Land o' Lincoln!

I have lived in Illinois for forty years and have never visited the Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library!  An awesome opportunity to have a First for my list!!  I really do love to read and learn about history; if there's a book that fictionalizes a true historical event or period, I want it.  Teaching American lit requires a pretty extensive understanding of American history, and I love to feather out my notes and discussions with the kids with bits and pieces of new info I glean from here and there.  So, when Mom suggested that we all head to Springfield on a road trip (another fave thing to do!), I was all in!

By "we," I mean the Hickman posse--Dad, Mom, and me--we got our tickets online, punched the address into Sally (the navigation lady who lives in the car screen), loaded up magazines and various chargers for the road, and we were off!

Here I am with a giant sculpture of our sixteenth president!  He looks pretty pumped to see me.

Behind me is the Union Station--in there, you will find complete sets brought from Steven Spielberg's movie, Lincoln, that are on permanent loan from DreamWorks.  The museum info tells visitors that Spielberg has never kept and loaned out movie sets, but that these artifacts were special to him and wanted them preserved.  How considerate--take a look at these costumes and furnishings:

Mary Todd Lincoln's dressing table and dress!  In real life, Mary Todd Lincoln was 46 when her husband was assassinated, while Sally Field  was 65 at the time of filming--apparently 65 is the new 46.

Here, you see Steven Spielberg's recreation of Lincoln's office, and Daniel Day Lewis' costume as Mr. Lincoln.

So on to the museum!  After a quick lunch, we started touring the museum, which is arranged in a circular format, with a log cabin entry that leads to the early years and a White House that leads to the presidential years, and two theatres that show films.  The log cabin is constructed of the same wood indigenous to Lincoln's youthful home in Indiana (after moving there from Kentucky), cut and put together with the same tools available to the Lincoln family in those years!  Pics from here are blurry--forgot how to set the camera for SUPER-dark settings:

Here we see young Abraham studying by the fire--legend has it that he taught himself to read by firelight as the family slept.

A scene of Lincoln in the years he worked with a merchant, carrying goods on the rivers of Illinois.

This one amuses me; apparently, there was a time when Lincoln was completely captivated by Mary Todd, and he was said to have simply gazed (NOT glared) at her as she spoke.  Methinks the decorators here took this a little to literally....

The next two pics are of Mary Todd Lincoln's wardrobe, which was highly ornate and just fascinating--the detail and the immense amount of yardage of fabric is impressive.  How did she even stand up in these dresses?  They're velvets and silks and taffetas and worn over hoops--PRE-air-conditioning.  Oy.

These dresses are stationed behind little placards that reveal snarky commentary about Mary Todd Lincoln's inability to get along with any other women.  The comments come across as really insecure... but witty....  :-) 

These pics are chosen because I like the museum's ingenuity in displaying history--the cartoons are framed at strange angles and in eerie blue light.  I imagine that waking up to hateful commentary in the papers, written by people who don't know me but who hate me, would be disorienting; the odd angles of the pictures and the voice-over reading the cartoons in angry voices were the perfect medium to get these ideas across to visitors.  In the third pic, Lincoln is considering the Emancipation Proclamation--some called it "not enough" to do any good, while others were outraged at the freeing of the slaves--referenced in the second pic.  The shadows behind him mimic the voices Lincoln hears as he decides what to do.  It's very much like performace art.

While there are artistic displays everywhere, there are also studies in realism--cast by looking at paintings and daguerreotypes, and precise details attended to, down to the handwriting on the documents and the maps on the walls.

This was fun, too--the War Gallery pictures are in an interactive display; there are computers set up underneath with touchscreens.  When a picture takes your fancy, you touch the screen in its location and the story pops up.

Discovered this handsome fella is Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  Son of the poet!

Again, the realism is just incredible.  I have to wonder if the theatre and coffin displays are to scale--they're huge and beyond ornate.

After the museum parts, we went to the theatres--one of them was a movie, but the SEATS were interactive.  When there was thunder, or cannon fire, or gun shots, the seats jolted from underneath and the entire crowd jumped.  Oof.  I was expecting this, and still was startled when my seat thundered.  The other theatre was holographic--a soldier, and I'm still not sure if he was real or not??--came out to explain the importance of the historians' work at the library.  They still find and archive documents and artifacts that arrive from people's estates even now, over a hundred years after Lincoln's death.  Did you know that there are missing "Mary Letters"??  Her son had his mother's correspondence burned before he died; why??  What was in them??  Dying to know.  The show was anything but dry, as one expects an archival library could be, and brought history to life with modern technology.  Kinda wishing I had that technology as I explain about the Puritans....

So our day was really great!  My family was together, we enjoyed the displays and our own company, and got to enjoy a road trip!  Am forever grateful for the familial cards I was dealt.  A road trip of three or so hours would be a long time with lame people who don't appreciate the delights of the 40 List....  Enjoy some parting shots!  One more of Lincoln, sculpted by the main actor in the movie, and some Hickmans!