Lincoln Museum in Springfield is Winner of the Lindgren History Museum Award

We intended to go to Springfield to see the Lincoln museum (Saturday). But after Jane took care of the horses, I was working on my computer waiting for her to be ready, and she was waiting for me to be ready, so we didn’t get on the road until almost 3 pm.

We got to the Lincoln Museum and Library at 4 pm, and they close at 5 pm, so we would have a whirlwind tour. I used by credit union prepaid Visa card to pay for our admission (this will be important in a few more days). We picked up a guide to all the exhibits – and two theaters – and headed in.

The first thing you see is a display of life-size wax figures of the Lincoln family: Abe, Mary, Robert, Tad, and Willie standing in the rotunda. I took a photo of Jane joining the family when a really nice volunteer for the museum offered to take one of both of us.

The next stop was the Lincoln family log cabin in Tennessee where Abe was studying by the fireplace. The exhibit reminded us that his mother died very young and Abe had a stepmother. The cabin looked fairly authentic and was well-described. Next was Mary Todd Lincoln’s parlor where they were sitting on a sofa as he courted her. They presented a brief history of Mary, as well as Abe’s first love Anne Rutledge – who had died.

Next was the Lincoln—Douglas debates where Jane & I photographed each other clapping as audience members. Then were the election campaigns with all the cartoons, flyers, lies, distortions, etc. They had a room set up as a TV studio with multiple screens. Chris Matthews was doing a live action report of election night 1860. It was creative and very well done. The next room was slanted – the walls were slanted, the doors were slanted, and the political cartoons covering the walls on all four sides were slanted. Again, very creative. We both wanted to linger here, but didn’t have time.
Then came the war. They had a movie screen that showed a map of the USA as war engagements took and lost territory along the front, changing from blue to gray and back again. It kept a running total of dead on both sides. I lost track after a combined million dead. They had a large diorama of him giving the Gettysburg address painted on the walls in another room.

Then it showed the White House years. We went in thru the kitchen – of course. They had a display of Mary Todd Lincoln being fitted for a gorgeous gown of embroidered lavender flowers on a white background. The materials talked about her desire to be the “hostess with the mostest” in D.C. but not ever quite making it because no one liked her. They then displayed the gowns of 4 of D.C.’s premiere hostesses of the day – Mary’s rivals. Her rivals (whose gowns are shown behind her) were Kate Chase (daughter of Lincoln cabinet member Salmon Chase), Adele Douglas (wife of Sen. Stephen Douglas), and Julia Grant (wife of Ulysses). Don’t remember who the 4th one was. They also depicted Willie’s grave illness on the night of that White House Ball – he would die a short time later.

They had a wonderful display of Lincoln’s cabinet room with his cabinet members present as life-sized wax statues. The set-up was the day Lincoln first proposed the Emancipation Proclamation. He did not make it public then for two reasons. One was that the Union (the North) was losing a lot of battles and he wanted to do it when they were winning, and two he and his cabinet were afraid that some border states like Maryland, Tennessee, and Missouri, that were still loyal to the union might switch over if something this huge was released. At some point along here, they showed portraits of Lincoln in all 5 years of his Presidency. You could really see him aging.

As you walked from the cabinet room into Lincoln’s White House office where he was signing the Proclamation, you passed by glass cases on both sides with dozens and dozens of floating heads all talking at once and all offering advice to Lincoln. You can’t understand anyone clearly because they are all talking at once, but that is the effect they are going for. Absolutely genius! The wall are covered with multiple copies of various printers’ versions of the Emancipation Proclamation put out to announce it and to serve as souvenirs.

The displays next led to the fateful night at Ford’s Theater where John Wilkes Booth was shown breaking into the President’s box, and where Mary and Abe were shown sitting with two of their friends (one a Miss Harris) enjoying the play, “Our American Cousin.” I (naturally) was there and could have stopped Booth, but was too engrossed in the play to turn around and see his evil doings. Thankfully they did not give us the life-sized wax version of his death bed.

They did, however, have a life-sized recreation of his closed casket lying in state in the Capitol rotunda, and a lot of information about the train that carried his body back to Illinois for burial – identifying each stop along the way where the people held memorial services for him.
/br>The last room is full of glass display cases holding some of Lincoln’s most prized personal items – many of them donated by his longtime Illinois friends. And then we were back in the rotunda with the wax Lincoln family posing for photos with tourists. And it was time to leave.