106. LINCOLN LIBRARY

Springfield, Illinois

7/16/2012

We didn’t take our Ferrari over to the Abraham Lincoln Library. As mentioned above, this facility recently opened. Presidential Libraries are research facilities. You can’t check out books like at your local library. They are depositories to preserve the legacy of the president.  It’s shocking that it took until 2005 for the first time a real catch-all Lincoln facility has been built.

I must bow down to Patricia’s eternal wisdom. Before visiting I thought it a bit of an overkill to have two Lincoln entries in the same town. A thousand places really aren’t too many if you think about it, so two Lincolns? However, in this case Patricia was absolutely spot on. Lincoln is such a dominating figure in American history. While the Lincoln home showcases Lincoln the man, this high-tech museum is definitely a monument to the legendary Lincoln – an American icon who has transcended into almost mythological stature. These two Lincolns really do deserve equal time.

This museum is set out in a circle with multimedia exhibits branching out from the perimeter. Each section highlights a different time in Lincoln’s life, with various special effects flying around the whole time. The experience is more like a performance than a museum. It’s hard not to be caught up in the sentimentality as the “story” moves into Lincoln’s untimely death.

One of the more impressive parts of the museum – at least on a technical level – was a sort of stage performance, where an actor explains the importance of the research done at the Lincoln library. Anyway, you can imagine the content can’t be too thrilling, but throughout the presentation the “ghosts” of history come to life through holograms. At the end, the actor dissolved into thin air. I can’t figure out how they did that.

“It’s a trick,” Laura said. “I know it’s a trick,” I said. “The point is I can’t figure out how they did it.” “It’s a trick,” she repeated. Daniel really enjoyed it. Later at the hotel when I asked the boys what their favorite thing was we did that day he said, “Guy go home.” That was his explanation for the disappearance. I guess that works for me.

There was a fun kid’s area filled with 19^th century-era toys. Kathleen and Philip think stacking blocks and jigsaw puzzles are still fun today. Since Mary Todd Lincoln spent much of her later years in an insane asylum, I found the name of the kids’ area – Mrs. Lincoln’s Attic – to be inadvertently funny for some reason.

This larger than life love letter to Lincoln made me think about the legacy of the Lincoln legend. (Try saying that three times fast.) If you think about it, there are only two men – and certainly only two presidents – in American history who are unassailable: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Interestingly, George Washington remains in American consciousness as a great president exactly because he shunned political power. The popular image of Washington is of a soft-spoken military man who had political power thrust upon him – power he used with reservation and then gave up as soon as he could in order return to life as an everyday citizen. Historians may quibble about this, but I’m talking about the popular image of Washington. No one imagines Washington as a politician.

On the other hand, Lincoln had grand ambitions to become the two things Americans hate the most – a lawyer and a politician. Lincoln has entered the American imagination as the only honest man to hold either of these professions. It is well known that Lincoln was not universally loved within his lifetime. His election was the immediate cause of Southern secession – no other president can claim the dubious honor of eliciting a response like that. Nonetheless, Lincoln’s death transformed the moments of his life into a sort of prophecy. The Lincoln Museum lingers on several examples of idle moments and off-hand comments that seemed to prefigure his murder.

Did you ever have those English teachers in high school who were always looking for Christ figures in literature? If there exists such a figure in American history isn’t it Abraham Lincoln? In a country that waffles between freedom of religion and freedom from religion, Lincoln’s death has been elevated beyond a political assassination into the realm of martyrdom. He has become a sort of mystical figure. (The fact Lincoln died on Good Friday is an eerie piece of trivia.) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and all the “Patriarchs” are certainly venerated as “prophets” of democracy. But then Lincoln came, not to destroy what they had done, but to complete it. Lincoln is credited as interpreting “All men are created equal” in a new way – the way we all now take for granted as the true meaning of the words, hidden for 100 years. Even from the men who wrote them.

Does Lincoln truly deserve this kind of hero worship? Perhaps he does. Perhaps not entirely. Nevertheless, this perception of Lincoln is so potent it can’t be ignored. The museum’s bombastic quality fits – if not as a true vision of the man Lincoln, but more as an insight into Lincoln’s unique place in the American mind.