Articles to Help Think about Lincoln and Indiana … and What Lincoln Means for Us Today.

 

More has been written about Abraham Lincoln than any other American, more than any person can hope to read in a single lifetime. There are a few articles that can stimulate important discussions of why Lincoln matters to us in 2009.

• “Abraham Lincoln and Indiana” thoroughly summarizes the importance of Indiana politics and politicians for Lincoln’s career. The state mattered much to Lincoln even after he left at the age of 21. This article includes discussions of Lincoln’s three most important Indiana-related speeches, which were delivered at the most critical points of his political career:
  • Report of Speech at Indianapolis Masonic Hall, September 19, 1859. At the height of his campaign for the president, Lincoln delivered a thoughtful examination of the politics of slavery.
  • Speech from the Balcony of the Bates House at Indianapolis, February 11, 1861. On his way to Washington to take the presidency of a country dissolving into civil war, Lincoln explained the balanace between States and the Union.
  • Speech to One Hundred Fortieth Indiana Regiment, March 17, 1865. As the war came to a close, and shortly before his own life was to end, Lincoln explained how the country could redefine itself without slavery.

• Darrel E. Bigham, “The Abraham Lincoln Collections at the Indiana Historical Society” Indiana Magazine of History (March 2005). A thoughtful overview of how the Indiana Historical Society assembled its collections of Lincoln’s papers and photographs. More comprehensive is the book edited by the great Lincoln scholar, Harold Holzer, Abraham Lincoln: Portrayed in the Collections of the Indiana Historical Society.
• Lincoln, Slavery and Race, special issue of Organization of American Historians Magazine of History (October 2007). An excellent overview of different perspectives on Lincoln and African Americans, and what we can learn for race relations today. (Read these articles along with the new collection edited by Henry Louis Gates and Donald Yacovone, Lincoln on Race and Slavery.)

• Joshua Wolf Shenk, The Atlantic Monthly (October 2005). Raises the troubling possibility that if Eli Lilly’s current products had been available to Lincoln in the 19^th century, the Union might not have survived.
• William E. Wilson, “There I Grew Up,” American Heritage Magazine 17:6 (Oct. 1966) and Chief Justice Frank J. Williams, “There I Grew Up” (speech to Conference of Chief Justices, Indianapolis, July 29 2006) give views of the importance of Lincoln from particular professional perspectives.
• Adam Gopnik, “The Mindful Museum,” The Walrus (March 2007). Although Gopnik wrote a book about Lincoln and his bicentennial (Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life), this thought-provoking article doesn’t mention Lincoln. Instead it is about how museums such as the Indiana State Museum and the Indiana History Society should no longer be mausoleums of old things, and should avoid becoming little more than shopping mall. Instead Gopnik discusses how museums can make us mindful of what the past means for the present and the future. Read this before talking with the folks at the State Museum who are planning the double Lincoln Exhibition in 2010.

 

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