thought we knew a lot about, and we did,