One of five existing original copies of the Gettysburg Address handwritten by Abraham Lincoln is the centerpiece of an exhibition that opened this week at Cornell University and celebrates the 200th birthday of the 16th president of the United States.

"The Lincoln Presidency: Last Full Measure of Devotion" explores Lincoln's presidential years - his role as commander in chief, his views on slavery, his two presidential political campaigns, his assassination, and how the nation grieved in the wake of his death, through a wealth of documents, letters, photographs and artifacts. The exhibit opened Tuesday and will be on display through April 16, 2010, in the Carl A. Kroch Library's Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections.

Other highlights of the exhibition include a copy of the 13th Amendment signed by Lincoln and congressional members, and a manuscript of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Cornell's collections on Lincoln and the Civil War date from the founding of the university in 1865 and the personal collections of its first president, Andrew Dickson White.

"Even though anyone can read the text of these significant documents, online at a keystroke, or in countless printed versions, people are riveted and inspired by the opportunity to see original manuscripts from Lincoln's own time," said Katherine Reagan, the library's curator of rare books and manuscripts.

Cornell's original copy of the Gettysburg Address, written in Lincoln's own handwriting, is known as the Bancroft copy after the historian George Bancroft, who requested a copy personally from the president. The four other handwritten copies are owned by public institutions: two at the Library of Congress, one at the Illinois State Historical Library, and one in the Lincoln Room at the White House.

The Gettysburg Address penned by Lincoln will be on display Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday only (see accompanying box for hours). facsimile of the Gettysburg Address, along with the rest of the large-scale Lincoln exhibition, will remain on view into April.

"Institutions that own original copies often need to limit the amount of total light exposure that these types of national treasures receive. Ink does fade over time. We want these documents to last as long as possible," Reagan said.

"These three documents shaped American history. To view artifacts created or signed by Lincoln himself is to see history come to life, through the power of the words Lincoln wrote. And by extension, the principles of equality and freedom they express," Reagan said.