I looked up from my smoked salmon and toasted bagel this morning at the hotel when I heard several voices singing along softly to the piped in music -
And do you feel scared - I do
But I won’t stop and falter
And if we threw it all away
Things can only get better
Wow wow wow oh, wow wow wow oh oh oh oh
There were a couple of dads and moms who knew every word to this Howard Jones hit. The geeky student council tables here for a session at the state capitol began to sway and sing along looking at one another with happiness.
My siblings get a text capturing the moment.
Lincoln’s museum and library are just steps away on this cold March morning. I follow a volunteer in the handicap door and wait in the lobby. There are dozens of people waiting outside in the cold - but for some reason the guard did not ask me to leave.
It is a beautiful new building. You can feel a majestic design in the entrance with the white stone and marble. Staff scurry about with ten minutes to open finalizing odds and ends.
When the doors open, I buy my ticket and enter. There are four major areas - two theaters with amazing presentations and two walking tours, young Lincoln and President Lincoln.
I have read and heard from a few sources that the Lincoln exhibits are some of the best. In my distant memory I recall many museums and science centers included pressing a red button, hearing a choppy recording, and a series of lights would highlight a variety of diorama’s or stuffed sculptures.
It wasn’t until my first trip to Disney World and the Hall of Presidents that I realized how interesting and engaging history could be. Many of those same techniques and story telling styles have been enhanced for President Lincoln. Both theaters provide a rich and captivating story of the President.
On the young Lincoln walking tour I found the most interesting part to be a modernized comparison of the election process recorded and dedicated to Tim Russert formerly of Meet the Press. A small version of Russert’s TV set plays a twelve-minute video of what Meet the Press would be like had it covered that first Presidential election Mr. Lincoln ran and won.
During the Presidential walking tour I was able to follow a private tour being conducted by one of the on-site experts. The family he slowly told the history to seemed less appreciative - at times I think he was really talking past them to me in the background.
Many wonderful and interesting things reside in this part of the walking tour. The most striking is a section I believe they called “The Soldiers Story.” It is a projected map of the US with a timeline across the bottom from 1860 - 1865.
It starts with the words “1 Week = 1 Second” Those few minutes a blob of red takes shape after Lincoln is elected and secession start in South Carolina and others quickly follow. By the time Lincoln takes office the blob is the only focus on the map and Fort Sumter falls.
As the edges of the blob move in and out of Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ohio and up and down the Mississippi the tally of North and South in the lower right corner grown.
BANG! The Battle of Antietam jumps the numbers on both sides.
With the Mississippi under Northern control and the fall of Georgia Lincoln is re-elected. The red blobs quickly start to shrink.
Then POP Lincoln is shot and the red is quickly gone from the map.
Powerful stuff to see.
You are not allowed to take pictures here, so you will have to go and see it. The one snap I did get with the help of the very friendly staff I have labeled - as President Lincoln and I look so much alike.
A few blocks south I had walked to see the home of Lincoln. It is a Federal historical site staffed by those famously nerdy green and brown rangers. His house is not open for viewing, or was not for me. The movies are just a poor mans version of what the museum captures.
On my way to President Lincoln Tomb I get a call from Phil the sibling. He asks what I am doing, and when I explain my trip to Springfield and plans to see McKinley later this month he says, “So you are touring Republican Presidents who were shot at?”
The Tomb is impressive. One of the several scout troops I have come across this day are there rubbing and picking Lincolns nose for luck. Inside it is solemn and respectful. We hear the story of the journey from Washington (pronounced Were-shing-tin) to Springfield. They tell of the tomb being built, rebuilt, reconditioned, and how a group of thugs tried to steal the body.
The last time they opened Lincoln's casket he looked just like the day he had passed apparently - much like Lennon. He is there with many of the family members. His oldest son is at Arlington. The last direct descendent died in 1985.
Points of Interest:
- Actor Tom Hanks is very distant cousins with Lincoln
- Lincoln was the first president to die by assassination.
- Abraham Lincoln was shot while watching a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. The same play was also running at the McVerick Theatre in Chicago on May 18, 1860, the day Lincoln was nominated for president in that city.
- The contents of his pockets on the night of his assassination weren't revealed until February 12, 1976. They contained two pairs of spectacles, a chamois lens cleaner, an ivory and silver pocketknife, a large white Irish linen handkerchief, slightly used, with "A. Lincoln" embroidered in red, a gold quartz watch fob without a watch, a new silk-lined, leather wallet containing a pencil, a Confederate five-dollar bill, and news clippings of unrest in the Confederate army, emancipation in Missouri, the Union party platform of 1864, and an article on the presidency by John Bright.
- At 6 foot, 4 inches, Lincoln was the tallest president.
- Abe Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died when the family dairy cow ate White Snakeroot and she drank the milk.
- Lincoln had a wart on his right cheek, a scar on his thumb from an ax accident, and a scar over his right eye from a fight with a gang of thieves.
- Mrs. Lincoln's brother, half-brothers, and brothers-in-law fought in the Confederate Army.
- Lincoln was the only president to receive a patent, for a device for lifting boats over shoals.
- He was the first president to wear a beard.
- During the Civil War, telegraph wires were strung to follow the action on the battlefield. But there was no telegraph office in the White House, so Lincoln went across the street to the War Department to get the news.
- He was the first president to be photographed at his inauguration. John Wilkes Booth (his assassin) can be seen standing close to Lincoln in the picture.
- His son, Robert, who was in Washington when his father was killed, was also on the scene when Garfield was shot in 1881 and McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
- Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be born outside of the original thirteen colonies.
- Lincoln loved the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
President Ford Trip
President Hayes Trip
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