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The Enduring Abraham Lincoln: 1809 - 2009
| Memorialized | Mythologized | Depicted | Globalized | Honored |
| Debunked | Remembered | Debated | Revised | Contemplated |
You might contemplate Abraham Lincoln, whether the vantage point is from the nineteenth century or the twenty-first century, as akin to the Jesus Christ of the American nation-state. Variations of this compelling analogy initially had surfaced in the wake of Lincoln’s assassination. But to this very day we continue to encounter references to this same invocation. When Professor Eric Foner of Columbia University addressed the British Academy in 2003 he observed that the count of written words devoted to interpreting, debating, and revising Lincoln are only exceeded by words devoted to assaying the life and influences of Christ.
Throughout 2009 the American people – and frequently citizens of other nations as well – will assemble to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. The United States Congress has authorized a national commission to commemorate this milestone in our nation’s history.
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Recent books about Abraham Lincoln Lerone Bennett, Forced into Glory, Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Johnson Publishing Company, 2007) Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, two volumes (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) Gabor Boritt, The Gettysburg Gospel, The Lincoln Speech that Nobody Knows (Simon & Schuster, 2006) Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Lincoln Unmasked: What You are Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe (Crown Forum, 2006) Eric Foner (Ed.), Our Lincoln, New Perspectives on Abraham Lincoln and His World (W. W. Norton, 2008) Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Simon & Schuster, 2005) Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (Simon & Schster, 2008) Harold Holzer, Lincoln, President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861 (Simon & Schuster, 2008) James M. McPherson, Tried by War, Lincoln as Commander in Chief (Penguin Press, 2008) James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Anti-Slavery Politics (W. W. Norton, 2007) |
Officially labeled as The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial, its programs will assume their shape in a multitude of forms that defy efforts at simple categorization. Some of the events will rise to a national and even international scale. Among them: a special joint session of Congress; scholarly symposia in Oxford as well as Paris; rededication of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.; national town-hall meetings; nation-wide teach-ins; and numerous exhibitions as well as web sites, including those mounted by our neighbors at the Chicago History Museum and The Newberry Library.
Other Lincoln events will include: a week-long bike tour; depictions in art, music, photography, and poetry; four Lincoln postage stamps; redesigned U.S. currency, including the penny and the five-dollar bill; and a special celebration of Lincoln’s 200th birthday on February 12th. Indeed difficult to avoid will be the unending stream of books published whose authors examine the multiple dimensions of Abraham Lincoln. The possibilities seem unbounded as well as unending. A sampling of titles, new as well as recent, offers us with some appreciation of our enduring quest to understand Lincoln (see right).
Lake Forest College, via a series of programs and events throughout the course of 2009, will participate in the nation-wide commemoration of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial.
And finally, how might we make sense of this occasion? Words written by James Baldwin, a twentieth-century man of American letters, help us to contemplate the connection between the nineteenth-century circumstances of Lincoln and how we consider his life as well as his times from our own vantage point during 2009: “History . . . does not refer merely to the past . . . history is literally present in all that we do.”
– Written by Professor of History Emeritus Michael Ebner