Land of Lincoln (Downtown)

We also visited the Lincoln presidential museum in downtown Springfield.  Not far from the current capitol building and across the street from Union Station, where Lincoln departed and returned.

No pic of the outside of the Museum and Library, but the interior is indeed wondrous to behold.

We had our picture taken with the Lincoln family, which they endured with stoic silence.

I am almost as tall as Himself, but only because I’m wearing my elevator shoe inserts.

Abe and Mary sparking.  She did all the talking, he sat in rapt attention.

His child-rearing practices, indeed both their practices, pretty free and easy.  Here Willy and Tad play inkwell baseball in the office of the law practice, while dad reads legal matters.

In the meantime at many southern ports and cities, slave auctions continue, protested by Sojourner Truth and William Douglass.

Generals McClellan and Grant share polite conversation on the porch of the White House in later years, despite strategic differences and despite a disproportion of military success.

Lincoln discusses his proposed Emancipation Proclamation with his cabinet, amid vociferous support, cautious political optimism, doubt, and downright opposition within the very room.

With the war over, and feeling that he can once again laugh, Lincoln and Mary attend a performance of a comedy, Our American Cousin, at Ford’s Theater on Good Friday, 1865.

In his Civil War documentary, Ken Burns speaks about the point in the editing just before Lincoln is shot, wishing that time could stop and change course.  But John Wilkes Booth is opening the door to the presidential box.

The funeral train did the journey from Washington D.C. to Springfield Illinois from April 21 to May 3.  The lying in state at the Old Capitol is replicated in the museum, but is too dark and solemn to photograph.

The museum is far and away the best of the presidential museums we have visited.  Dramatic, heart-warming, inspiring, educational, and thoughtful.

And in the museum shop, a prominent display of what appears to be relatively new wares was purchased and is modelled by Paula, and is duplicated in a wide variety of media – mugs, caps, key chains,t-shirts, etc.