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News Gram™ September 2005

September 2005 ~ Volume 12, No. 2

Springfield, IL — This city is not ordinarily the first place to recommend to those going on vacation. Better Maui, New York or Cancun where the sun, theater or hot tamales can provide a memorable experience. But Springfield, are you kidding? Not at all.

Last April, the President of the United States descended on this sprawling, capitol city and dedicated the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library. In so doing, he transformed this place into one of the most exciting tourist attractions in the country. Combining spectacular technological innovations, architectural elegance and historical controversy, the whole project has become a magnet for the majority of Americans. Neither Springfield nor the rest of the country will be the same.

Overall, the exhibits range from Lincoln’s letters to desktop accessories to numerous, eerily realistic portraits, busts and photographs of him to two automated theatrical presentations that transport the audience back to the early 1860s. The visual effects create a presidential presence that can only be described as haunting. The voice of our 16th president seems not recorded but just behind a curtain or around a corner.

More importantly, the museum seeks not merely to present Lincoln but to discuss him, to consider not the legend of the man but the controversies he embodied. Was it slavery or the integrity of the Union that drove him to lead the country into its bitterest conflict? How did Lincoln plan to rebuild a South savaged by the War Between the States? And what exactly were the motives behind John Wilkes Booth, one of the most successful romantic actors of his day?

These and other questions serve as thematic elements visitors encounter in each exhibit. The result is a historical Lincoln with an open moral and intellectual texture. He is puzzling at times, mysterious even, and always seeking to resolve larger than life problems. Adding to his deep dimensionality is his humble material and spiritual provenance. Early on, there was little opportunity for formal education and it fell to the child to decipher those mysterious markings on paper in which he would later seek lifelong solace and enlightenment. As an autodidact, Lincoln was unwavering in his determination, partly because he must have understood that his quest to understand the world would somehow improve his lot in life.

Early on in the meanderings from one to another exhibit it becomes clear that Lincoln’s character had a profound substance to it. Recall, these were times in the early 19th century when a nation was yet to be built, when even the richest felt the roughness of life and when death was never far away. Nor was character conceived of, as we understand it today, as a psychiatric entity seemingly devoid of moral fabric.  We were more Greek in our view of each other. Character was the mark of a person, the defining complex of moral traits that serve to distinguish each of us from those around us. That Lincoln knew he was on a moral quest, a search for a more just world is clear, though not as a proselytizer or zealot but as a reasoned seeker of a better world.

Mixed with this metaphysical core was a deeply American pragmatism, a recognition that ideas divorced from the concrete concerns of men and women were etiolated particles devoid of life. It was the combination of moral depth, a search for meaning and an attraction to the political fray that yielded a Lincoln who was perhaps our greatest president.

Nor was the White House a sinecure of peace – personal or political. The Civil War ensued shortly after his ascendancy. Even before that point, he and Mary lost a son. While in office, they lost a second son. And as if to haunt him beyond the boundary of his assassination, a third son succumbed after the death of his father. Those who designed the museum labored hard to demonstrate the agony Lincoln experienced as the war ensued. The casualties – over a million – seemed to be experienced by the president one death at a time. His face assumed that well known lined, drawn appearance whose creviced contour seems a historic signature. 

His end was one of the great tragedies of 19th century America. The man, who had brought the nation through the conflict, had lit the path to the future and had endured enormous abuse in the press, was deprived of the opportunity to soothe its deepest wounds. One can only speculate what would have happened had he been available to convey to a nation rent by division, opportunism and suffering a vision of where its sails must take it.

In the midst of all this history is a delightful exhibit headed by a televised Tim Russert who provides an up to the minute account of Lincoln’s election. It brings a smile to one’s face to recognize that all the passion, fury, debate, pomposity and continuous political mendacity among the promoters is not restricted to contemporary campaigns. America is what it is largely because of its history, its people and its constitution. While much may have changed, the underlying process of transforming human energies from raw, aggressive drives into enriched lives for so many remains intact. Perhaps that is the central message of the Lincoln Museum.

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