Editor's Letter

Welcome to the second issue of Detours, the online magazine of the Illinois Humanities Council. In launching our magazine, we decided to take on big ideas; and "The Legacy of Abraham Lincoln," as a subject is almost as daunting as our first one, "Time." Lincoln has become a touchstone for just about any question one can think of, according to James McPherson, "quoting him as important as quoting the Bible." Focusing on the 16th president for our February 1999 issue is especially appropriate for the IHC. This year is our 25th anniversary and, as the state humanities council of the "Land of Lincoln," we are celebrating the importance of Illinois heritage.

Ironically, it may be harder for Illinoisans to pay attention to Lincoln. Lincoln, in all his variety, is buried in Illinois under the great stone monument at Oak Ridge Cemetery, just outside Springfield. But he is also buried under the weight of the "Lincoln plaques, markers, statues, and namesakes (towns, colleges, motels . . .so ubiquitous as to render the actual man of flesh and blood invisible)," as Dan Guillory has suggested in his essay, "Living with Lincoln." In this issue of Detours, Kim Bauer, historical research specialist for the Henry Horner Lincoln Collection at the Illinois State Historical Library, has written about some of the Lincoln statues in Illinois.

There is the weight of scholarship, too. In surveying the literature, it is hard to imagine that any more can be written about Lincoln; but there have been new discoveries. Scholars have turned increasingly to aspects of his life before he became President. For example, The Documentary History of the Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, 1836-1861, known as The Lincoln Legal Papers, will be the definitive resource on Lincolnís legal career. This project has uncovered many manuscripts in county courthouses in Illinois. This material will soon to be available on CD-ROM

G. Cullom Davis, the director of this project, has been kind enough to share excerpts from an address he delivered as President of the Association for Documentary Editing in St. Louis, Missouri on October 9, 1998. As a scholar, Davis has truly "lived with Lincoln." These excerpts, titled "Popular Legacies of Abraham Lincoln," give us a refreshing insiderís look at the Lincoln industry, the state of Lincoln scholarship and Lincolnís influence on popular culture.

According to Richard Norton Smith, Director of the Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum, it would be a mistake to think that presidents in our own century were the first to be concerned with image. Lincoln was an excellent politician and campaigner--a Great Communicator as well as the Great Emancipator. Smith's article is drawn from the speech he delivered as the 1998 Governor's Lecture in the Humanities at the Executive Mansion in Springfield, IL.

We thank everyone who contributed to this issue of Detours. And we extend our deepest appreciation to the Chicago Historical Society and the Illinois State Historical Library for their generous assistance in finding photographs and for allowing us to use them here.

Kristina A. Valaitis
Executive Editor, Detours
Executive Director, Illinois Humanities Council

Abraham Lincoln and the Perpetual Campaign

Richard Norton-Smith

Photo of Lincoln's pocket watch courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.I have declared before a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion, neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it exists." --Letter to John L. Scripps (June 23, 1858)

"If A. can prove, however conclusively that he may, of right, enslave B. –why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally that he may enslave A? You say A. is white and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly? –You mean the whites are intellectually superiors of the blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellectual superior to your own." --Fragment on Slavery (c. 1854)

 

Let me express my appreciation to Governor Edgar and to the Illinois Humanities Council for the opportunity to address this subject, in this place, and before this audience. As the final such lecture of the Edgar governorship, this evening may carry something of a bittersweet quality. Yet any such feelings should be far outweighed by the collective pride that the Council and its supporters can take in combating the historical illiteracy that amounts to a cultural amnesia. From one distinguished Illinoisan whose campaign days are, by his own choice, drawing near to their close, I turn to another for whom virtually every waking hour represented a campaign of sorts, an unceasing pursuit, not only of power and position, but also of coherence and self-fulfillment.

In addressing what I call Abraham Lincoln's perpetual campaign, and in return for your hospitality, the least I can do is keep in mind Lincoln's own description of a long-winded lawyer whose chief distinction it was to compress the fewest thoughts into the most words of anyone in Springfield. Only those of you who call this city home know whether, as the poet Vachel Lindsay assured us early in this century, Mr. Lincoln walks your streets at midnight. If he does, his restlessness may well have literary origins. For while he may or may not stalk the neighborhoods in which he received his political baptism, he most certainly haunts the imagination of Americans for whom the sixteenth president remains at once the most universally recognizable and yet mysterious of figures. The task that confronts any Lincoln student is both daunting and exhilarating. Rare indeed is the writer who enters the Lincoln force field without being changed in some lasting way. I am no exception to this rule. So at the outset let me deny the rumor that I grew my beard in response to your kind speaking invitation. Actually, a little girl in upstate New York wrote me a letter suggesting that I would look better with whiskers.

With his characteristic blend of shrewdness and spontaneity, Lincoln was not above deprecating his own physical appearance, especially if it allowed him to one-up the formidable Stephen A. Douglas. On one occasion after Judge Douglas had called him two-faced, Lincoln more than rose to the challenge.

"I leave it to the audience," he drawled. "If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?"

Small wonder that Douglas should complain of his perennial rival that every one of Lincoln's jokes "seems like a whack upon my back." Of course, humor can serve many purposes, on and off the campaign trail. For the politician it is both sword and shield, a weapon to turn on one's opponent, and a defense against those who might otherwise come too close or probe too deeply. Humor can also be employed to deflate pretense. Take the case of Lincoln's Springfield law partner, William Herndon. As effusive as his colleague was secretive, Herndon was given to rhetorical purple patches like his fulsome description of Niagara Falls delivered just a few days after Lincoln had chanced to see the great cataract with his own eyes.

Herndon in full flight could be something of a natural wonder himself, and he pulled out all the stops to convey the visual splendors of the foaming torrent, the roar of the rapids and the sublime majesty of a rainbow permanently suspended above the Niagara gorge. Exhausting his vocabulary of praise, the younger man at length asked what about the experience had made the deepest impression on Lincoln.

"The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw the Falls," said Lincoln, "was, where in the world did all that water come from?" Nearly two centuries after his birth, during which he has inspired at last count over 5,000 books and countless articles, monographs, high-flown eloquence and eminently forgettable convention oratory, we still ask of this human Niagara, "Where did all that water come from?" As rich as Lincoln scholarship may be, it pales beside the man who generated it. For if he wasn't two faced, Abraham Lincoln did not necessarily wear the same face before every audience.

Of all the Lincoln stories, none seems to me so metaphorically revealing as the eerie encounter Lincoln had with himself on election night 1860. Worn out from the campaign and suspense of vote counting, the President-elect went home to rest. From his bed he saw a bureau with a swinging mirror, and in it his own reflection. "My face I noticed had two separate and distinct images," Lincoln would recall. "One of the faces a little paler. . . than the other, I got up and the thing melted away. My wife thought it was a sign that I was to be elected to another term, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I shouldn't see life through the last term."

The story foreshadows the terrible price exacted for Lincoln's political self-realization. More than that, it hints at Herndon's later description of his friend as "a man totally swallowed up in his ambitions." In truth, the man in the mirror was many men, the dual images reflective of one who combined opposites with astonishing ease. "What is conservatism?" candidate Lincoln had asked early in 1860. "Is it not adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?" Yet just two years later, amid the smoke and steel of civil war, Lincoln sounded a radically different note when he told Congress, "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

The man who declared "the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor, or dishonor, to the latest generation," was as contradictory in his personality as in his politics. For Abraham Lincoln, life itself was a fiery trial, whose ultimate reward was the good opinion of his fellow citizens, and the chance to be honorably remembered to the latest generation. Law may have been his livelihood, but politics was his life. Needless to say, the idea of a scheming, politically consumed Lincoln hardly squares with Carl Sandburg's dreamy idealist who halts in the middle of the road to rescue a pig stuck in the mud, or the upright store clerk who walks miles to return a few cents to an inadvertently shortchanged customer. The critic Edmund Wilson declared in the 1930's that Sandburg was the worst thing to happen to Lincoln since John Wilkes Booth. I wouldn't go that far, but I would caution readers that the great prairie poet, a florid stylist and fierce egalitarian, wrote biography that often reads like autobiography.

Moreover, he had a clear agenda in crafting his mythic Lincoln as a sort of Paul Bunyan in a stovepipe hat. It was his intention, wrote Sandburg, "to take Lincoln away from the religious bigots and the professional politicians and restore him to the common people." Sandburg's Lincoln is summoned by destiny, not unlike his youthful hero George Washington, that other presidential icon with whom he reappears out of the historical mists each February to sell us appliances and used cars before quietly submitting to the dead hand of textbook history.

Ironically, Lincoln himself would be the first to recognize the value of Sandburg's literary mausoleum. As a boy he devoured Parson Weems' sugary biography of the nation's first president--cherry tree, dollar hurled across the Rappahannock and all--blissfully unaware that no man in America was less likely to throw money away than the tightfisted father of his country. Conceding that Washington could hardly be so faultless as portrayed, Lincoln demonstrated his own profound grasp of historical mythology when he argued, "It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect, that human perfection is conceivable."

Yet on another occasion Lincoln rejected anything less than literal fact, saying "history is not history unless it is the truth." No small part of what I call Lincoln's perpetual campaign involved his dogged pursuit of the secular immortality bestowed upon Washington and the founding generation. As a young state legislator adapting their nationalistic creed to the frontier, Lincoln's ambitions were already in evidence. Having spearheaded a successful campaign to endow Illinois with publicly funded roads, canals and railways, Lincoln voiced the hope that future generations might venerate him as a prairie-bred Dewitt Clinton.

Of course, comparisons with the father of the Erie Canal would hardly fuel the cottage industry that even now leads thoughtful scholars such as Douglas Wilson and Michael Burlingame to mine seemingly inexhaustible veins of Lincoln lore. To them, and to long recognized Lincolnians like David Herbert Donald, and especially Stephen Oates, I am indebted for much of what follows. It is not enough for the historian to grub for facts; he must then imagine those facts into a credible imitation of a life as it is being lived, so that we can know a man on his own terms and in his own times ... So return for a moment to the second floor bedroom of the Lincoln house amidst the beery jubilation of Republican Springfield in November, 1860. We have already noted two faces in the mirror, ghostly images taunting Lincoln then and mesmerizing Lincoln students ever since.

Who is the blurry apparition in the looking glass? The double likeness suggests a man of many moods, finely balanced between extremes. The mirror reflects a calculating fatalist, a melancholy comic, a longsuffering husband and negligent spouse. What else does it show us? The Great Emancipator of legend, or the racist caricature drawn by some academics in our own time? The teller of vulgar stories, or the author of imperishable prose? The champion of popular self-determination, or the incipient dictator trumpeting human rights while suspending individual liberties? Is the man in the mirror the most assertive chief executive in American history, or the essentially passive figure captured in Professor Donald's bestselling biography published in 1995?

"I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me," Donald quotes Lincoln as telling an irate Kentuckian angry at the President for reneging on his pledge not to make war on slavery. What an artful dodge! "Don't blame me - blame events." That Lincoln could shed his skin without losing his soul should hardly come as a surprise. For this master politician had long since perfected the art of self-concealment. In some ways he is hiding still. In the popular mind, for example, he is forever enshrined as the unlettered genius who came out of the wilderness to vindicate self-government in a world where kings and despots still held sway.

The reality is more complicated. Lincoln spent a lifetime, not so much celebrating his origins as escaping them. It wasn't the $8 a month flatboatman to whom his political philosophy paid tribute, but a system of government that offered him and other common laborers the chance to be uncommon, to work their way to respectable self-sufficiency and a smattering of culture. In retrospect it seems clear that Carl Sandburg enjoyed Lincoln's youthful privation far more than did the subject of his biography. There was no romance to be woven from his childhood, Lincoln told his 1860 campaign biographer John L. Scripps. In an oft-quoted disclaimer, the candidate insisted that his early years in Kentucky and Indiana amounted to nothing more than "the short and simple annals of the poor."

One soon learns that with the sphinx-like Lincoln, however, few things are short and nothing is simple. In that same autobiographical fragment the Republican nominee belittled his father's meager educational attainments and all but ignored his mother. Lincoln had been conspicuously absent from Thomas Lincoln's funeral in 1851, at the start of a decade during which he rose to the pinnacle of the Illinois legal profession, with a $5,000 annual income that was triple the governor's salary. But if his bank balance was healthy, on the subject of his rustic upbringing Lincoln had long since drained his emotional account.

His burning need for recognition was hammered on the forge of adversity. Lincoln's earliest memories revolved around dreary farm labor from which Weems' idealized portrait of George Washington crossing the Delaware had offered an enterprising and imaginative boy momentary respite. Young Lincoln confided to a country schoolteacher his intention to be a public man. The Pilgrim's Progress and Aesop's Fables, supplemented by the crabbed erudition of Coke and Blackstone, the poetry of Robert Burns and the mental gymnastics of rural debating societies, all fed the dreams of an aspiring lawyer and politician. Together they set the stage for Lincoln's tireless effort to prove himself - and to improve himself - while simultaneously vindicating the ideas of social mobility and individual dignity contained in the Declaration of Independence.

For Lincoln, Shakespeare offered much more than entertainment. Along with the King James Bible, the Bard helped him master the language with a spare eloquence that has never been equaled. He displayed a special fondness for Shakespearean tragedies, none more so than Richard II, with its lugubrious invitation to sit upon the ground and tell the sad story of the death of kings. Over the years Lincoln scholars have spilled barrels of ink hoping to trace his persistent melancholy to its source. His depression stemmed from the death of his mother when he was but nine years old, it has been argued, its shattering impact reinforced by the loss of a much loved sister a few years later, and the cruel fate visited upon Ann Rutledge in 1835. Other theories attribute his emotional fragility to acute embarrassment over his ungainly appearance and social ineptitude, or to neglect in childhood even chronic constipation for which Lincoln liberally dosed himself with Blue Mass pills purchased from a Springfield druggist.

More recently it has been suggested that Lincoln's family was genetically predisposed to depression. Apparently his father had been known to walk Kentucky fields loudly talking to himself of God's providence - much as his famous son would be observed on the Illinois legal circuit babbling what one lawyer and bunkmate called "the wildest and most incoherent nonsense." Lincoln seemed as preoccupied with insanity as with death. In his late thirties a visit to the haunts of his Indiana youth inspired a poem about a boyhood friend who had lost his mind. "A human form with reason fled, while wretched life remains," wrote Lincoln in harrowing recollection.

Did Abraham Lincoln fear the loss of his own sanity? According to Stephen Oates, it was precisely such dread that explains his refusal to indulge in alcohol or surrender to passion. Americans, he told a Springfield audience in 1842, must place their reliance on "reason, cold, calculating, impassioned reason." The quest for self-control became a integral part of his perpetual campaign. But for the politician some things are beyond control. Not even the most rigid self-discipline can assure the outcome of an election, or move voters to see moral imperatives obscured by self-interest, greed, or prejudice. There is no single explanation for Lincoln's moody silences or abrupt emotional withdrawals. But the most credible of causes, it seems to me, is simply this: the yawning gulf between his aspirations and his expectations. He could master himself, but not the electorate. Both idealist and pragmatist, Lincoln had chosen the one profession that guaranteed fame and misery in equal measure.

To Billy Herndon he once confessed that his mother was the illegitimate offspring of an unnamed Virginia aristocrat. Then he swore his law partner to secrecy. The vow died with Lincoln. As a result, next to Sandburg, it is Herndon's Lincoln - henpecked, greedy for office, suicidally depressed, and no friend to organized religion - who still dominates the scholarly horizon more than a century after Herndon's grab bag of personal observation, second-hand gossip, and historical hearsay first appeared to challenge the saintly image of a martyred president.

Herndon's Lincoln is both tender and ruthless, furtive and transparent. He is a severely logical attorney, who rarely travels the legal circuit without a well thumbed copy of Euclid to ponder before a midnight fire. But he is also a superstitious child of the frontier, relating premonitions of a terrible fate awaiting him. Truth be told, Herndon's Lincoln fears death less than obscurity. To Joshua Speed, probably the closest thing to an intimate friend he ever had, the aspiring politician said in 1841 that he would be perfectly willing to die then and there. "But I have an inexpressible desire to live," he added, at least "till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it." Another close associate, Ward Hill Lamon, heard Lincoln confide White House aspirations almost as soon as the two men met. "He never rested in the race he had determined to run," Lamon wrote long afterward. "He was ever ready to be honored; he struggled incessantly for place."

Launching his first campaign for the legislature at the age of 23, Lincoln embarked upon a cycle familiar to every politician who relies on the electorate for his self-esteem as well as his livelihood. Democracy is a fickle employer, and those who look to the ballot box for justification mistake transient popularity for a king's cure. So why run such a risk? For Lincoln, whose enormous drive was matched by a brooding pessimism, victory at the polls promised current reputation and future remembrance. Just as Winston Churchill relied on incessant labor and a combative personality to ward off what he called his "black dog," so the painfully self-conscious Lincoln sought immersion in a cause or campaign larger than himself.

It cannot be said that the young candidate, a leathery skinned giant with a floating left eye and size 14 feet, cut a prepossessing figure on the campaign trail. "He wore a mixed jeans coat," recalled one voter, "clawhammer style, short in the sleeves, and bobtail - in fact, it was so short in the back that he could not sit on it - flax and tow linen pantaloons and a straw hat." Enhancing the comical effect were several Lincoln anecdotes shrewdly unfurled to disarm hostile members of the audience. A master of political symbolism, Lincoln reached out to working class voters suspicious of his conservative economic policies. He once addressed a Springfield crowd estimated at 15,000 while standing in a farm wagon. On another occasion he burnished his mass appeal by saluting the honest laborer who digs coal at about seventy cents a day "while the president digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a day."

Yet no amount of well-timed wit or strategic cleverness could banish the petty slights and banal treacheries of the political arena. "Now if you should hear anyone say that Lincoln doesn't want to go to Congress," he confided to a friend in 1843, "I wish you ... would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very much." When the prize went instead to a Whig rival, Lincoln made little effort to hide his bitterness. Three years later he was again climbing the greasy pole. His Democratic opponent was Peter Cartwright, an itinerant Methodist preacher who looked out from a makeshift pulpit one morning to discover his adversary in attendance at an emotionally charged camp meeting.

Sensing a literally heaven-sent opportunity to embarrass Lincoln whose unorthodox views had branded him in some quarters as little better than an infidel, Cartwright invited all within the sound of his voice who hoped to taste the delights of heaven to stand. A healthy portion of the crowd rose to its feet, but not Lincoln. The evangelist next called upon all those who wished to avoid the eternal hellfire of damnation to rise, an appeal which, not surprisingly, elicited virtual unanimity. Still Lincoln held back. Seizing the moment, the Reverend Cartwright observed that while many in the room had signified their desire to go to heaven, and practically all had conveyed their dread of hell, only Mr. Lincoln had failed to respond to either request.

"May I inquire of you, Mr. Lincoln, where are you going?"

Slowly Lincoln rose to his full height, until he towered over the rest of the assembly. "Brother Cartwright asks me directly where I am going," he said. "I desire to reply with equal directness: I am going to Congress." And so he did, though not without first admitting to his old friend Joshua Speed that winning the election in November, 1846 "has not pleased me as much as I expected." It was a complaint made familiar through repetition. A decade earlier, as a freshman member of the Illinois legislature, his depressed state had moved one colleague to ask bluntly what was wrong with his friend. Lincoln's reply conveyed the dilemma of a man walking an emotional treadmill, for whom a life in politics expressed both the will to succeed and the disillusionment with success as measured by roll calls, patronage jobs, and artificially generated controversy.

"All the rest of you have something to look forward to," said a dejected Lincoln, "and all are glad to get home, and will have something to do when you get there. But it isn't so with me. I am going home ... without a thing in the world." His spirits did not rise even if his political standing did. As Whig floor leader in the Illinois house, Lincoln called himself "the most miserable man living." Promotion to the national legislative offered only fleeting rewards. While in Congress he opposed the Mexican War as an unjust conflict waged for slaveholders by a compliant Polk Administration, and earned vilification for his antiwar efforts. Denied re-election in 1848, Lincoln joined the ranks of unemployed lawmakers who lobbied the new Whig president, Zachary Taylor, for the spoils of victory. Logical as ever, Lincoln prepared a list of eleven perfectly sound reasons why Taylor should appoint him Commissioner of the General Land Office, a sinecure paying $3,000 a year. Taylor was unpersuaded. As a consolation prize Lincoln was offered the territorial governorship of Oregon, which he turned down, a politically adroit move he blamed on a wife whose desire for rank dwarfed even his own.

His willingness to feed at the public trough gave poignancy to Lincoln's later dealings with the hoard of place-seekers who infested his White House. Transforming misery through humor, in 1863 he declared himself well pleased to have contracted a mild form of typhoid fever since, as he expressed it, "now at last I have something I can give everyone."

But all that was in the unfathomed future. And in the meanwhile, there was posterity to ruin an ambitious man's sleep. "It isn't a pleasant thing to think that when we die that is the last of us," a youthful Lincoln had remarked to a friend during his New Salem days. Had he died in 1849, or even five years later, Following his first unsuccessful campaign for the United States Senate, Lincoln would be little noted nor long remembered today. Whatever else they held in store, events would spare him that fate. Instead, they would bury Lincoln the man in a shroud of democratic mythmaking and self-sacrificing nobility.

It would be more accurate to say of the middle-aged Lincoln that the thing he was most willing to sacrifice was private life. Certainly his intense struggle with Stephen A. Douglas contained elements of jealousy as well as high-minded principle. While Lincoln might enjoy a laugh at Douglas' expense, for most of his career he was unable to defeat him at the polls. This gave rise to feelings of envy and personal resentment, even worthlessness. In a private memorandum composed in 1856, two years before the epic contest in which both candidates rehearsed arguments that would recur in the next presidential campaign, Lincoln couldn't help but contrast the glittering achievements of his Democratic rival with his own, far more modest reputation.

"With me," he wrote bitterly, "the race of ambition has been a failure - a flat failure. With him it has been one of splendid success." Neither courtroom eminence, newfound prosperity, nor a growing family were sufficient to quench his thirst for distinction. On the contrary: the Quaker brown Lincoln residence at the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets may well be considered the original House Divided. Billy Herndon exaggerated the shrewish qualities of Mary Lincoln, with whom he enjoyed - if that is the word - a relationship of unconcealed mutual antipathy. Yet there are too many contemporary accounts that have Mary striking her husband with a stick of wood, hurling hot coffee in his face, or driving him to take refuge on an extra long couch in the offices of Lincoln and Herndon to be dismissed as mere neighborhood gossip.

This is not to say that Lincoln was an easy man to live with. When he wasn't away on the legal circuit for weeks at a time, he could be found lying on the floor in a newspaper induced trance, or answering the door in his shirt sleeves, or absentmindedly pulling a wagon down the street, heedless of the screaming child who had fallen out. At first blush, the Lincolns appeared as ill-matched as sandpaper and silk. On closer examination, their admittedly turbulent marriage confirms the old adage that opposites attract. Like a pair of high-spirited horses yoked in harness, they had to pull together if the coach of state was not to be upset. Mary's quicksilver temper should not obscure the genuine love she felt for her husband, nor the pride she took in his accomplishments. Indeed, just as it has been said that without Nancy Reagan there would have been no President Reagan, so it can be argued that at a time when few others saw him as a man of destiny, Mary sustained Lincoln's belief in himself and in his mission.

"There are no accidents in my philosophy," Lincoln explained to a friend. "The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from finite to the infinite." Occasionally even the infinite required a little strategic planning to disgorge its secrets. Lincoln's 1858 loss to Douglas left him temporarily dispirited, but the fires of ambition were far from banked. By now an old hand at covering his tracks, Lincoln publicly downgraded his chances for the White House. To various associates he expressed hopes for another shot at the Senate or an appointment as Attorney General in a Republican administration. He portrayed himself as strictly a favorite son candidate around whom fractious Illinois Republicans might coalesce, even as he raised his profile by making speeches in six Midwestern states.

In February, 1860 he journeyed to New York to deliver the rousing Cooper Union address that would introduce the dark horse from Illinois to skeptical eastern audiences. Before leaving Springfield, Lincoln invited Joseph Medill and Charles Ray of the Chicago Tribune to examine his proposed text. As would-be kingmakers, the newspapermen urged numerous changes to the manuscript, then sat back to bask in the glow of their celebrated pupil. In the event, Lincoln took New York by storm, without incorporating a single "improvement" suggested by his Chicago brain trust.

"Old Abe must have lost out of the car window all our previous notes," said Ray.

Medill knew better, telling his partner, "This must have been one of his waggish jokes."

A grassroots campaign needed an appropriately populist symbol. Honest Abe the Railsplitter sounded much better than Calculating Abe the Railroad Lawyer. With this in mind, at the state convention of his party held in Decatur in the spring of 1860, Lincoln supporters unveiled an inspired bit of political theater. By careful prearrangement the candidate's cousin, John Hanks, came forward carrying a pair of two weathered fence rails allegedly split by his illustrious kinsman. Modestly Lincoln said that he could not positively identify the rails as being his handiwork, finally relenting long enough to acknowledge the possibility. To dispel any lingering doubts, Lincoln brightly added, "I have split a great many better looking ones."

Not since 1840, when William Henry Harrison's Whig supporters had transformed their Virginia - born grandee into a popular hero enamored of log cabins and hard cider, had the Dick Morrises of their day engineered a more potent conversion. Democrats, none too happy to have their thunder stolen, lampooned Lincoln as the Prince of Rails. The Chicago Herald a leading Democratic organ, declared with mock solemnity that at the age of 18 the Republican candidate had routinely split 76,000 rails a day.

The image-making didn't end there. Campaign biographer Scripps, not content to have his hero repay a farmer for a damaged book with three days hard labor, described a youthful Lincoln whose intellectual curiosity had led him to Plutarch's Lives. This charming tale had but one deficiency - it had been made up out of whole cloth by a writer who just assumed, as he put it in a post-election letter to the victorious candidate, that Lincoln was familiar with the erudite volume. "If you have not," wrote Scripps embarrassedly, "you must read it at once to make my statement good."

Scripps received no formal reply, but the Library of Congress did, in the form of a White House request to borrow Plutarch's Lives. If a supporter exaggerated his virtues, then Lincoln would do his best not to make a liar out of him. In other ways, the man who took the oath of office before the West Front of the Capitol in March, 1861 was scarcely recognizable to his political cronies back home. Standing at last atop the summit of American politics, a divided soul confronting a disintegrating nation, Lincoln had a transcendent cause to ennoble his gamesmanship. Even before his election, his yearning for advancement had been elevated, if not altogether purified, through a growing involvement with the antislavery movement. Logic told him that it was hypocritical for a nation that professed its love of liberty to keep millions of human beings in chains. Another kind of logic - the compelling logic of the battlefield - would bring him around to the view that a war over states rights must ultimately be fought for human rights.

Still, enough calculation and raw desire for power remained to enable Lincoln to run rings around his Democratic opponent in the 1864 election, the plodding martinet George B. McClellan. Even now he sought validation as well as votes. Yet as much as he changed America, America had changed him even more. The war had fused the disparate elements of Lincoln's personality and outlook into a character of astonishing force and subtlety. Honoring his pledge to do nothing in malice, for the most part he was able to laugh off the harsh attacks directed his way by less magnanimous men in his own party. When radical Republicans in Congress publicly assailed his reconstruction policies, the president said he was reminded of a no doubt mythical old acquaintance, "who, having a son of a scientific turn, brought him a microscope. The boy went around, experimenting with his glass upon everything ... One day, at the dinner table, his father took up a piece of cheese.

'Don't eat that father,' said the boy, 'it is full of wrigglers.'

'My son,' replied the old gentleman, taking a huge bite, 'let' em wriggle; I can stand it if they can.'"

To say that Lincoln grew in office is to underestimate his true achievement. Long before his fateful visit to Ford's Theater, his life had become a parable of sacrifice, not success. In his growing spirituality, Lincoln did not, like some modern-day politicians, presume to know God's agenda. Still less did he arrogate to himself the role of national theologian. "It's been my experience," he once mused aloud, "that folks who have no vices have generally few virtues." Nevertheless, his death on Good Friday struck powerful chords among his contemporaries. Even now, 133 years after his funeral train made its mournful trek across the Illinois prairie, he remains as vital a part of America's future as he is a venerated relic of our past.

Like all of you, I am deeply mindful of the history that has been made in this city and in this house. Nearly half a century has passed since another Illinois governor, Adlai Stevenson, electrified his countrymen by declaring that it was more important to tell the truth than to win an election. In accepting his party's 1952 presidential nomination, Governor Stevenson eloquently assessed the twentieth century, "the bloodiest, most turbulent of the Christian era," at its mid-point. Today, as we approach the end of that century scarred by war and stained by oppression, the world looks to America for a new birth of freedom - the very prescription made by Lincoln on the field at Gettysburg.

If the Railsplittler retains an undiminished power to move, inspire, and occasionally shame us, perhaps it is because in his perpetual campaign we can see reflected back many of our own ambitions, uncertainties, and drives. Out of his fiery trial emerged the soldier of freedom for whom preserving the Union supplied both a unity of purpose and a ticket to that secular immortality he had first glimpsed as a boy spellbound by Weems' life of Washington. Thus the man in the mirror ensured that he would be remembered and revered as the leader who marshaled the English language and his own matchless talent for manipulating men and events to keep the United States united. Few campaigns have been so richly rewarded.

About this contributor
Richard Norton-Smith is currently the director of the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library and has written several books. His most recent book, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, was the recipient of the prestigious Goldsmith Prize awarded by Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Smith delivered this paper during the 1998 Governor's Lecture in the Humanities in Springfield, Illinois. The IHC wishes to thank him for permission to publish it here.

 

Lincoln in Fiction

Lesley Lathrop-Vitu

 

• 1867 The forest Boy By Z.A. Mudge
• 1870 The Ballad of Abraham Lincoln By Bayard Taylor
• 1882 The Pioneer Boy and How He Became President: The Story of The Life of Abraham Lincoln By William Makepeace Thayer
• 1883 Abraham Lincoln, The Backwoods Boy By Horatio Alger
• 1900 On The Wings of Occasions By Joel Chandler Harris
• 1906 The Perfect Tribute By Mary Raymond Shipman andrews
• 1908 The Toy Shop: A Romantic Story of Lincoln The Man By Margarita Gerry
• 1909 Father Abraham By Ida M. Tarbell
• 1910 The Graysons: A Story of Abraham Lincoln By Edward Eggleston
• 1913 The Southerner, A Romance of The Real Lincoln By Thomas Dixon
• 1918 A Man for The Ages: A Story of The Builders of Democracy By Irving Bacheller
• 1920 A Man of The People: A Drama of Abraham Lincoln By Thomas Dixon
• 1921 The Boy Scout's Life of Lincoln By Ida Tarbell
• 1924 The Shepherd of The People: Abraham Lincoln, A Novel By Sidney Herbert Burchell
• In The Footsteps of Lincoln By Ida Tarbell
• 1925 Father Abraham By Irving Bacheller
• 1926 Little Abe Lincoln By Bernie Babcock
• 1927 forever Free: A Novel of Abraham Lincoln By Honoré Willsie Morrow
• 1928 The Father By Katharine Holland Brown
• Better Angels By Richard Henry Little
• 1929 Lincoln's Mary and The Babies By Bernie Babcock
• 1930 The Last Full Measure By Honoré Willsie Morrow
• 1934 The Lincoln Stories of Honoré Morrow: Containing Dearer Than All, Benefits forgot and The Lost Speech of Lincoln By Honoré Willsie Morrow
• 1935 Lincoln, Le Grand Pionnier By Ernest Breuil
• Great Captain By Honoré Willsie Morrow
• 1937 Sut Lovingood Travels With Old Abe Lincoln By George Washington Harris
• 1940 Reprieve By Ralph Bradford
• for Us The Living By Bruce Lancaster
• 1942 A Recruit for Abe Lincoln By Maribelle Cormack
• 1945 Henry's Lincoln By Louise A. Neyhart
• Abe Lincoln of Pigeon Creek: A Novel By William Edward Wilson
• 1947 Martin and Abraham Lincoln: Based On A True Incident By Catherine Cate Coblentz
• Abraham Lincoln: His Life, Work, and Character. An Anthology of History and Biography, Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Belles-Lettres. By Edward Wagenknecht
• House Divided By Ben Ames Williams
• 1949 Vinnie Ream and Mr. Lincoln By Freeman H. Hubbard
• Comes An Echo On The Breeze By Edward James Ryan
• 1951 The Lost Years: A Biographical Fantasy By Oscar Lewis
• 1952 The Story of Abraham Lincoln By Nina Brown Baker
• 1953 Abraham Lincoln By Jeannette Nolan
• 1954 The Soul of Ann Rutledge: The True Story of Abraham Lincoln's First Love By Bernie Babcock
• The River Road: A Story of Abraham Lincoln By Meridel Le Sueur
• Love Is Eternal: A Novel About Mary Todd Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln By Irving Stone
• 1955 The Boy On Lincoln's Lap By Jerrold Beim
• The Buffalo Trace By Virginia Louise Snider Eifert
• When Lincoln Went To Gettysburg By Adele Gutman Nathan
• Mary Florence: The Little Girl Who Know Abraham Lincoln By Kathleen S. Tiffany
• 1956 Out of The Wilderness: Young Abe Lincoln Grows Up By Virginia Louise Snider Eifert
• Christmas for Tad: A Story of Mary and Abraham Lincoln By Helen Toppin Miller
• 1958 With A Task Before Me: Abraham Lincoln Leaves Springfield By Virginia Louise Snider Eifert
• 1959 Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance By Frances Cavanah
• New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln In The White House By Virginia Louise Snider Eifert
• Abe Lincoln, Frontier Boy By Augusta Stevenson
• 1960 A Distant Trumpet By Paul Horgan
• 1961 Citizen of New Salem By Paul Horgan
• 1962 My Cousin Abe By Aileen Lucia Fisher
• 1967 Arrival: 12:30, The Baltimore Plot Against Lincoln By Alan Hynd
• 1968 Summer Journey South By Walter Carnahan
• 1971 Abe Lincoln and The River Robbers By Lavere anderson
• Abe Lincoln's Beard By Jan Wahl
• 1976 Gettysburg: Tad Lincoln's Story By F.N. Monjo
• 1978 Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers By Burke Davis
• 1979 The Cosgrove Report By George J. A. O'toole
• The Lincoln Diddle By Barbara Steward
• 1981 Lincoln's Mothers By Dorothy Clarke Wilson
• 1984 Lincoln By Gore Vidal
• 1987 Saving The President: What If Lincoln Had Lived By Barbara Brenner
• Arguing With Historians: Essays On The Historical and The Unhistorical By Richard Nelson Current
• Freedom By William Safire
• 1988 When Lilacs Bloom Again: A Novel Based On The Life and Times of Abraham Lincoln By Henry K. Dugarm
• No Longer Sings The Brown Thrush By Mary Blair Immel
• 1989 A Court for Owls: A Novel By Richard Adicks
• 1992 False Profits By David H. Everson
• 1993 A Bullet for Lincoln: A Novel By Benjamin King
• 1994 Henry and Clara By Thomas Mallon
• 1996 Mr. Lincoln's Whiskers By Karen B. Winnick
• 1997 An Acquaintance With Darkness By Ann Rinaldi
• 1998 From Log Cabin To White House With Abraham Lincoln By Deborah Hedstrom
• Booth: A Novel By David Robertson
• Grace's Letter To Lincoln By Connie Roop

Lincoln in Films

Facets Multimedia

Photo of Lincoln courtesy of the Illinois Historical LibraryThe following list of films was compiled by Facets Multimedia, Inc., 1517 West Fullerton Avenue, Chicago, IL. 60614. For information on video sales, rentals, our film schedule, classes and other events, visit their website. Films designated with an asterisk (*) are notable films or films by a notable director.

 

• 1910 Abraham Lincoln's Clemency - D: Theodore Wharton
• 1912 Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - D: J. Stuart Blackton & James Young
• 1914 Lincoln, The Lover - D: Thomas Ince
• 1915 The Battle Cry of Peace - D: William J. Ferguson
• *The Birth of A Nation - D: D.W. Griffith
• 1916 The Crisis - D: Colin Campbell
• 1917 Her Country's Call - D: Lloyd Ingraham
• 1918 Birth of A Race - D: Emmett J. Scott
• Madam Who - D: Reginald Barker
• My Own United States - D: John W. Noble
• 1920 The Copperhead - D: Charles Maigne
• The Land of Opportunity
• 1921 The Highest Law - D: Ralph Ince
• 1922 The Heart of Lincoln - D: Francis ford
• 1924 Abraham Lincoln ("The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln") - D: Phil Rosen
• Barbara Frietchie - D: Lambert Hillyer
• *The Iron Horse - D: John ford
• The No-Gun Man - D: Harry Garson
• 1925 The Man Without A Country - D: Rowland V. Lee
• 1926 Hands Up! - D: Clarence G. Badger
• 1927 The Heart of Maryland - D: Lloyd Bacon
• 1928 Court Martial - D: George B. Seitz
• 1930 *Abraham Lincoln - D: D.W. Griffith
• 1932 The Phantom President - D: Norman Taurog
• 1934 Are We Civilized? - D: Edwin Carewe
• 1935 *The Littlest Rebel - D: David Butler
• The Perfect Tribute - D: Edward Sloman
• 1936 Hearts In Bondage - D: Lew Ayres
• *The Plainsmen - D: Cecil B. Demille
• *The Prisoner of Shark Island - D: John ford
• Trailin' West - D: Noel M. Smith
• 1937 Courage of The West - D: Joseph H. Lewis
• John Ericsson--The Victor At Hampton Roads - D: Gustaf Edgren (Sweden)
• Victoria The Great - D: Herbert Wilcox
• Welles Fargo - D: Frank Lloyd
• Western Gold - D: Howard Bretherton
• 1938 The Lone Ranger - D: John English & William Whitney
• of Human Hearts - D: Clarence Brown
• 1939 Lincoln In The White House - D: William C. Mcgann
• *Young Mr. Lincoln - D: John ford
• 1940 *Abe Lincoln In Illinois - D: John Cromwell
• Hi-Yo Silver - D: John English & William Witney
• *Virginia City - D: Michael Curtiz
• 1945 Abbott & Costello In Hollywood - D: S. Sylvan Simon
• 1951 *The Tall Target - D: Anthony Mann
• 1953 San Antone - D: Joseph Kane
• 1955 The Face of Lincoln -
• 1957 Abe Lincoln In Illinois -
• 1962 How The West Was Won - D: John ford & Henry Hathaway
• 1971 The Great Man's Whiskers - D: Philip Leacock
• 1976 Captains and The Kings - Made for Television - D: Douglas Heyes & Allen Resiner
• The Faking of The President - D: Alan Abel & Jeanne Abel
• The Last of Mrs. Lincoln - D: George Schaeffer
• 1977 The Lincoln Conspiracy - D: James L. Conway
• 1982 The Blue and The Gray - Made for Television - D: andrew V. Mclaglen
• 1985 *North and South - Made for Television - D: Richard T. Heffron
• 1986 Dream West - Made for Television- D: Dick Lowry
• North and South II - Made for Television - D: Kevin Connor
• 1988 *Lincoln ("Gore Vidal's Lincoln") - Made for Television- D: Lamont Johnson
• Two Idiots In Hollywood - D: Stephen Tobolowsky
• 1989 The Big Picture - D: Christopher Guest
• 1990 *The Civil War - Documentary, Made for Television - D: Ken Burns
• 1991 Ironclads - Made for Television - D: Delbert Mann
• The Perfect Tribute - Made for Television - D: Jack Bender
• Lincoln - Made for Television - D: Peter W. Kunhardt
• 1995 Tad - Made for Television - D: Robert C. Thompson
• 1998 The Day Lincoln Was Shot - Made for Television - D: John Gray

The Men who Played Lincoln
Some of the more prominent actors who have played Lincoln include:

• F. Murray Abraham ("Dream West," 1986),
• John Carradine ("of Human Hearts," 1938),
• Henry Fonda ("Young Mr. Lincoln," 1939),
• Hal Holbrook ("North and South,"1985, and "North and South II," 1986),
• Kris Kristofferson ("Tad," 1995),
• Raymond Massey ("Abe Lincoln in Illinois," 1940, and "How the West Was Won," 1962),
• Gregory Peck ("The Blue and the Gray," 1982),
• Jason Robards ("The Perfect Tribute," 1991),
• Sam Waterston ("Lincoln," 1988, and, in voice only, "The Civil War," 1990),
• Dennis Weaver ("The Great Man's Whiskers," 1971).

There were a few actors, however, who virtually made a cottage industry out of playing the former President. Frank McGlynn Sr. played Lincoln no fewer than seven times between 1934 and 1937, while George A. Billings, Benjamin Chapin and actor-director Ralph Ince each took on the role four times during the silent era.

 

Lincoln on the Web

Lesley Lathrop-Vitu

Below are just a few of the many links to Abraham Lincoln sites on the WWW. Many of these sites include links to other sites. This list was compiled by Lesley Lathrop-Vitu. (Note: This list was compiled by Lesley Lathrop-Vitu. The IHC is not responsible for content on external sites.)

• Abraham Lincoln Association
• Lincoln Bicentennial 1809-2009
• Lincoln Library
• Lincoln Papers
• Library of Congress
• The History Place
• The Lincoln Museum
• Abraham Lincoln Online

 

Lincoln's Locks: The Relics of a Secular Saint

Lesley Lathrop-Vitu

 

 

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and bearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." --First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1861)

 

"The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act…Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty." --Address at the Sanitary Fair, Baltimore (April 18, 1864)

TELL SOMEONE, as I did, that you are going to poke through the hair clippings and blood-stained artifacts of a dead president and the most likely reaction you will get is: "Eewww!" For many, the thought of coming into direct contact with detached body parts - let alone the post-mortem fluids - of another has as much appeal as clearing months-old leftovers out of the refrigerator.

However, those who collect and work with these relics believe that they aren't morbid at all. Fascination with relics of the dead has been part of civilization for thousands of years. As long ago as the 5th century, Augustine of Hippo wrote, "If a father's coat or ring, or anything else of that kind, is so much more cherished by his children,... in no way are the bodies themselves to be despised, which are much more intimately and closely united to us than any garment; for they belong to man's very nature."

Of all our modern-day heroes, it is perhaps Abraham Lincoln whose relics and artifacts hold the greatest sway over the affection of the vast majority. His place in the hearts and minds of Americans was apparent barely a generation after his assassination, when a gang of counterfeiters and grave robbers led by "Big Jim" Kinealy plotted to steal his body for a ransom of $200,000, a hefty sum of money in those days. Fortunately, they didn't succeed. But the fact that they recognized the lengths to which this country would go to preserve the almost-sacred body of its martyred president speaks volumes.

Today there are collectors, both public and private, whose archives include personal artifacts from Lincoln's murder. The souvenirs of his autopsy are preserved at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, part of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. And the Library of Congress' American Treasures exhibit houses several items from the assassination, including the contents of his pockets at the time he was shot. The Chicago Historical Society has an extensive collection of Lincoln material. Although not on display, their archives include numerous boxes of assassination relics - a sleeve from the undershirt he was wearing at the time, hair clippings, pieces from the death towel, swatches from Mary Todd's dress and the dress of Clara Harris, who accompanied the Lincolns to the theatre. Far from gruesome, it is a powerful and moving experience to hold in your hand the handkerchief he was carrying at the time, to see up close the dark brown stains that cover nearly half the square of once-white fabric. One expects these things to be different, somehow, perhaps to feel heavier than normal, or to emit the sweet smell of perfume long ago associated with the relics of Christian saints. But they don't.

And there are hair clippings, too. One of them is in a frame, long strands tied with a neat little bow and bearing an inscription announcing its original owner. Another is haphazardly folded into a makeshift envelope, stuffed inside another, larger envelope, with no legend at all. Some of the hair is long, some short; and parts of it are clumped together by some substance, maybe blood, but more likely hair oil. The difference in presentation between the one item and the other is striking.

But all these things meant something important to those who possessed and took care of them over the years. One item, fragments of the drapery that hung in the East Room while the President's body lay in state awaiting the funeral, was especially moving. Carefully mounted on a small piece of board, the white drapery was accompanied by a touching letter from the woman who donated it. In the letter she describes how she came to have it, that a relative had been one of the young men charged with guarding the slain president's body and that he had taken the drapery as a personal memento. She describes how inspiring it had been to her family, how much they cherished it over the years, and how she hoped that the historical society would hold it in the same high regard.

THE NOTION THAT individuals could embody and reveal ideal qualities for others has its roots in the classical tradition of the ancient world. The Greco-Roman world held that social and political problems could be expressed and rectified by the elite of society. The monotheistic religions which developed in the Mediterranean world, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, adopted this concept and added an emphasis on the role of the saint as the nexus of a precise point of contact between God and man. Through the extraordinary circumstances surrounding their lives and deaths the saints seemed to make real the potential of humanity. The saints, their relics, and their shrines served as moral exemplars for the religious communities of Late Antiquity.

During the Middle Ages, the veneration and trade of relics became a kind of lodestar for Christian religious observance. The most significant of events at any church or cathedral was the installation of its relics. So great was the demand for relics that theft and fraud became big business during the Central Middle Ages, and in the thirteenth century the Catholic Church addressed the issue by requiring that "newly discovered" relics be authenticated by the local bishop, or even the Pope himself.

The collection and preservation of relics and other memorabilia from Abraham Lincoln's life began almost immediately after he died. Termed "Lincolniana" by those familiar with it, by the end of the nineteenth century it had become a substantial cottage industry. A few wealthy collectors dominated the trade and were known as the Big Five. The circle included Judge Daniel Fish of Minneapolis, William H. Lambert of Philadelphia, Charles W. McLellan, a former member of the Confederate army who later settled in New York, Judd Steward of Plainfield, New Jersey, and Joseph B. Oakleaf of Moline, Illinois. Together they amassed thousands of pieces, many of which were later sold at auction or donated to libraries and museums. Many of these items were simple letters or other documents penned by the late president himself. But a small percentage came straight from - or in direct contact with - Abraham Lincoln's body. They included everything from clippings of hair, to the bloody handkerchief he was carrying when he was shot, to the bed sheets upon which the president had died.

In today's world of collecting, Lincoln relics are hot items. Artifacts from the 16th president consistently fetch the highest bids. Whereas a letter from Albert Einstein in which he first mentioned his theory of relativity sells for $395,000, and a letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Washington about establishing the Constitution of the United States goes for around $525,000, Abraham Lincoln's handwritten letter to Grace Bedell - the little girl who suggested that he grow a beard - has changed hands for as much as $850,000. Trade in Lincoln and Lincoln-era artifacts has even gone digital with several of the Internet auction sites hosting a brisk trade.

It is now well-known that on the evening of April 14, 1865, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln were attending a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., when the president was shot in the back of the head by John Wilkes Booth. Two doctors, Dr. Charles A. Leale and Dr. Charles S. Taft, who were present at the theatre, rushed to the president's box and tried desperately to save his life. Dr. Taft, attempting to access the bullet wound, cut away a small patch of Lincoln's hair and held on to it throughout the night as the president lay dying first at Ford's Theatre and then later at the Petersen house. After Lincoln finally passed away on the morning of the 15th, Taft approached Mary Todd and tried to give her the lock of her dead husband's hair, but she refused telling him that he should keep it as a gift for trying to save the president's life. Those strands of hair passed through many hands in subsequent generations. Several of them were even set into a ring and given as a gift to President Theodore Roosevelt.

About 130 years later, ten of the strands became available through a reputable East Coast memorabilia dealer; and collector, Michael Braun, of Chimacum, Washington, leapt at the opportunity to buy them. A longtime collector with an extensive Civil War collection, he paid $3,500 for the Lincoln relic and it is an item he treasures above all others. Braun says there are two reasons why people collect this kind of thing: first, to preserve a memory of someone or something significant; and second, to effect an emotion by getting closer to a person. Relics, he believes, aren't at all morbid, and he enjoys taking the strands of hair to area schools to show children "something that was literally a part of someone important." He says the piece makes him feel like a "custodian of history." Braun doesn't regard the Lincoln artifact as just another item in his extensive collection. Although he regularly buys and sells memorabilia, the Lincoln relic is something he will never part with. He plans to leave it to family members after he's gone. Braun says he wanted the item because of what Abraham Lincoln stood for and what he went through in his life. "Whenever I look at it, it reminds me of what everyone should aspire to."

THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE AGES, people traveled hundreds - even thousands - of miles to venerate holy relics and worship at the shrines of martyred saints. Santiago de Compostella, Spain, and Jerusalem were two of the most hallowed destinations, but there were many such sites scattered throughout Western Europe. Believed to be places where extraordinary visions could be seen or miraculous healing summoned, pilgrimage sites received a multitude of medieval Christians.

In our own time, there continue to be stories of divine healings and holy visions that may, or may not, lend themselves to simple explanations. From Lourdes in France, to Fatima, north of Lisbon, Portugal, to the small town of Knock in Ireland, these places attract thousands of religious pilgrims every year. But there are also secular "shrines" which draw masses of visitors, each, in some way, hoping to connect with the heroes of the past.

Museums, memorials, and historical societies house collections, sometimes small, sometimes vast, of Lincolniana. That many of these collections are considered shrines by their visitors is evidenced from the mild uproar that took place when the Chicago Historical Society dismantled an exhibit devoted exclusively to Lincoln in favor of its current "A House Divided" exhibit, which depicts Lincoln in the much larger context of slavery and the Civil War. Eric Foner, a co-curator of the exhibit, said in a 1990 interview with the Illinois Humanities Council that "the old Lincoln Gallery was sort of a church, basically. People came in to worship Lincoln".[and it had] almost this religious aspect -- Lincoln's top hat, Lincoln's this or that, objects which had no real historical significance, but nonetheless were associated with Lincoln."

Fortunately for those of us who wish to see Lincoln artifacts, many collectors bequeath their collections to museums. Dr. Weldon Petz, of West Bloomfield, Michigan, recently donated almost 40,000 items to the Plymouth Historical Museum. He began his collection in the 1940s while performing with the big bands in New York, although his fascination with the man began when he was a boy of 8. He says that Lincoln was a person with whom he was "absolutely fascinated," and he was fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Lincoln biographer, Carl Sandburg. With a collection that size, he says he would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite. But some items did have special significance. One was a coronet that a relative had played at the dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery. Another was a peach pit in the shape of Lincoln's head and face. Carved by a man serving time in prison, Dr. Petz was struck by the fact that someone going through such a difficult time had carved the image of Lincoln. He kept the carving when he donated most of his collection to the museum. He says that it was important to him that others, especially children, be able to see the artifacts and that he knows they are being well-taken care of. "It's satisfying to have them in a museum where other people can enjoy them."

IF AMERICA IS A RELIGION, then Abraham Lincoln is its patron saint. Every generation since his assassination has reinterpreted and reevaluated his deeds and words. Whether one believes he was Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator, or just an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, one cannot deny the influence he has had - both personally and commercially - on the many who have owned, touched, and viewed the relics and artifacts of the man himself.

Before a recent trip to Washington D.C, a friend of mine asked if it is possible to climb onto Abraham Lincoln's lap at the Lincoln Memorial. In fact, it isn't. Not only is the statue too tall and elevated too high, but there is also a rope surrounding it and ever-watchful guards nearby. However, the question illustrates what a lot of people wish they could do. To many, he represents wisdom and patience; he is the "Father Abraham" immortalized in the books of Ida Tarbell and Irving Bacheller. The designers of the nearby Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial seem to have had an awareness of the public's wish to be close to its fallen heroes. The site includes a semi-life-sized statue of the much-loved president sitting in a chair with his dog at his feet. Thus, it is possible to stand next to him, to put your arm around him, and, yes, even to sit on his knee. However, as if to demonstrate the old entertainment-industry maxim that one should never appear with children or animals, more hands reached out to touch Fala than FDR on the day I was there.

With the recent discovery of genetic proof that Thomas Jefferson fathered several children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings, the relics of legendary figures and heroes may soon take on a new significance. Already it has debunked the late Anna Anderson Manahan's claim that she was really Anastasia, the daughter of Czar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra. Today researchers are evaluating the role that genetic testing and other high-tech procedures may play in determining several longstanding historical mysteries. Did, for example, Emily Dickinson carry on a love affair with her sister-in-law, Susan Huntington Dickinson? Could a lock of Beethoven's hair reveal the mysterious identity of his so-called "Immortal Beloved"? And could Lincoln have contracted syphilis as a young riverboat worker, as some have speculated?

None of these technological uses for relics, however, explain their significance for the many Lincoln collectors. Nor do they account for the multitude of people who visit Lincoln memorials and exhibits. A few days after President Lincoln died, a memorialist in the New York Times wrote, "A nation's jewels are the virtues of its illustrious dead. Its cities may crumble, its masterpieces of industry and art may moulden into nothingness; but these are heirlooms that defy time." Relics of the dead can remind us that human virtue does exist. One man who has a handwritten letter from Lincoln to Seward hanging near the entrance to his home recently told me, "I look at it each day and think of its author." I suspect that most of us would respond in the same way. Particularly in this era of cynicism and irreverence, we see the relic, think of the man to whom it belonged, and are inspired by the possibility of what one person can become.

*Left to Right: Mary Todd Lincoln's cape, which she wore to Ford's Theater on the evening of the assassination; Framed lock of Lincoln's hair; (bottom) Blood-stained handkerchief Abraham Lincoln was carrying at the time he was shot; Drapery fragments from the East Room of the White House where Abraham Lincoln's body was held for viewing.

Popular Legacies of Abraham Lincoln

G. Cullom Davis
The Lincoln Festival;: Photo by Vicki Woodard"Every man is said to have is peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far shall I succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed." --Letter to the people of Sangamon County upon announcing his candidacy to the Illinois General Assembly (March 9, 1832)

"Both [sides] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of others men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged." --Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865)

The Abraham Lincoln Industry
The magnitude of Lincoln's unique place in American popular culture led the late Ralph Newman many years ago to speak of "The Abraham Lincoln Industry," noting the innumerable cities, institutions and companies bearing his name. Robert Johannsen, the biographer of Stephen A. Douglas, noted its global impact when he described Lincoln as "one of America's ... great export commodities." A recent and comprehensive survey of the 16th president's enduring place in popular culture is Jefferson scholar Merrill Peterson's fine book, Lincoln in American Memory. What these and many others observers have documented is the pervasive and deeply imbedded stature of Lincoln as our national hero and icon. According to Peterson, he enjoys such eminence because his life and work exemplified five central elements of the American experience: nationalism, humanity, democracy, Americanism and individualism. The evidence of this unrivaled position takes many forms. First there are the dozens of organizations and institutions exclusively devoted to promulgating his memory. Perhaps the most telling example is a trade group, the Association of Lincoln Presenters, which consists of more than 100 bearded impersonators who earn a living by appearing at pageants, schools and conventions. Their own annual meeting has become a news photographer's dream, with dozens of Lincoln look-a-likes parading for the camera. One especially eager member arrives in an automobile that has been remodeled to resemble a mobile log cabin.

Another measure is the plenitude of Lincoln museums, galleries, historic sites and manuscript dealers, collectively too numerous and far-flung to count. Dealers and collectors know that Lincoln relics bring top dollar. Five years ago I was the incredulous middleman (too naive to demand a 10% finder's fee) for the sale at auction of a simple letter that Lincoln wrote in 1860 to a friend of his son Robert. A curator at Christie's had estimated that this touching but inconsequential manuscript might bring as much as $150,000, but when the auction gavel fell the bid was $780,000. One year earlier it took $1.5 million to buy an early draft of the "House Divided" speech, and nearly that much to acquire a mere 75 word fragment from Lincoln's draft of the second inaugural address.

Busily informing their avid readers are more than a dozen Lincoln-centered periodicals. There are newsletters like the Fort Jefferson Lyceum, the Lincoln Ledger, Lincoln Legacy, Lincolnian, Lincoln Letters, Lincoln News National, our own Lincoln Legal Briefs, and even the Surratt Society Newsletter. The more substantive periodicals include Lincoln Lore, The Lincoln Herald, the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, The Railsplitter and the Journal of the Lincoln Assassination.

When it comes to books about Lincoln, the latest count tallied over 17,000 titles, which Merrill Peterson was prompted to label "a vast redundancy." Books in Print identifies well over 100 Lincoln titles currently available, and of the 11 major biographies written before 1960, seven are currently in print, with two more editions forthcoming. The nine volume Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln remained in print for 40 years and sold 40,000 copies, two records bound to inspire envy and humility among all of us. Even at a hefty $75 price, the two volume "Library of America" edition of selected speeches and writing was a Book of the Month Club selection. Without question, the popular appetite for reading about Lincoln is voracious, which prompted the humorist James Thurber years ago to propose stringent government regulation of this genre. He further suggested imposing a $50,000 fine for writing a Lincoln biography without a permit.

One final dimension of this cultural phenomenon is our national habit of idolizing and mythologizing, or what Merrill Peterson calls the "apotheosis" of Lincoln. His martyrdom on a Good Friday launched this cult (literally with a bang), and it has gone unabated for 133 years. It is a fact, for example, that until fairly recently Illinois state highway signs directed tourists to the "Lincoln Shrines." This fall one organization is sponsoring a "pilgrimage" to Lincoln sites in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. Somewhat less reverential but considerably more expensive is the forthcoming eight-day Smithsonian excursion, called "In the Footsteps of Lincoln," and costing $5,000 per person.

Feeding off of this hero-worship habit is a parallel and evidently irresistible urge, among public officials in particular, to invoke Lincoln as their philosophical lodestar for partisan beliefs. Fifty years ago Lincoln scholar David Donald aptly called this "Getting Right with Lincoln," i.e., associating one's views with the saintly 16th president. Republicans naturally had the exclusive franchise on this potent weapon until the 1930s, when Franklin D. Roosevelt seized the mantle. Since then Lincoln's sanction has been a bipartisan asset, thereby making it all the more elastic and contentious. LBJ, for example, invoked Lincoln in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam, and Governor Mario Cuomo enlisted him in the war on poverty. Ronald Reagan went a bit too far at the 1992 Republican National Convention, when he quoted Lincoln's legendary "Ten Cannots" as holy writ for his appeal to get government off our backs. Unfortunately his source was spurious; the "Ten Cannots" is in fact an old canard that never came from the lips or pen of our martyred hero.

Lincoln for the Sages
Now, as the Lincoln bicentennial looms, there is ample evidence that Lincoln belongs as much to the sages as to the ages. The "scholar squirrels" as Gore Vidal has caustically dubbed us, are largely in command of the Lincoln industry. The manifestations of that conquest take various forms that warrant elaboration. Lincoln scholarship, in brief, has become at century's end richly diversified and scattered among many disciplines more open than ever to interpretive and evidentiary disputes, singularly susceptible to intramural fights and factional alignments, more alert than ever to untapped and unconventional sources, and demonstrably if subtly influential on the image of Lincoln that suffuses our popular culture. Together these separate strands constitute an authentic if at times perverse Lincoln renaissance.

Scores of historians represent the core of this dynamic activity. Just in the past five years there have appeared at least nine serious new biographies. More specialized monographs and articles surface frequently on such diverse subjects as Lincoln's native American policy, his law practice, the wartime arbitrary arrests, the Ann Rutledge legend, his religious beliefs, the mail he received, his assassination, and even the size of his toes. Added to this are several anthologies and a cascade of reissued out-of-print works. Opportunities abound for testing one's ideas before an audience of peers. There are four annual conferences: the Abraham Lincoln Symposium, the Lincoln Institute Symposium, the Lincoln Colloquium and the Lincoln Forum, plus frequent ad hoc gatherings.

Scholars in this same group have been busy discovering, editing and publishing volumes of long-neglected documentary sources. There are recent and excellent works on Lincoln's sayings as recalled by others, the interviews that both John G. Nicolay and William Herndon collected about him, John Hay's diary, the writings of John Wilkes Booth, and the wartime newspaper dispatches of Noah Brooks. Forthcoming are a complete edition of The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, a compilation of his court martial actions, and others.

But this is only the epicenter of Lincoln scholarship. Like the force of gravity itself, Lincoln seems to irresistibly pique the interest of practitioners in other and even remote fields. Beyond Clio's walls are literary scholars like Garry Wills, Robert Bray, and Douglas Wilson, novelists like Shelby Foote and Gore Vidal, language maven William Safire, anthropologists, clinical psychologists molecular biologists, and others. Moreover, the computer age is just beginning to revolutionize research on and access to Lincoln. Among its applications are the CD-ROM edition of his legal papers, the digitization of his printed works into a massive concordance, several commercial CD-ROMS, computer "morphing" of his head and hands for analytical purposes, software that purports to detect plagiarism, and a Library of Congress project to place 15,000 documents from its own holdings on the Internet, as "Mr Lincoln's Virtual Library."

Such varied offerings pose a serious challenge to the ordinary Lincoln specialist. Increasingly we find ourselves called upon to render informed opinions on technical matters we never covered in graduate school. The conscientious historian must be a polymath, as conversant with textual deconstruction, DNA analysis, graphology, content analysis, and computerization, as with the historical method.

Equally perilous are the modern interpretive arguments that divide the professors of Lincolnology. Did Lincoln suffer from Marfan Syndrome, or perhaps venereal disease, or even spousal abuse? Was he in fact author of the famous widow Bixby letter? Did he trample civil liberties under wartime pressure? Is a purported sixth holograph copy of the Gettysburg Address genuine? Was Mary Todd pregnant with their first child when Lincoln hastily agreed to marry her? These and other knotty controversies are mealtime conversation topics at Lincoln gatherings and fodder for an insatiable press.

This contentiousness often leads to outright feuds and angry factions. Sadly, Lincoln's plea for "malice toward none; charity for all" has had no more effect upon the scholar squirrels than it had upon Reconstruction. Nearly ten years ago our guild was torn apart over charges that Stephen B. Oates had mildly plagiarized an earlier biography for his own popular study. Beginning as an intramural professional dispute, it quickly escalated into a public battle, with press releases, ad hominem attacks and official inquiries. The professional division of the American Historical Association twice commissioned studies, leading both times to cautiously worded reports that both sides could invoke. As a central figure in the dispute's early stages, I can testify to the rancor and ill will it generated.

Recriminations erupted again in 1995, this time over a contested election for president of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Once again your genial, mild-mannered speaker was at the storm's center, being the successful challenger in what critics called a palace coup, and defenders a leadership crisis. The venerable ALA, founded in 1909 and headquartered in Springfield, has a distinguished record of promoting scholarship through its journal and publishing basic Lincoln sources like the Collected Works. It is also, however, like slavery, a "peculiar institution," with an unwieldy 42-member board consisting of Springfield aristocrats, Lincoln buffs and tradesmen, civic leaders, and scholars. Shaken by the unseemly public feud, the ALA has sought to mend fences, enlist new leaders and reinvigorate its record of service.

During the 1990s, for some reason, the search for new Lincoln sources has been more intense and fruitful than at any time in the past fifty years or more. Our own six-year painstaking search located 100,000 document pertaining to Lincoln's law practice, including several hundred new items in his handwriting. Thomas and Beverly Lowry have devoted their retirement years to patiently inspecting and cataloging 80,000 Civil War court martial cases at the National Archives, and early this year they announced the discovery of 600 Lincoln signatures and/or notations. Michael Burlingame, a prolific member of the scholar squirrels, has specialized in uncovering long ignored tertiary and reminiscence sources. He has published some of these materials and is using others for his forthcoming multi-volume biography.

One reported discovery, the so-called Hoffman daguerreotype, bears special mention. Robert and Joan Hoffman announced this acquisition four years ago, claiming scientific proof that it was the earliest (1843) image of young Abe Lincoln. Supporting their claim was a plausible provenance and the testimony of a physician, forensic anthropologist, photographic historian, and specialist in biomedical computer morphing. Both at that time and in recent months this story has been widely noted in the press.

Many Lincoln experts rejected the claim, and a vascular specialist concurred after comparing the vein pattern on the subject's right hand with known Lincoln photographs. Christie's decided to auction this controversial artifact as "Portrait of a Young Gentleman, Believed to be Abraham Lincoln." Bid estimates stretched as high as $1 million and as low as $5, in effect leaving it to the market to determine authenticity. On October 6 the market spoke, with a $150,000 bid that was too low to satisfy the owners. In my opinion they should have taken the money and disappeared.

Publicity about manuscript discoveries and record-breaking auction prices may help explain a parallel and unpleasant development of this decade, the rising incidence of alleged forgeries, hoaxes and thefts. Several years ago a prominent Lincoln collector announced that he had acquired the second page of a sixth holograph copy of the Gettysburg Address. Immediately sides formed supporting and rejecting the claim, then the talk subsided, leading many to doubt the document's authenticity. Another suspect manuscript is the purported oral history reminiscences of Mariah Vance, a laundress for the Lincoln family in the 1850s. The owner and editors spent nearly 20 years seeking a prestigious publisher for this intimate portrait of domestic turmoil, first under the title "Mistah Abe" and later "A House Divided." Failing in that, they did release it in two hefty volumes from Hastings House in 1995, called Lincoln's Unknown Private Life. Judging from today's obsession with peephole politics, choosing that title three years ago was an act of great prescience, but that has not satisfied reviewers, who generally have dismissed the memoir as a fraud.

In the course of our massive search for Lincoln legal documents in 88 county courthouses and scores of other repositories, we took pains to carefully recruit and train researchers, and to establish credibility with circuit clerks and curators. It therefore was a deep shock one year ago to discover that some of the documents we had identified and photocopied for our files later surfaced at auction and dealer sales. Further, our worst suspicions were confirmed last winter, when authorities charged a former staff member, Sean Brown. Since then he has pleaded guilty in two separate court trials to stealing hundreds of documents written by contemporaries of Lincoln, plus at least two written by Lincoln. Brown awaits sentencing later this fall. There is an exquisite but painful irony in this affair. It was our training that qualified Brown to identify valuable records, and our hard-earned stature that gained him easy access to places we already had visited. On the other hand, it was our own meticulous record keeping that enabled us and then criminal investigators to detect the theft and identify the guilty party. My colleagues can attest to the sense of embarrassment and betrayal we feel. Incidentally, the October 1998 issue of Chicago Magazine featured a profile of Brown labeled, "The Man Who Stole Lincoln."

Escape from History: Lincoln Populi
Finally, what impact, if any, has the Lincoln renaissance by scholars had upon the broader public and their absorption with the Lincoln industry? Has contemporary American popular culture been measurably influenced by the writing and ranting of the professors of Lincolnology? A definitive and comprehensive answer is not possible, but there are some intriguing if scattered signs that say yes. They strongly suggest that our serious work has a way of indirectly creeping into the media mainstream, for good or ill.

Book sales are a typical but inconclusive measure. Among the scores of new and reissued titles this decade, many have sold respectably and several were book club selections. Only one deserves special mention, David Donald's 1995 biography, Lincoln. A career-culminating synthesis by the twice Pulitzer Prize winning author, it has enjoyed good reviews and sales of over 300,000 copies, impressive for a 700-page, $35 tome.

One must turn to less conventional and more indirect sources for a fuller answer. By themselves they may be minor revelations, but collectively they make a point. It is a fact, for example, that Lincoln specialists are frequently sought as consultants and talking heads for Civil War and presidential documentaries on television. C-SPAN enjoyed favorable reviews and high ratings for an ambitious series that re-enacted the Lincoln-Douglas debates and included scholarly commentary. Similarly, popular tours of Civil War battle sites as well as the forthcoming Smithsonian excursion to the Land of Lincoln now boast expert historians as guest lecturers. Scholars like James McPherson, John Simon, Harold Holzer and Douglas Wilson ensure that tour guests get history that is accurate and unvarnished.

Last year's hit movie, "Saving Private Ryan," tells a World War II story, but its vital plot device, related by General George C. Marshall, is none other than the legendary widow Bixby letter. True, Steven Spielberg did not interrupt his script with a discourse on Lincoln's disputed authorship, but who can say whether earlier press accounts of this controversy may have fired the film maker's imagination?

Even the tabloid supermarket press likes Lincoln. Several years ago, just after Michael Burlingame's psycho-biography had portrayed Lincoln as the victim of spousal abuse, one paper teased readers with the headline "Wicked Witch of the White House." Those persons expecting an expose of Hilary Rodham Clinton discovered instead Burlingame's case against Mary Todd. Five years ago Weekly World caught readers' attention with a front page headline, "Abraham Lincoln's Corpse Revived." The report was of secret experiments by doctors at Walter Reed Hospital to apply a wonder drug, "Revivitol," to the Great Emancipator's mummified remains. Reportedly the elixir worked, at least for 95 seconds, which was long enough for Lincoln to sit up and declare, in words that must rank among his least memorable, "Gentlemen, where am I?"

Laughable as this story was, it unquestionably was inspired by the public furor over a serious proposal several years earlier, to conduct DNA testing of hair and bone autopsy fragments in storage in Washington since 1865. The purpose, as Walter Reed pathologists explained, was eventually to determine whether Lincoln carried the congenital connective tissue disorder known as Marfan syndrome. As the sole historian among geneticists and other scientists on a special advisory panel to consider the ethical and cultural implications of such a study, I can testify to the intense and widespread public reaction. Reporters and columnists freely speculated that such a procedure could inevitably lead to cloning Lincoln. Therein lay the seed, so to speak, for imaginative tabloid editors to concoct their tale about Revivitol.

My final example comes fresh from the small screen. On Monday evening, October 5, 1998, United Paramount Network (UPN) premiered its outrageous new presidential sitcom, "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer" (the P is not silent). If my description piques your curiosity, I suggest you watch soon, because this program cannot (and should not) last long. Intended as a satirical sendup of shenanigans in the Clinton White House, it takes viewers back to the Lincolns in 1861. Pfeiffer, the show's protagonist, is an English nobleman of African descent who has emigrated to America and then been hired as Lincoln's White House butler. His diary supplies each episode's farcical plot, which in the first episode was supposed to center on the president's bisexual tendencies, including lust for his voluptuous personal secretary, named Mona (resembles Monica). His conjugal neglect of Mary triggers tantrums and her own adulterous instincts, with slapstick consequences. After accidentally ingesting an aphrodisiac (not Revivitol, but possibly Viagra), Lincoln rekindles sex with his amorous wife. The next morning Mary is so pleased that she declares, "the old Railsplitter is back" then dons his stovepipe hat, stands on a chair, and croons a slow, sultry "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" a la Marilyn Monroe to John Kennedy. Striving futilely to carry this limp story are tasteless gags about slavery, Ulysses Grant's fondness for alcohol, and gay sex. At the last minute producers responded to criticism by substituting another, equally mindless episode, in which Lincoln furtively engages in telegraph sex. These sophomoric stunts prompt Pfeiffer to complain to Lincoln, "You're acting no better than a horny hillbilly from Arkansas."

Mercifully, the program lists no historical consultant, and the actor playing Lincoln has admitted (with mixed metaphors), "we're playing fast and loose with sacred ground." But in fact there are subtle historical allusions in this dreadful show, drawn without doubt from the scholarly findings and controversies I have described. Does the notion of a Black diarist ring bells? What about marital troubles between the Lincolns, and documented gossip about an adulterous Mary Todd, and Lincoln's reported virility, and Mary's emotional instability? Desmond's Pfeiffer's story, like the supermarket tabloids and other emblems of popular culture, demonstrates that scholars like me who live with Lincoln never can foretell where and how our musings may spread. To that extent, and for better or worse, Lincoln belongs to the sages.

About this contributor
G. Cullom Davis is currently director and senior editor of the Lincoln Legal Papers, a project sponsored by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and co-sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Center for Legal Studies at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He has been Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Springfield and the founding director of its oral history center. A native Illinoisan, Davis has degrees from Princeton and the University of Illinois. His past writings have centered on modern United States political history, oral history methodology, and Illinois history. Davis is a past Chairman of the Illinois Humanities Council.
 

Q & A: The IHC talks to Lerone Bennett, Jr., Executive Editor of Ebony Magazine

Lia Merriweather

Lerone Bennett, Jr."Most Americans, if they can help it, are not going to deal with the fact that he's a racist and that he believed in an all-white nation and that he was not the great emancipator of the slave." --Lerone Bennett, Jr.

"One of the things we have to deal with in this country, one of the things that we have to deal with in Illinois, is the truth about Abraham Lincoln, so that we can create openly for the millennium an America that terrified Lincoln: a black and white and brown and yellow and rainbow America." --Lerone Bennett, Jr.

In 1968, journalist and historian Lerone Bennett Jr. rocked the academic world with his article, "Was Abe Lincoln A White Supremacist?" In the article, Bennett contended that the widely held image of Abraham Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator" was a myth and that America needs to re-examine Lincoln's public policies on slavery and Lincoln's own ideas about race. Thirty years later, Bennett, executive editor of Ebony Magazine, again questions Lincoln's legacy and its effect on the nation today.

Exactly, why do you consider Lincoln as the "Great Emancipator" a myth, as you stated in your article, "Was Abe Lincoln A White Supremacist?" (Ebony, February 1968)?

Oh, there are so many reasons, I'm doing a book on this. First of all he was not an emancipator, great or otherwise. He did not emancipate black people in this country. And it is unfortunate for black people and white people that there's been so much misinformation disseminated on Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, again, only a handful of Americans has read the Emancipation Proclamation. Few know what's in it or what it says. In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave in and of itself. Lincoln "freed" the slaves in the South, where he could not free them. Specifically, and this is the clincher, there were on January 1, 1863 three or four or five areas where Abraham Lincoln could have actually freed somebody. One of those was in New Orleans and half of Louisiana that was controlled by Confederate forces at that time. If you read the Emancipation Proclamation, you will find out that he specifically excluded the black people in New Orleans and Louisiana where he could have freed. There's an area in Virginia, in and around Norfolk, where he could have freed somebody on January 1st-- he specifically excluded those people from the Emancipation Proclamation. Black people in America were freed not by the Emancipation Proclamation, but by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

Do you think it was possible for him not to become a mythic figure considering the circumstances of his death?

I think the tragic assassination played a major role in it. Coming at a time at the end of the war, the assassination of Lincoln and everything associated with him became part of American legend and people have not examined the emancipation [or] Lincoln since then. I think that's a part of it, part of the myth. I also think there is this incredible reluctance on the part of white Americans, especially, to deal with the problem that Abraham Lincoln didn't want to deal with, the problem of race in America. And I think people everywhere, museums, intellectual and cultural organizations deliberately used Abraham Lincoln to hide themselves and to hide Americans from the race problem Abraham Lincoln tried to hide himself from. Abraham Lincoln was a racist, [he] believed black people were inferior, opposed citizenship for black people, wanted to deport black people, and never in his whole life had a rational idea about the race problem in America. If they dealt with it [Lincoln's stand on race], then they would have to deal with racism in America in the 19th century and the 20th century. Few institutions, apart from the DuSable Museum of African American History [Chicago] and of course Ebony, have examined Abraham Lincoln on this level and have focused attention on the black and white Illinoisans who, unlike Lincoln, believed in equality and human rights. That's incredible, it's been more than a hundred years, we have not had in Illinois a rational discourse on Abraham Lincoln in race at any major institution.

Why do you think there hasn't been a major discourse of Lincoln on this level?

I don't know. The point I'm making and let me make this very clear, there were white people in Illinois at Abraham Lincoln's time who believed more or less in the Declaration of Independence, who believed in equality, who operated the Underground Railroad, and who tried to help black slaves escape into Canada: Zebina Eastman, Dr. Richard Eells and Lyman Trumbull. These were white people who were involved in the struggle for equality. They're totally forgotten in America and Illinois today. Whereas everybody talks all the time about the Abraham Lincoln who supported the fugitive slave law, who opposed equal rights for black people and who wanted us deported. That's incredible! It's almost impossible to get white people in Illinois to focus on white people in Illinois who believed in equality in Lincoln's time, unlike Lincoln who did not believe in equality.
So these are the forgotten heroes?

They are forgotten of course, unsung heroes. Lyman Trumbull was a senator, who had other faults, but he was much more advanced on the question of race than Abraham Lincoln. He [Trumbull] was the author of the first confiscation act, played a major role in the second confiscation act and played a major role in the passage of the 13th Amendment. Nobody in Illinois knows his name today. Everybody knows Abraham Lincoln's name, who was opposed to equal rights and who urged people to go out into the street to hunt and capture and return fugitive slaves to the South.

Do you think this myth of Abraham Lincoln drifts away from the other heroic aspects of his presidency during the Civil War?

I did this article in 1968 and it created kind of a furor in academic circles and newspapers all across the country. After that, there was and still is going on a re-evaluation of Lincoln; and many people believe that now, since this, it would be better that his fame were anchored on something other than this myth of him as the Great Emancipator.

Then there are some historians and scholars who say that you can't really examine Lincoln with a 1998 perspective, or a 1968 perspective. What do you feel about that argument that you should only examine him in the time frame in which it was common for black people to be called the "n-word," and be in a submissive place in society. What do you think about that?

I think that's absurd. I just said that in Illinois, in Abraham Lincoln's day, there were white men who were way in advance of him on the issue of race. I've named some of them. Again I say, in addition to that, one of the things that white Americans are running from on this whole Lincoln issue is the challenge of dealing with some white men who were more advanced in the 1860s than most white people are today: John Brown, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and others. It's absurd for anybody to say that all white people in the 19th century were bigots who say the n-word everywhere. I've criticized him, not just to be criticizing Abraham Lincoln, I've criticized him in that article and I've criticized him in the book I'm writing. I'm making the point that the tragedy of this whole thing is that museums in Chicago, and in Illinois and the United States of America and universities in all of the states in America have not dealt with the white men and women who really believed in equality in America. And it's ironic that the only white people in America in Lincoln's time who really believed in equality are forgotten. And Abraham Lincoln, who did not believe in it, is honored everywhere and people never stop talking about it. That's a great irony there.

And just to clarify, some people believe that Lincoln freed that slaves because he cared about the slaves' condition and the way they were being mistreated. There's another view that he freed the slaves so that he could get support from Great Britain, who had already outlawed slavery by the time of the Civil War. What do you think is the exact reason that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation?

I think he was driven to it, forced to do it, pressured to do it by members of the Republican Party, by Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens and other members of the Republican Party and by large segments of the American public--segments which demanded that he free the slaves and use all Union resources to defeat the Confederacy. So, he did it because it was absolutely necessary for him to do it, politically and militarily, and of course the international situation was a consideration. Among the people in Illinois, in Lincoln's time, who were more advanced on civil rights and equality than Abraham Lincoln were Joseph Medill and Dr. Charles Ray, publishers and editors of The Chicago Tribune. Medill was one of the most withering critics of Abraham Lincoln throughout the war. Medill was brilliant on this issue, gorgeous! He had his problems with race, but he demanded for almost two years that Lincoln free the slaves and use black soldiers. As long as he possibly could, Lincoln resisted Medill and Charles Ray and The Chicago Tribune and the New York Tribune and other people who demanded that he free the slaves and use black soldiers.

How do you think this affects Lincoln's place in history now? Do you think that his place in history is going to wither at all, or do you think there is still going to be this mythic vision of him?

Lincoln is reported to have said that "you can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Up to this point, people have fooled all the people in America all of time, except one or two on this Lincoln issue. But there's a limit to how far people can go in institutionalizing myths and untruths. Nothing is sure as William Herndon said. Nothing is surer than the truth, and that the truth about Abraham Lincoln is going to come out and is going to become more and more known. Since the 1968 article, increasingly, little by little, people know more and more about how big that myth is. But the health and racial sanity of America and the challenge of race require Americans to deal with the truth of our past if we want to create a rational future. One of the things we have to deal with in this country, one of the things that we have to deal with in Illinois, is the truth about Abraham Lincoln, so that we can create openly for the millennium an America that terrified Lincoln: a black and white and brown and yellow and rainbow America. Lincoln wanted to create an all-white nation. Again, how ironic can you be. People everywhere in this age with Hispanics, Asians and blacks, they still say, "Oh if I find out what Abraham Lincoln believed I would know what to do today." What he believed is that he wanted to put all these people out of the country who are always going to the Lincoln Memorial marching. He wanted all of them out. He wanted to create his ideal, his dream was an all-white nation. We can't keep on worshipping that icon and create a rainbow nation. We've got to go back to our past and first of all deal with Lincoln. That's painful. It's painful for black people. It's painful for everyone in this country.

You've touched on before about how black people interpret Lincoln's role in freeing the slaves. What vision do you think blacks have of Abraham Lincoln today?

Oh, I think more and more black people are aware of the mythical proportions of the Lincoln story. I think many who do not know their facts just have an inherent cynicism about that kind of thing and take it with a grain of salt. More and more scholars, young black scholars in particular, are speaking to various aspects of the thing. I think more and more, the story's being known. Even in 1999, virtually every major academic institution, virtually every major cultural institution still holds to the traditional idea of Abraham Lincoln. Now all this has come out, still in media and in universities and museums, the old Lincoln idea is the Lincoln idea that you get everyday. I mean after all of this has come out, you've got the Internet and everything. I don't mean to be provocative, but it's painful. Lincoln in a way has become a kind of central core of the identity of white Americans. Most Americans, if they can help it, are not going to deal with the fact that he's a racist and that he believed in an all-white nation and that he was not the great emancipator of the slaves. But again I say that somehow, somewhere white Americans are going to have to deal, first of all, with the white Americans who really believed in what Abraham Lincoln didn't believe in. Secondly, they're going to have to deal with the black and white people in the 19th century who tried to make America what Martin Luther King and others tried to make it in the 20th century.

What is Frederick Douglass' interpretation of Abraham Lincoln's legacy? He said that Lincoln is a president for white Americans for the white people of America. How would you interpret that?

Since my article, people have created Lincoln defenders, created three or four defenses for Lincoln. One of them, they say and you mentioned it, "After all, he was a man of his time, what do you think?" I've spoken to that. Secondly, they say, "Well, yeah, he was racist, by 19th century standards," which doesn't deal with the fact that he was a racist by any standard. They say, "Well, yeah he was a racist, but he was growing." In fact he died arguing for a constitution in Louisiana that excluded half of the people in the state because of race. Another thing they do and I'm sort of amused by it, to answer what I've said to attack me, they say, "Well, Sojourner Truth said he was a good white man who didn't have a racist bone in his body." Or they say "Frederick Douglass said he was good white man." Now we know that defense. The Frederick Douglass part comes in here because everyone takes that posture now. Frederick Douglass said in a memorial tribute he wrote in 1876, that Lincoln was a good man and he treated him very well when he went to the White House. So everybody quotes that, and says, "What is Lerone Bennett talking about? Frederick Douglass saw the man and say he was a good man, a good white man!" Two or three things wrong with that. One, and I can talk about it all day, African Americans know--I know, I grew up in Mississippi, I grew up in the South and I've lived in Chicago for a long time-know that white people or racists can be nice, personally, to one or two blacks which has nothing at all to do with what their position is on race and what they do publicly in relation to racism. The second thing is that Douglass is one of the most passionate critics of Lincoln's policy during the war. In 1864, when Lincoln was running for re-election, Douglass refused to, at first, support him, wanted to support somebody else, said that he was a fraud and this his policies had been disastrous for black people. After the Democratic Convention nominated McClellan and on a policy that would have seemed to have favored the South and to have stopped the war and led to slavery, he changed his mind and supported Lincoln, but he never took back what he said about Lincoln's administration. Then finally, it's in my 1968 article. In 1876, Douglass made this formal speech dedicating a monument to Lincoln, it was there he said that truth is greater than politics:

"Abraham Lincoln was not in the fullest sense of the word, either a man or a mortal. In his interests and associations in his habits and thoughts and his prejudices, he was a white man, he was preeminently the white man's president."

Now this was a national speech, before the president and the Supreme Court. He spoke the truth and that is the considered word of Frederick Douglass on Abraham Lincoln-who admitted and said "He treated me decently when I to the White House." The problem was not whether an individual white man smiled or was nice to an individual Negro. The problem was what was his public policy. That's the issue then and that's the issue today.

And you think that continues to be Lincoln's legacy today-that people are afraid to deal with this other side of Lincoln?

Yes, I'm saying that Abraham Lincoln has been used to hide the race problem in the 19th century and in the 20th century. People have used him to keep from dealing with the racial problems that Lincoln tried not to deal with. People have used him to keep from seeing white people and black people in America who said in the 19th century, "We've got to deal with the race problem in this country." People have used Abraham Lincoln to keep from looking at themselves.

About this contributor
Lerone Bennett Jr. is currently the executive editor of Ebony Magazine in Chicago. He is the author of Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America (1962, revised 1987); Black Power U.S.A.: The Human Side of Reconstruction, 1867-1877 (1967); Great Moments In Black History: Wade in the Water (1979; and various other books. Among his numerous awards, he has received the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and was recently inducted into Chicago State University's new National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent in December 1998. Bennett is on the Board of Trustees at Morehouse College (Atlanta), Columbia College (Chicago) and the Chicago Historical Society. He is also a member of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. He is currently writing a book based on the myth of Abraham Lincoln as the Great Emancipator that will be published in 1999.

The Lincoln Legacy in Little-known Illinois Sculpture

Kim Bauer

All photos courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library."It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us…that government by the people, for the people, shall not perish fro the earth." --Address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (November 19, 1863)

"And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgement of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God." --Final Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863)

Since the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as the Republican Party's candidate for president in May of 1860, there have been ongoing attempts to remember him through public sculpture.¹ His assassination in April 1865 galvanized the nation's northern populace to an awareness that had never before been witnessed in the nation's history. Almost overnight, the first "heroic" statue of Lincoln was created.² Early literature treating Lincoln sculpture centered on all forms of Lincoln monuments and their locations. Lincoln statuary was just one component of these lists.³ It was not until 1932 that the first book-length treatment of heroic statues of Lincoln was compiled by Franklin Mead.⁴ Mead's work gives a brief description of the statue and of the sculptor involved. Mead also devised a classification system to group the various statues into geographic and chronological order.⁵

The next author to chronicle Lincoln in sculpture was Donald Charles Durman.⁶ As with Mead, Durman's work lists the known Lincoln statues. Durman also includes other "heroic" sculpture besides statues. As Durman states, "Only those busts, heads, and statuettes are included which were made by sculptors who also made large statues of Lincoln or for which Lincoln is definitely known to have posed."⁷ However, Durman did broaden the scope of the "heroics." He did this by including material used in making the sculptures from simply marble and bronze to also incorporate wood, plaster, and limestone works. Durman also expanded the entries to the works to contain more information concerning the individual sculptor and the sculpture itself. Almost immediately after Durman's well-known work, the third book to chronicle Lincoln in sculpture was published.

F. Lauriston Bullard was a well-known authority on Abraham Lincoln. Approached by the Abraham Lincoln Association to produce a comprehensive work on Lincoln sculpture, Dr. Bullard was a very good choice.⁸ Long an editor at the Boston Herald, Bullard had attained a degree of qualification on Lincoln by writing and collecting Lincolniana. The author was able to use his contacts in the newspaper industry to obtain information and photographs for the various sculpture. Dr. Bullard was also noted for his attention to detail.⁹ While Durman presents a greater number of entries, Bullard goes into more detail, giving the reader an index as opposed to Durman's exclusion of one. Bullard also gives his own assessment of the sculpture as works of art. Bullard's assessment is one of artistic merit. Rarely do Bullard or Durman, and never Mead, venture into the sociological or psychological meaning behind the need for erecting these Lincoln pieces.¹⁰ That task would be left for a later author.

In 1994, Merrill D. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia, completed his tome, Lincoln in American Memory.¹¹ This work was the culmination of a nation's lifetime of Lincoln. Professor Peterson's book is a wonderful compliment to Mead, Durman, and Bullard's works. It presents a synthesis of the reasons behind the desires of the American populace to foster and perpetuate the memory of Abraham Lincoln. Through Peterson's categorization¹² the sculpture that is presented in the literature can be fully understood.

Circuit Markers
A means used to keep Lincoln for future generations was that of marking, preserving, and celebrating sites connected with the President. The desire to provide some form of "witness" joined with local pride and hopes for tourist commerce to lead to calls for locating and marking Lincoln sites.¹³

One such project was the Lincoln Circuit Marking Association. Conceived in 1914 by Judge Joseph Cunningham, reputed to be "the last living associate of Lincoln in 'riding the circuit,'" the association was to mark the sites of Eighth Circuit courthouses and the roads alleged to have been used by Lincoln in riding from county seat to county seat. The Illinois Daughters of the American Revolution soon became interested and organized the circuit marking association as the legal vehicle for fundraising and including non-DAR members in the good work.¹⁴

The project occupied seven years. County boards paid for the marking of sites within their boundaries. The program was so popular that courthouses outside of the officially demarcated Eighth Circuit were added, as "they wanted to be permitted to place markers, and it was agreed to do this, since Mr. Lincoln often practiced in those counties." Coles County was also added, as "in riding the circuit that county was always crossed, and in marking the Lincoln Circuit it would be impossible to leave this county out."¹⁵

The circuit was commemorated in three ways. Telephone poles along the circuit route carried the Association's logo, marking the way for pilgrims. Points where Lincoln was believed to have crossed county lines in riding the circuit were marked with metal plaques, designed by State Architect Edgar Martin. Who produced the interesting sculpted figure is at this point unknown. Each county seat was marked with a bronze plaque, designed by Henry Bacon with bas relief sculpted by Georg Lober, a native Chicagoan and student of Gutzon Borglum.¹⁶

The county seat markers were dedicated through 1922. The ceremonies typically included praise for the project (one speaker referred to the newly marked trail as "a necklace of precious jewels, threaded on the Lincoln circuit for the bosom of the nation"), and praise for the artworks themselves as carrying "a simplicity so simple as to be impressive, so beautiful as to dwell in the mind of the beholder."¹⁷

More important, each ceremony announced explicitly the driving force behind the larger commemorative effort--the effect the monuments would hopefully have on the coming generations. In the words of Rockford politician Oscar Carlstrom, these simple bas reliefs would lead "all who pass [these places] . . . to know of their having been touched by the immortal feet of Lincoln and . . . pause with a reverent thought in passing."¹⁸

Giant "Heroic" Busts
There have been a number of heroic Lincoln heads produced over the years. Donald Durman's book lists over a dozen such works.¹⁹ In recent years the list has grown to include many that have remained unrecorded despite the advent of the Smithsonian Institution's Art Inventory and the Save Outdoor Sculpture project.²⁰ Many of these heads are still little-known works.

The most recent Illinois addition to this category are the two works of the Colorado artist, Jim Nance. Mr. Nance has sculpted life-size busts of Lincoln; one depicting him as "The Prairie Lawyer"; the other as president in a work titled "The Immortal Conscience." Mr. Nance has described these two works as one, that the "Prairie Lawyer" should not be viewed separate from "The Immortal Conscience,":

"When I tried to capture the spirit and the character of this great man, I realized that since both periods of his life intertwined, two portraits -attorney and president- were necessary to fulfill my vision of Mr. Lincoln. Only through two portraits could I show the transition and the struggle, the strength and the triumph, and the mortal cost of that triumph".²¹

The busts themselves are made of bronze, stand twenty-six inches high, and sit on a base of marble and walnut. The dedication ceremony for the two busts took place on May 3, 1995 at the Lincoln-Herndon State Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois.

Roadside Giants
The post-WWII years saw a United States with the strongest economy in the world. Families took to the road in search of education, entertainment, and excitement. One tool used by many entrepreneurial communities to attract the dollars of potential visitors was the roadside colossus.

Colossal figures as moneymaking ventures have long been a fixture in the United States, people traveling great distances to see Peale's mammoth skeleton, New York's Cardiff Giant, and outsized Native Americans and wild animals at various world fairs. By the 1960s Big Ole stood with giant buffalo, bass, and Canadian geese as staples of the American roadside.²² It was perhaps only a matter of time before they were joined by Abraham Lincoln.

The first of our Illinois colossal Lincolns was created in 1967 by Carl W. Rinnus for placement at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Rinnus, a department store window decorator known for sophisticated and colorful displays, was approached by state fair officials to create a colossal figure of the ax-wielding Lincoln of the New Salem years.²³

The 30 foot fiberglass figure was erected in late June 1967, about six weeks before the opening of the state fair, where it was joined by the other overgrown figures, including the Sinclair Oil Company dinosaurs, fiberglass farm animals, and the famed butter cow.²⁴ Garishly colored, like most roadside colossi, the amiable young man holds his ax as if just breaking from work. The youthful, friendly features are those of the young Lincoln who, I would argue, embodies many of the attributes most Americans see in themselves as a people--honesty, good humor, a sense of fair play, and a willingness to help others.

The state fairgrounds colossus was followed in 1968 by another, located near Charleston, Illinois. While the young Lincoln in Springfield was conceived of as but a sign of welcome to a week-long festival, Charleston's 62-foot figure was meant to serve as an attraction in itself. "The world's tallest memorial to Abraham Lincoln" was intended to draw innumerable tourists and their dollars to Coles County's many recreational and historic sites, some of which were related to the 16th President.²⁵

The history of the Charleston work is mired in controversy. Few connected with the project have cared to discuss it. Local boosters were eagerly pursuing several avenues to draw visitor dollars to the area.²⁶ It appears that the Lincoln project began with a Charleston businessman noting the tourist drawing power of Iron City, Michigan's colossal Paul Bunyan. Others businessmen became interested and the work was soon commissioned under auspices of the private Charleston Tourism Development Corporation.²⁷

In May 1969 the figure, produced by the Gordon Specialty Co. of St. Paul, Minnesota, was placed in the new Lincoln Memorial Park. The June 1 dedication was almost incidental to the "Lincoln Heritage Trail Festival," a weekend of special events headlined by a carnival, a flea market, Indian dances, antique shows, and horse racing. Lincoln and Douglas lookalikes urged visits to local attractions. One dedication speaker, referring to the figure itself, noted proudly that "Abraham Lincoln has made history for Charleston."²⁸

Charleston's 62-foot Lincoln, clothed in black, projects a mood not unlike his dress. He seems downright angry. The face is actually severe looking, the left hand is formed into a fist that crumples the papers within it. With gray hair and beard, one could see a nasty John Brown as plausibly as Abraham Lincoln. Another disadvantage--the viewing angle from the ground to the right hand has led many observers to think that the President is making an obscene gesture. Charleston's Lincoln colossus stands today, enticing tourists to a private recreational park, still touted as "the world's tallest Lincoln statue."²⁹

Statues

Gironi
The move from nineteenth century to the twentieth saw transitions in many areas of the life of the United States, among them the passing of the generation that had experienced Abraham Lincoln, leading Merrill Peterson to declare this era that of a move from "Memory to History."³⁰ Knowledge of the coming end of the Civil War generation was a troubling one to many Americans, leading them to seek means to transmit the testimony of the Civil War generation forward through time.³¹

Many of the thousands of soldier and sailor monuments dotting the landscape stand as a testimony to the perceived power of sculpture as a means of transmitting memory. Early in the commemoration process entrepreneurs recognized the existence of a large market for monuments inexpensive enough to be purchased by small towns.

One entrant into the market for an inexpensive tribute for placement in schools and other public places was Italian sculptor Rafaello Gironi, an employee of Boston's Sculptured Arts Company. Gironi, probably influenced by the commercial opportunities presented by the Lincoln Centennial and the desire to make memory "tangible", presented two works for public institutions in 1909. The first was a bearded bust , 2 feet 9 inches tall. It stood on a 3 1/2 foot pedestal and sold for $30. Gironi's status as a "thoroughly Americanized immigrant" was seen as giving the bust special meaning, with one commentator noting that while there were fine works by Volk and Saint-Gaudens on the market, "it is something new to have an accurate conception from the hands of an adopted citizen.

The young Italian also modeled a heroic statue. This work was almost certainly taken from the Chicago Lincoln Park Saint-Gaudens figure. In order to increase his potential buyer audience, Gironi relied on an old lithographer's trick of switching heads on a subject. Like printers had done, Gironi offered this statue with a bearded Lincoln or without. By doing so, Gironi was able to produce a chronologically correct Lincoln depending on the time period that the purchaser was interested in obtaining. This allowed Gironi to effectively skip the step of recasting the body of Lincoln every time there was a change of Lincoln's face.

Pattison--Lincoln Library
The 1960s saw the opening of an era in which political leaders and the public generally no longer felt it necessary to "get right with Lincoln." Once the Great Emancipator and savior of the Union, later humanitarian and symbol of the worldwide battle of democracy against fascism, Abraham Lincoln now entered the realm of the mortal. All aspects of his character and thought came under scrutiny. Did Lincoln truly believe in the equality of all humanity, or was he, as Lerone Bennett claimed, just another racist? Did "Honest Abe" deserve the title, or was he in fact a sharp lawyer and, later, a cynical manipulator of the public? As Merrill Peterson has noted, even late-night comedians for the first time felt free to poke fun at the tall skinny guy with the funny hat.³²

A sculptural figure that can be interpreted as symbolizing this period of rethinking and doubt stands at an entrance to downtown Springfield's Lincoln Library (the name given to Springfield's public library). In April 1976 officials of the Old Capitol Art Fair examined over 50 designs for a major sculpture to be placed in front of the under-construction Lincoln Library building, which was to serve as home to the fair's permanent collection. The work would be the art fair's Bicentennial gift to the city of Springfield. After an initial round of competition, a design by well known Chicago sculptor Abbott Pattison was unanimously chosen by the art fair's panel of judges. The finished sculpture was unveiled November 21, 1976, at the as yet unfinished Lincoln Library. The actual appearance of the work had been a well-kept secret--in the words of one art fair official "We don't want to spoil the surprise."³³ Surprise wasn't the word.

The abstract figure, "conceived as an image of Lincoln," stands eight feet tall. It is located at the library's south entrance, facing the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. Sculptor Pattison intended for the statue to thus represent "the marriage of modern Springfield and Lincoln's day." The head and facial features were meant to bear resemblance to those of Lincoln, while the rest of the body is completely abstract. In a bit of understatement one journalist declared that "the abstract body and representational head evokes a character resemblance rather than an exacting physical likeness. . . ." Among the "Lincolnesque qualities" mentioned are "kindness, hominess, and humility" in the figure, "masterful personality" projected in the arms, and "born of the land" affirmed by the legs as they sink into the base.³⁴

Artist Pattison, who claimed himself to be "a patsy to do anything about Lincoln," readily admitted that "not . . . everyone is going to be 'wowed' about my sculpture," but that "It seems that for a modern abstract building you must straddle the resemblances to Lincoln with the lines and shape of the building. . . . The building does not call for a romantic picture of Lincoln. It was a compromise between the completely abstract and a man whom we have all admired from childhood."³⁵

Pattison's "Lincoln" withstood periodic attack through the first year or so if its existence. Less than a week after the dedication it was found sporting a sign reading "Sid's Junk Yard." Much criticism took the form of letters to the local newspaper. One out-of-state visitor, bearing the appropriate surname Lament, used the terms "abominable," "monstrosity," "grotesque," and "degrading" all in one paragraph.³⁶

The statue stands today, unnoticed, it seems, by almost all but grumpy Lincolnians. This work might, in fact, be the Lincoln sculpture for its time--a non-representational representation reflecting the society's own confused feelings about the man who was once called "The First American."

Keith Knoblock
One of the most recent entries into the field of Lincoln sculpture is the statue at Bloomington, Illinois. Inspired by the Bicentennial of the United States and a desire for McLean County to have a life-size Lincoln, V.L. "Budd" Fairfield, an American History instructor at Bloomington High School began the project in 1975. Fairfield had "conceived" of his idea from an unusual source - actor Raymond Massey. Fairfield had once stood next to the actor when Massey was in a traveling production of "Abe Lincoln in Illinois." Earlier attempts to erect a suitable Lincoln statue by McLean County's citizenry had met with defeat after projected costs had become too prohibitive.³⁷

After preliminary proposals, the Bloomington Bicentennial Committee awarded the project to sculptor and Illinois State University faculty member, Keith Knoblock. The image that Knoblock conceived was one that shows Lincoln in his forties. Here one can see an image of Lincoln as part of the common folk. His sleeves are rolled up and he has his working clothes on, prepared to tackle any task. This statue is of a copper/bronze mixture and took eight months to complete. The dedication was held on August 28, 1977 and the statue was placed in the then newly-built McLean County Law and Justice Center. It is in this center that the statue still resides, reminding all of Lincoln's connection with Bloomington and McLean County.³⁸

Lily Tolpo
A recent addition to the world of Lincoln statues is the work done by Lily Tolpo. Long known as the wife of the noted Lincoln sculptor, Carl Tolpo, and for her bust of Mary Todd Lincoln, Ms. Tolpo has created a life-sized portrait of both Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas depicting their debate at Freeport, Illinois. Titled "Freeport's Lincoln and Douglas in Debate," it is the only such portrait of both men, together, known to exist.³⁹ The sculpture depicts a seated Lincoln listening to a standing Douglas giving his point in the debate.

Originally, the concept for this statue was to place the original in Freeport with subsequent castings of the same statue to be located in the six other debate sites around the state. However, the only one that has been dedicated to date, is the Freeport site. That dedication took place on August 27, 1992, the 134th anniversary of the original debate. When contacted, a Freeport official stated that other sites are more interested in placing "original pieces" depicting their own site's uniqueness than in a replica of the Freeport statue.⁴⁰

Conclusion
The desire to expand Lincoln's influence goes on unabated. Lincoln sculpture is a major component of this influence. Tourism, personal economic gain, war remembrance, and artistic recognition are just a few of the elements. Regardless of the motive, the unifying representative for all of this is Lincoln and his image; whatever that image may mean. By documenting these pieces, the researcher and historian are able to better understand the differing motives and desires behind these driving forces; and, to properly place Lincoln in the context of the ever-changing times.

About this contributor
Kim Bauer is the historical research specialist for the Henry Horner Lincoln Collection of the Illinois State Historical Library in Springfield, Illinois. The author would especially like to thank Mr. Mark Johnson of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency for his invaluable assistance in helping to research this topic.

Endnotes
1. The world of Lincoln sculpture must be forever indebted to Leonard Wells Volk. His life mask of Abraham Lincoln, done in the spring of 1860, has remained the definitive basis for countless sculptural renditions and variations of Lincoln. During the winter of 1860 the sculptor Thomas D. Jones came to Springfield, Illinois and made a bust of Lincoln, the first bearded bust from a life sitting.
2. The art term "heroic" used throughout this paper means a "life-size" or "larger than life" work. Durman claimed the first "heroic" statue credited to the sculptor Pietro Mezzara. For a more complete account of this see Donald Charles Durman, He Belongs to the Ages: The Statues of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 26-27. Hereafter Durman. Dr. Louis A. Warren claimed that Henry Jackson Ellicott did the first life size study. "Earliest Sculptors of the President," Lincoln Lore, No. 899, July 1, 1946. This was subsequently disproved and credit still belongs to Mezzara.
3. Works with titles as Charles Edward Brown's Scenic and Historic Illinois; Guide to One Thousand Features of Scenic, Historic, and Curious Interest in Illinois (Madison, WI: C.E. Brown, 1928) and the Southwestern Indiana Civic Association's The Lincoln Country of Southwestern Indiana (Evansville, IN: Koenemann-Riehl and Company, 1935) were indicative of the localized attempts to draw visitors to the region.
4. Franklin B. Mead. Heroic Statues in Bronze of Abraham Lincoln, Introducing the Hoosier Youth of Paul Manship (Fort Wayne, IN: The Lincoln National Life Foundation, 1932).
5. For example, Mead uses chapters titled as "The Lincoln of Illinois," and "Lincoln, the President," to place the various statues in their artistic context.
6. Durman, He Belongs to the Ages: The Statues of Abraham Lincoln. See footnote two for complete citation.
7. Ibid., p. vii.
8. F. Lauriston Bullard. Lincoln in Marble and Bronze (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1952).
9. While proof-reading his author's copy of the work, Dr. Bullard came across a discrepancy and left this note to the editor, Dr. Roy Basler, "To wit: There is no sandstone Lincoln. In my present state, my text is not easy to get. Am in pajamas, writing at a crowded table." From the author's copy Lincoln in Marble and Bronze, Box 93, Abraham Lincoln Association collection, Manuscripts Division, Illinois State Historical Library.
10. The only times that these discussions concerning the psychological and sociological impact are discussed is when the respective author's are quoting the artist's own conception of what Lincoln meant to them; or, when the question arose during dedication ceremonies.
11. Merrill D. Peterson. Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
12. Dr. Peterson "archetypes" are: ëThe Savior of the Union'; ëThe Great Emancipator'; ëMan of the People'; ëFirst American'; and, ëSelf-Made Man'. Lincoln in American Memory, Back page of inside dust jacket cover.
13. For Springfield sites, see Peterson, p. 265; the background of another project, the Lincoln Way, is covered in Report of the Board of Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library to the Forty-ninth General Assembly of the State of Illinois on the Investigation of the Lincoln Way (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1915), vii-ix
14. "The Lincoln Circuit," circular issued by Lincoln Circuit Marking Association, Henry Horner Lincoln Collection, Illinois State Historical Library.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. "Lincoln Circuit Marker Unveiled," Illinois State Register, 5/8/22, p. 2.
18. "Unveil Marker With Impressive Program," Metamora Herald, 10/20/22, p. 1.
19. Durman. He Belongs to the Ages: The Statues of Abraham Lincoln, p. ix-xii.
20. The Smithsonian Institution has been cataloging the known examples of art in America nearly since its inception in 1846. The Save Outdoor Sculpture (SOS) Project is a cooperative attempt by the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property and the Smithsonian to catalog and keep an up-to-date inventory of the known outdoor sculptures throughout the United States. To access the Smithsonian Institute's Art Inventory on the Internet go to the address www.siris.si.edu. To access the SOS Project on the Internet go to www.nic.org.
21. From the promotional brochure published by Jim Nance and to be accompanied with the statues. See the inside front cover for this quote. The brochure and other supporting material can be found in the vertical file Sculptors: Nance, Jim located in the Henry Horner Lincoln Collection, Illinois State Historical Library.
22. For an enjoyable look at the colossus as an American phenomenon see Karal Ann Marling, The Colossus of Roads: Myth and Symbol Along the American Highway (Minneapolis; University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
23. "Creator of fairgrounds Abe statue may finally get his due," The State Journal-Register, 2/11/96, p. 4.
24. For unusual sculptural attractions see "Illinois State Fair" advertising supplement, Illinois State Journal, 8/6/67.
25. Undated press release advertising erection of the figure is found in "Lincoln Heritage Trail Festival" publicity packet, Henry Horner Lincoln Collection, Illinois State Historical Library. Lincoln-related sites in the area include Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, Shiloh Church (burial place of Thomas and Sarah Lincoln), and the site of the Charleston Lincoln-Douglas debate.
26. One such venture was inclusion on the Lincoln Heritage Trail, a project of the state tourism departments of Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, with support of the American Petroleum Institute. See "Lincoln Heritage Trail Festival" publicity packet, Henry Horner Lincoln Collection, Illinois State Historical Library. For outline history of the Lincoln Heritage Trail see Mark E. Neely, Jr., Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1982), p. 190.
27. "Will Lincoln buy Charleston's Joke?" The State Journal-Register, 6/8/78, p.1.
28. For information concerning dedication and photo of lookalikes see "Lincoln Heritage Trail Festival" publicity packet, Henry Horner Lincoln Collection, Illinois State Historical Library; dedication quote, "Lincoln Statue Dedicated Sunday," Coles County Times-Courier (Charleston), 6/2/69, p. 1.
29. Springhaven Campground and Recreational Park promotional brochure, courtesy John Hoffmann.
30. The term "memory to history" is taken from Merrill Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Chapter 6 discusses various aspects of the transition as reflected in Lincoln scholarship and commemoration.
31. The notion of passing memory of the war to another generation is illustrated by one of the pleas used to seek support for a soldiers and sailors monument in Decatur, Illinois-"in a little while those [who lived the experience of the war] who still live will also have passed away. The . . . the Macon county soldiers of the civil war will live only in the memories of succeeding generations." "The Monument," Decatur Herald, 10/4/03, p. 3. A report of the dedication of a monument in Virden, Illinois, brought the comment that "two generations seemed to clasp hands yesterday across a span of 30 years in building a monument, the foundation and superstructure of which is as enduring as the everlasting hills." "The Monument History," Virden Reporter, 6/13/02, p. 1. One means used by veterans to share their "testimony" was to visit schools in the week before Decoration Day, to share their memories with students. See "The Veterans Corner," Peoria Daily Transcript, 5/3/97, p. 3 and 5/30/97, p. 4; "Soldiers at School," Canton Weekly Register, 6/2/10, p. 1.
32. Peterson, pp. 357-58; 379-80.
33. "Sculpture planned for new library," The State Journal-Register, 11/3/76, p. 3.
34. "Lincoln Library sculpture," Illinois Times, 11/26-12/2/76, pp. 13-14.
35. Ibid.
36. "Toby McDaniel," The State Journal-Register, 11/26/76, p. 15; "Statue Called Monstrosity," The State Journal-Register, 6/27/77, p. 6.
37. For Fairfield's encounter with Massey, see The Bloomington Pantagraph [n.d., n.p.] The 1875 and 1890 attempts had projected costs of $ 50,000 and $ 100,000 respectively. Ford County Press, Sept. 18, 1997 [n.p.]. Both of these articles are from the Sculptors-Knoblock, Keith vertical file in the Henry Horner Lincoln Collection, Illinois State Historical Library.
38. Ibid.
39. Barbara Hughett. "Lincoln-Douglas Statue to be Dedicated in Freeport, Illinois," The Little Giant: A Newsletter of the Stephen A. Douglas Association, May 1992, v. 4 (1): 3
40. Personal telephone interview with Ms. Mickey Martin, President, Freeport Lincoln-Douglas Art Foundation, 10/19/97.