Ohio Valley History

Abraham Lincoln is probably the most widely revered American. Generations have studied his words and leadership style as they sought to spread democracy and bend the arc of the universe toward justice. This makes him an excellent vehicle for engaging with America's history and ideology.

Lincoln is also the most widely recognizable American. His face and body were both distinct, but observers then and now also consider them comical, especially given his penchant for wearing a stovepipe hat on top of his already angular frame. He told bawdy jokes and had a rustic accent that opened him up to ridicule as soon as he entered the public sphere. This helps make him an irresistible tool for marketers and a bottomless tourist draw.

In 2005, ninety-eight businesses in Springfield, Illinois, had Lincoln in their names, but that city is not the only place claiming him. He was born in Kentucky, grew up in Indiana, and achieved his greatest accomplishments in Washington, DC. In Springfield, though, he spent most of his life and came into his own as a lawyer and politician.¹

I only had a cursory notion of these things when I began what became a fifteen-year stint at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (ALPLM). After all that time immersed in the Lincoln world, I've realized Springfield's relationship with its most famous resident provides an excellent case study for some of the dangers and benefits of working in public history. His legacy is so huge and means so much to so many, it can foster wonderful opportunities for connection and intellectual exploration while simultaneously inspiring conflict over who owns that legacy and what is the most appropriate way to engage with it. What's more, the educational and inspirational opportunities it creates are just as great as its potential for accruing status and profits. Springfield is similar, a town steeped in history with numerous possibilities for collaboration and public education (a National Park site, two large museums, a host of state sites, a university, several other museums, libraries, and archives, plus many residents eager to be involved in the work of those institutions), while also constantly needing ways to draw more people and money into the city. Everyone who's ever worked in public history has encountered these tensions, but its amplification in Springfield makes it more visible.

But first the basics: Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, near Hodgenville, Kentucky. His family moved to Spencer County, Indiana, in 1816 and then to Illinois in 1830. The following year, Lincoln settled in New Salem, where he began his political career and started pursuing the law. In 1837, he moved to Springfield as a partner of fellow Illinois politician John Todd Stuart, and he married Stuart's cousin Mary Todd in 1842. Lincoln remained there until winning the presidency in 1860 as an antislavery Republican. He left for Washington on February 11, 1861, and as president he presided over the defeat of the Confederate rebellion and hastened the destruction of American slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation and his support of the Thirteenth Amendment. Lincoln won reelection in 1864 but barely served a second term, due to his murder at the hands of white supremacist actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865. He did not visit [End Page 26] Springfield during his presidency, so his tragic return came at the end of his lengthy funeral train trip for interment in Oak Ridge Cemetery on May 4. His two surviving children, Robert and Tad, took up residence in Chicago. Mary also settled in Chicago, only returning to Springfield when her health began failing in 1880, and she died there two years later.

Even this cursory timeline exposes a complicated relationship between the Lincolns and their home city. For Abraham, Springfield was a town of immense opportunity. He even helped make it so by working with eight other legislators—the "Long Nine"—to move the capital there from Vandalia in 1839. Yet ultimately his accomplishments took him away from the city, and fate prevented him from returning. Mary similarly came to Springfield seeking opportunity and found it in her politically ascendant husband. Yet, she chose more cosmopolitan settings for her post–White House years. Robert, too, did not return and made himself into a prominent lawyer and businessman in Chicago, eventually retiring to Manchester, Vermont, at an estate he named Hildene and referred to as his "ancestral home." Springfield nurtured the Lincolns to greatness that they reached elsewhere.²

Another relevant aspect of Lincoln's family history is that following Robert's death in 1926, his descendants showed little interest in publicly shepherding or preserving their family's legacy. Robert took the role seriously by directly managing his father's personal papers and even serving as fact-checker for biographers and in other critical roles. His son Abraham "Jack" Lincoln II seemed eager to learn about his namesake grandfather but tragically perished in 1890, at only sixteen. Robert's two daughters, Mary "Mamie" and Jessie, mostly avoided engaging in the broader Lincoln world, as did the three Lincoln great-grandchildren. None of that last generation had children, so when Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith passed away on December 24, 1985, he ended Abraham Lincoln's direct line. This sets Lincoln apart from many other prominent American political figures, whose families remain vigorously protective of their legacies. Aspects of Lincoln's legacy had always been up for grabs, but the disengagement and then absence of the family made it entirely so, and the list of those who've tried to claim and shape it is extensive, with Springfield always in the mix.³

I don't bring this up to judge the Lincolns. Having worked at Abraham Lincoln's museum, I, too, constantly felt the enormity of his legacy. There was a feeling that any misstep somehow violated a sacred trust—a feeling only heightened by the constant stream of research requests and factchecks loading up my email and voicemail. Add in a constant sense that the museum—and Springfield more broadly—had to prosper, lest this vehicle for sharing Lincoln's legacy somehow be lost, and I understood why someone might defer these responsibilities.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's jump back to 1865 and consider these issues at their first springing. Lincoln's body was scarcely cold before fighting broke out over where it would rest and who controlled his legacy. With his elevation to national sainthood secured by the tragic circumstances of his death, even many of Lincoln's fiercest opponents lined up to praise him. This was true of Springfield also, which ultimately won this strange contest. After all, even there Lincoln only carried the 1860 election by sixty-nine votes and by a lower margin of ten votes in 1864. He never won Sangamon County, and his own former mentor John Todd Stuart went to Congress as an unofficial Democrat in 1862 to fight Lincoln's war policies, especially emancipation.⁴

Yet in 1865, Stuart and other prominent Springfielders immediately renewed their fealty to Lincoln and asserted their city's right to his remains. They had competition from heavy hitters like Washington, DC, Chicago, and even New York City, where riots had broken out in opposition to Lincoln's conscription policy. Pinpointing precisely where or [End Page 27] with whom these bids originated, and how far they got, is difficult. Regardless, in the week following Lincoln's death, two locations emerged as leading contenders for his final resting place: Springfield and the crypt originally intended for George Washington under the Capitol Building. Thus did one of the rivalries over Lincoln's legacy—between the East Coast and the Midwest—begin.⁵

As competitors vied to claim Lincoln's body, his widow, Mary, remained shut in her White House bedroom in a state of all-consuming grief. Robert Todd Lincoln—the new patriarch at only twenty-one—tried to get a grip on his family while at least nominally coordinating his father's funeral and monitoring the capture and trial of the assassins. Here, too, we can sense early tensions over who possessed Lincoln's legacy, as forces outside the family began making decisions about him, while Robert and Mary occasionally and sometimes forcefully intervened to regain control.⁶

Springfield's claimants to Lincoln's remains began lobbying immediately, with two efforts materializing independent of each other. The day after Lincoln's death, Stuart started organizing Springfield's elite into a committee that eventually became the Lincoln Monument Association. Meanwhile, Governor Richard Oglesby of Illinois was already in Washington with a delegation that had met with Lincoln the day of the assassination and afterward began pressing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to designate Springfield as Lincoln's final destination. Stanton secured Mary's approval, setting the wheels in motion for Lincoln's funeral train to leave Washington on April 21 and arrive in Springfield on May 3.⁷

The Lincoln family and the elite men of Springfield and Illinois were not on the same page, however. Mary seems to have immediately selected Oak Ridge Cemetery as the place most suited for her husband's burial and assumed everyone else agreed. She would soon discover otherwise, as members of the Monument Association were considering Oak Ridge, but an influential bloc led by Federal Judge Samuel H. Treat were proposing Lincoln's body be placed inside a massive monument on a prominent hill near the center of town.⁸

The ensuing conflict between the Lincolns and the Monument Association elucidates the most enduring conflict regarding Lincoln's legacy—between the desire to revere him and the desire to use his fame to accrue wealth and status. To be sure, those seeking the latter didn't necessarily lack the former, but the battlelines in Springfield most clearly show how material interests, like tourism and economic gain, can influence even the most reverential decisions regarding such a beloved historical figure.

This is due partly to Springfield's frequent economic concerns. In 1865, the worry was mainly that industrialization was leaving the town behind, seemingly realized by threats to move the capital to a more prosperous place. Stuart and his allies hoped bringing Lincoln home would cement Springfield's status as Illinois's political center (which it did) and that their proposed monument would sit like a crown on its downtown—attracting tourists and their pocketbooks from passing trains, while also providing Lincoln with an appropriately grand resting place.⁹

That association members also had financial stakes in this decision soon became evident. The designated downtown plot belonged to the wealthy and politically connected Mather family, which stood to benefit greatly from the purchase. What's more, with the Treat Plan seemingly bulldozing ahead, prominent Springfielders began buying land and businesses around the plot, in anticipation of rising property values and tourist dollars.¹⁰

This combination of boosterism, entitlement, and personal profit gave the association ample motivation to fight once Mary—communicating through Robert and other family members—indicated she had no intention of approving its plan. The ensuing battle lasted only a few days, but even in that short time, Springfield's elite resisted and obfuscated [End Page 28] to such an extent that Mary—despite still mourning in her White House bedroom—had to use the media to circumvent them and eventually threatened to abandon a Springfield burial altogether, in favor of Chicago. Even weeks after Lincoln's body had been placed in the receiving vault at Oak Ridge, association members still conspired to move it downtown, prompting Mary to finally respond directly and lament to Governor Oglesby—who supported the association—"If I had anticipated, so much trouble, in having my wishes carried out, I should have readily yielded to the request of the many & had his precious remains, in the first instance placed in the Vault of the National Capitol," before again threatening to take the body out of Springfield.¹¹

Robert's support for his mother was clear, as he not only personally selected the spot in Oak Ridge for his father's monument but handed Mary's letter to Oglesby in person. After all, Mary was widow to the great martyr and claimed Lincoln himself had told her, upon stopping in a quiet area along the James River during their last visit to the Army of the Potomac, "When I am gone, lay my remains in some quiet place like this." Despite Mary's obvious authority, the city assumed ownership of Lincoln's legacy, and its potential for economic and political benefit drove the association to consistently, connivingly, and misogynistically disregard her wishes. Taken as a whole, the tomb episode lays out many of the tensions around ownership and usage that persist to this day in Springfield and throughout the Lincoln community.¹²

Similar forces played out in the long debate over the proper use and ownership of the Lincolns' Springfield home at Eighth and Jackson. The Lincolns bought it from Charles Dresser—the same Episcopalian minister who had presided over Abraham and Mary's wedding—in 1844, and it became a subject of public fascination even during their White House years. After Lucian Tilton, president of the Great Western Railroad, started renting the home in 1861 for $350 a year, curious spectators began dropping by for tours, and their visits only increased after the assassination. Robert and Mary jointly inherited the property, but Robert largely managed it through Springfield agents and eventually bought Mary's share. It was Robert, then, who oversaw the succeeding four tenants between 1869 and 1887. Most rented the home for its convenience and did not share the reverence of its visitors. The last, however, was a fellow traveler.¹³

Osborn H. Oldroyd lived at Eighth and Jackson precisely because it belonged to a figure of such intense fascination for visitors and himself, and he quickly set about transforming it into a shrine. A young Republican before the war, Oldroyd had supported Lincoln's candidacy. That he was already deeply invested in Lincoln when he enlisted in the Twentieth Ohio Volunteer Regiment near the outbreak of the war attests to his political loyalty and suggests he may have been part of the pro-Republican Wide-Awake movement. During the war, Oldroyd reached the rank of sergeant, and upon its conclusion, he published the portions of his personal journal detailing the Vicksburg siege. He then returned to Ohio, where he managed the National Soldiers' Home in Dayton and started a family.¹⁴

Through the roughly twenty-three years following the 1860 election, Oldroyd must have amassed as much Lincoln material as possible, because when he began his tenancy in 1883, he possessed about two thousand books, works of art, artifacts and more. As his family lived on the second floor—in the very rooms his hero had experienced his most private moments—Oldroyd flooded the first floor with his collection. It's hard to determine what he displayed when, but photographs and artwork covered the walls, while sculptures and artifacts were so abundant some had to be placed on the floor. This was, in effect, Springfield's first Lincoln museum, and, like the other such institutions of its day, it's often hard to delineate its nature between shrine and tourist trap.¹⁵ [End Page 29]

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The Lincoln Home parlor as it appeared during Osborn Oldroyd's use of it as an exhibit space. Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Springfield, Ill.

This mix was probably not as garish to Oldroyd's contemporaries as it seems now. The Louvre and the London National Gallery were not his primary frames of reference. Instead, Oldroyd likely drew inspiration from P. T. Barnum's New York museum and other "cabinet of curiosities" galleries. Plus, Oldroyd likely had no alternative place to store his collection, making exhibition his only option. That being said, some certainly considered Oldroyd's effort tacky, not least because it was being staged in the very home of America's martyred secular saint.¹⁶

Oldroyd's potential hucksterism is further evident in how he, unlike previous tenants, charged admission to visitors—although again it's difficult to parse exactly how much this was profiteering or simply Oldroyd earning what he thought was his due. Robert appears to have tolerated this behavior at first, but things changed in 1885, when Oldroyd started having rent problems. In letters privately calling Oldroyd a "dead beat" and "rascal," Robert might have just been addressing these rent issues, but Lincoln's only surviving son likely didn't appreciate his tenant's curatorial choices either, like hanging a portrait of John Wilkes Booth above the family mantle. Oldroyd, meanwhile, had already started lobbying Illinois legislators to convert the home into a state-owned historic site, with him living rent-free as the caretaker. He made some progress, but Robert was understandably wary of the idea and didn't pursue it.¹⁷

Here again, we see the tensions around ownership of Lincoln's legacy. By the time Oldroyd took up residence, Robert was not just the sole owner of the home but the sole surviving member of Lincoln's immediate family, given Mary's passing the previous year and Tad's death in 1871. With Oldroyd's curation of the home and machinations with the state government, we see three entities vying for control of a key site of Lincoln's legacy and how it ought to be preserved and interpreted. Neither Robert, Oldroyd, nor the state had any sense of modern best practices for historic sites, but the contours of competing views on interpretive etiquette and appropriate use of collections and property are visible.¹⁸ [End Page 30]

Oldroyd's more expansive and potentially mercenary view of Lincoln's legacy was evident in other aspects of his work. Most egregiously, the last of his several books on Lincoln—published in 1930, the same year Oldroyd passed away—was speciously titled The Mystic Number Seven in the Life of Abraham Lincoln (with a seven below Lincoln's first name and last name, in case the reader misunderstood the theme). Oldroyd began with the claim that during his decades of studying Lincoln, he never "sought to delve into any mysticisms or superstitions, nor to attribute any supernatural causes contributing to the formation of his remarkable career." Yet, he continued, "I confess to surprise and even amazement at the frequent mention of periods of seven (7) and its multiples, which are too often, to be considered as coincidences, appearing in his life." The short tome then introduces the importance of the number in biblical lore before dividing into sections cataloging its frequency in Lincoln's life. In an even less impressive list than one might assume, Oldroyd resorts to such stretches as noting both Lincoln's Black Hawk War militia ranks had seven letters as does the word slavery.¹⁹

It's possible Oldroyd believed this flimsy argument, but that doesn't diminish how tasteless these assertions and his interpretive methods would have seemed to observers. Regardless, Robert reached his limit in 1887, when the state again moved to acquire the site. Whatever Robert's commitment to protecting Lincoln's legacy, the headaches of managing the Lincoln Home as an absentee landlord and would-be curator were apparently more than he could tolerate. This time he agreed to sell for $1, with Oldroyd becoming its official curator, under the condition that it be kept in good repair and remain "free of access to the public." This last condition reveals Robert exerting one last element of curatorial control—recognizing the site's importance to the American people by ensuring entrance would always be free.²⁰

As for Oldroyd, his hold on the home's corner of Lincoln's legacy proved tenuous, and becoming a state employee left him at the mercy of bureaucrats whose chief concerns were not curatorial. These political forces would continue to exert a heavy influence over Lincoln's legacy in Springfield, and, regardless of his own culpability, Oldroyd became their first victim. In 1893, John Peter Altgeld won election as the state's first Democratic governor since the Civil War and promptly fired Republican Oldroyd in favor of a political supporter named Herman Hofferkamp. That this curatorial position—the only one employed by the state devoted to Lincoln's legacy—devolved into a patronage dump after only one personnel change was enough to rouse Robert to intervene one last time. A lifelong Republican, Robert supported John R. Tanner in his 1896 efforts to unseat Altgeld and, on Tanner's victory, urged him to expel Hofferkamp and entrust curatorial control to the Edwards family—longtime familial and political allies of the Lincolns—who curated it in a manner more aligned with the day's best practices. Oldroyd then landed in Washington, DC, and took up residence in another Lincoln shrine—the Petersen House, where Lincoln died across from Ford's Theatre—to once again exhibit his collection. It remained there until 1926, when Oldroyd sold it to the federal government.²¹

After Robert's passing in 1926, curatorship of the home remained in the hands of families connected to the Lincolns. Conflict between responsible stewardship of the home and Springfield's economic growth arose again, however, in the 1960s. By then, Illinois had imbued local governments with increased powers to create and protect historic sites. Springfield had properties needing such enhanced protection, especially the Lincoln Home, which became the center of a new historic district, stretching into the surrounding four-block area. In 1966, nearby property owners proposed installing a restaurant, hotel, and wax museum within that area. While all three businesses [End Page 31] were obviously intended to cash in on tourist traffic, the wax museum is especially noteworthy because with Oldroyd's departure, there was no other museum devoted to the Lincoln story. A wax museum did eventually open near the home, and it appears to have been active for some time, but the 1966 plan led to a court battle directly related to issues of preservation, interpretation, and profit.²²

Adhering to its preservation ordinance for the site, Springfield denied the proposal, and the potential business owners sued in the Sangamon County Circuit Court, which ruled in their favor. The developers had planned their ventures along nearby Ninth Street, which, although part of the preserved zone, was a business corridor, and thus the court authorized its use as such. It was a clear victory of economic interests over historic ones, which became the city's argument against the decision when the case went to the Illinois Supreme Court. By this time, Springfield was also home to two nonprofit historical organizations—the Illinois State Historical Society and the Abraham Lincoln Association—which filed briefs in support of the city protecting the Lincoln neighborhood lots. The Supreme Court denied the appeal, on the grounds that zoning conflicts were out of its jurisdiction, and transferred the case to the Fourth District Appellate Court, which reversed the previous decision and ruled in favor of the city. This reinforced the state's new commitment to historic preservation but also contributed to growing concern that Lincoln's home, no longer protected by the family, may be too important to be properly preserved through state power alone. Issues like this contributed to the site's 1972 transfer to the National Park Service, which remains in control today and continues to honor Robert's demand for free admission.²³

Lincoln's descendants played no active role in these fights over their great-grandfather's home, but they were still alive and somewhat engaged with other aspects of their family's legacy. Mamie's son Lincoln Isham passed away in 1971, and Jessie's daughter Mary "Peggy" Lincoln Beckwith passed in 1975. Finally, Jessie's son, Robert "Bud" Todd Lincoln Beckwith, ended the Lincoln line with his passing in 1985. All three viewed themselves as Robert's heirs and applied whatever preservationist motivation they had to managing Hildene. It was Bud, however, who furtively pierced the Lincoln bubble when the Civil War centennial called on him to stand in for his great-grandfather. He never came close to matching Robert's level of engagement, but he became part of the broader Lincoln community—in Springfield and elsewhere—and thereby a more active player in shaping his family's legacy.²⁴

Of the relationships Bud formed at this time, none was more consequential than his friendship with James T. Hickey, curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Illinois State Historical Library (later ALPLM). Illinois created the position for Hickey in 1958 because its collection of Lincoln material had grown large enough to require proper curation and Hickey had established himself as an expert in Lincolniana through building his own collection and uncovering Marine Bank ledgers detailing Lincoln's financial activities. In perhaps an effort to reclaim Lincoln's legacy from Washington, DC, after the 1922 dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, Illinois had been amassing an impressive array of Lincoln materials. This process began with a large donation of books and other items from Governor Henry Horner in the first half of the twentieth century. Efforts accelerated considerably in the 1940s, when the state acquired signed copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment, along with one of five surviving copies of the Gettysburg Address in Lincoln's hand. As Lincoln curator, Hickey aggressively built on this strong foundation, although he did so while also expanding his own collection. By befriending Bud Beckwith, Hickey found an opportunity to acquire what was left of the Lincoln family's materials—for both Illinois and himself.²⁵ [End Page 32]

In 1977, Bud invited Hickey to Hildene, where the intrepid collector discovered Robert's personal files related to his mother's infamous insanity trial. The positive press this generated and the support of the broader Lincoln community convinced Bud to give Hickey free reign to survey all the historic materials at Hildene. The catch was these items were to go not just to the Illinois State Historical Library but also the Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Hickey's personal collection. By the time he was through, Hickey had distributed Hildene items to several additional recipients—museums and private citizens—while leaving a small number behind, mostly related to the descendants themselves, that became the collection of the current Hildene site.²⁶

This glimpse from the late 1970s reveals an almost warped mirror image of the family's previous battles over Lincoln's legacy, with Lincoln's last descendant—knowingly or otherwise—handing it over almost entirely to historic sites and a private collector. What's more, Hickey's acquisitions served as a major victory in the ongoing cold war over Lincoln's legacy between the Midwest and East Coast—literally wresting control of the family's material remnants from one region to the other. Like Oldroyd before him, Hickey's twin impulses as collector and curator are difficult to parse. The subsequent histories of the objects he collected on his own or from Beckwith, for instance, reveal a troubling disregard for historical probability and provenance. Indeed, Hickey appears to have viewed himself as a responsible shepherd of Lincoln's legacy while also openly using that legacy to enrich himself. This conflict of interest caught up with him in 1984, when the new Illinois Historic Preservation Agency instituted stricter policies against state-employed curators acquiring their own historic material. Faced with this new ethical reality, Hickey retired later that year.²⁷

This was the status of Illinois's Lincoln collection in the 1990s, when the state attempted to solve several ongoing problems regarding Springfield and Lincoln's legacy by building a museum fully dedicated to the Lincoln story. This massive undertaking shows how fully tensions over the proper way to honor, interpret, and profit from Lincoln's legacy had formed in the 150 years since his death. For contemporary observers, the resulting Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum stood—and stands—as either the ultimate expression of Lincoln's legacy or a symbol of its deterioration, or some mixture of both.²⁸

Part of the motivation for building ALPLM came from the same economic and growth problems that had plagued Springfield in the aftermath of Lincoln's death. What's more, the products of the state's decades-long efforts to expand its Lincoln collection were mostly out of sight in the subterranean halls of the Illinois State Historical Library under the Old State Capitol. The building above was a historic site, so collection objects were incorporated into its exhibits and re-creations of historic rooms, but never a large number and usually without adequate preservation safeguards.²⁹

This was especially so for the state's copy of the Gettysburg Address, which in a roundabout way sparked the entire effort to create ALPLM, along with the drive of political influencer and history enthusiast Julie Cellini—a trustee of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, which oversaw the library and its collection. Early in Cellini's tenure, Hickey gave her a hands-on encounter with the collection's most impressive items, including the Gettysburg Address. She later recalled that this experience profoundly affected her, inspiring the idea that the library "could have been, should have been, so much more than we were" and the collection had to get out of its "awful, moldy rooms." "Jim, everybody needs to see this," she told him. "We need to open this stuff up."³⁰

Cellini soon learned that the main problem was that the library lacked sufficient means to display the collection she'd come to love. Again, the Gettysburg Address drew the most focus, as Cellini and others [End Page 33] lobbied the state to appropriate funds for a new display case that would both better preserve the document and draw visitor attention. The state agreed and funded an exploratory effort that quickly expanded beyond better caring for the Gettysburg Address into imagining an entirely new home for the collection, with adequate space to show it off. "We really didn't need a case; we needed a place," Cellini recalled, lining up with Dave Blanchette, then communications officer who joked, "We never built the new display case for the Gettysburg Address. So, we built a new display case for everything else."³¹

The path to that new facility led the team to Disney—by way of Congressman Dick Durbin—which came to Springfield and evaluated its feasibility as a more robust Lincoln-themed tourist destination. This was kept mostly under the radar, because Disney was reeling from its previous controversial plan to build a Civil War–themed amusement park near the Bull Run battlefield in Virginia. Regardless, the Illinois team—including state administrative and historical staff—was impressed by the experience and decided to pursue Disney's recommendation to build a new, world-class library and museum. In tandem with these efforts, the Illinois State Historical Library partnered with the Huntington Library in California, the Chicago History Museum, and collector Louise Taper to stage a joint exhibit of objects, titled "The Last Best Hope," which ultimately served as proof of concept for the Lincoln collection's museum potential. Cellini remained the driving force and was now totally committed to the idea. "I wasn't going to give it up," she later declared. "It was like hoping I'd have another child maybe, or to bring something else forward, something so much bigger than yourself, to get just to be aligned with it."³²

The broad timeline was to open the new facility's doors ahead of the 2009 bicentennial of Lincoln's birth and, after only a few hurdles, it met that goal on April 19, 2005 (although the library had opened to the public the previous year). The final bill exceeded $150 million, reflecting significant support from several Illinois governors; much of the state's public history apparatus—especially State Historian Thomas Schwartz—a national team of consulting historians; and financial champions at the federal, state, and local levels. While they couldn't partner with Disney directly, the team contracted with former "imagineer" Bob Rogers, whose groundbreaking immersive techniques promised a museum that would set an entirely new standard for design and public reach. After some initial hesitation due to internal politics and potential corruption, Illinois secured veteran presidential library administrator Richard Norton Smith, the "P. T. Barnum of Presidential Museums," to be ALPLM's inaugural director and shape public narratives about the new venture.³³

Elements of Springfield's previous efforts to capitalize on and promote the Lincoln legacy—both positive and negative—showed themselves throughout the near-decade from ALPLM's conception to dedication. Perhaps foremost, some of its boosters sensed that this was about justifiably claiming (or reclaiming) Lincoln's legacy for Illinois and Springfield. In arguing that no other museum was adequately devoted to Lincoln's entire story, Cellini posed the fundamental question "Why isn't this here, and if not here, where?" and ultimately concluded, "This could be big and exciting and wonderful and necessary for Illinois to do it, to be the keepers of the Lincoln legacy, the story." State politicians favoring the project concurred, with one Republican noting "More than ever, Springfield will reflect the heroic man who passionately loved the city." Reporting on the opening, local Springfield Associated Press reporter and future ALPLM communications director Christopher Wills specifically defined ALPLM's mission in opposition to other prominent Lincoln sites, asserting "The Lincoln presented here is not the one-dimensional man most museumgoers know from the materials at the National Park Service, the National Archives or the Smithsonian Institution."³⁴ [End Page 34]

Yet, this renewed desire to anchor Lincoln's legacy in Springfield was not just geographic. Two decades had passed since Bud Beckwith's passing, leaving not just a vacuum where the family's claim to Lincoln's legacy once stood but also the absence of influence presidential families often exerted on similar institutions. Celebrating the museum's opening, Smith told the Indianapolis Star, "We're lucky. There is no widow or children around to tell us we did it wrong." Cellini similarly revelled: "We were so lucky that the Lincolns are all gone," but saying at the same time that the team nevertheless enjoyed whatever input the Lincolns may have provided, because Schwartz had "good judgement of what the Lincolns would have understood their story to be."³⁵

Few voices challenged Springfield's efforts to reclaim Lincoln's legacy in time for the bicentennial. The conflict instead was over how ALPLM's advocates were shepherding that legacy. Other than some concerns over ALPLM swallowing up precious resources and visitors from Illinois's other historic sites, those in positions to shape the project appear to have been near-unanimous in their support for how Illinois was choosing to tell Lincoln's story. Some voices within the state but outside the project, however, disagreed.³⁶

The hiring of Bob Rogers and the implementation of his more theatrical approach made some observers suspicious that, as with the tomb 150 years earlier, tourism and potential profits were trumping responsible stewardship and historical education. This was especially so after Rogers revealed the museum would feature a series of lifelike and immensely costly life-sized "figures" to represent Lincoln and his contemporaries at various stages of his life. When Rogers introduced a prototype of Lincoln resolutely leaning forward on a desk, these suspicions boiled over into full-throated attacks, despairing over not just the future of the museum but whether Springfield could be trusted with a legacy as great as Lincoln's.

Chief among these critics was John Y. Simon, late professor of history at Southern Illinois University and director of The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. He fired his first major salvo in a January 2001 Chicago Tribune editorial: "Let's Bounce Rubber Lincolns." Focusing mainly on the planned mannequins, Simon lamented that presenting these important historical figures in "rubberoid form" showed that the new museum's supporters "believe that their mission is entertainment rather than education, and that a modernized wax museum represented the best opportunity to beguile children." Condemning Rogers's approach as "condescension," Simon spent the next four years arguing that children—Rogers's oft-stated target demographic—respond better to actual historic items and places, making this "theme park" approach both unnecessary and embarrassing. The theme-park metaphor became a fixture of Simon's interviews—often referencing "Six Flags over Lincoln." As he told one reporter, "Lincoln's own words have living meaning, so the idea of interpreting his story as Six Flags over Lincoln really bothers me.… Children are impressed by reality. What we get here are rubber Lincolns. It's a modern-day wax museum."³⁷

In that same interview, Simon said other historians agreed with him and that he was unofficially serving as their mouthpiece. Political commentator Andrew Ferguson had his doubts: "There have been critics: two, by my count, which is just close enough to a real controversy for the New York Times to announce that a real controversy exists." Regardless of the scope of these criticisms, Simon's dry wit and fearless criticism wove him into every article on ALPLM for years and was likely a major motivating factor in choosing Smith as a public relations specialist capable of countering him.³⁸

The new director quickly coined the museum's approach as "scholarship and showmanship," which immediately became as ubiquitous in media coverage as Simon's quips. Smith then spent his roughly three years as director offering a host of similar soundbites, [End Page 35] which effectively reconciled critiques of the museum's "Disneyfied" approach with its overall mission of responsibly educating visitors about Lincoln's life and legacy. Leaning into the museum's immersive design, Smith promoted its "in your face history" with descriptions that turned the "either/or" critique into "why not both?" "We're not about dumbing down, which would be a betrayal of trust," he told the New York Times. "What we want to do is credibly put a visitor inside a 19th-century world." In another interview, Smith resolved Springfield's 150-year-old tension between exploiting Lincoln's legacy and using it for education by noting, "Intelligent thought is not incompatible with popular appeal." He even flipped Simon's argument on its head, declaring to the Washington Post: "In an era when it's easy to despair about historical illiteracy, this is an experiment attacking historical illiteracy." Many of these articles also featured Simon, but Smith never referred to him directly—or at least not until the museum's official dedication when, triumphant amid accolades and a huge Springfield crowd, he told a local reporter he'd like to give the professor "a big hug."³⁹

And indeed, the opening accolades were abundant and easily overwhelmed the critiques. Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer declared ALPLM "a spectacular accomplishment," and David Donald affirmed its approach, noting it captured Lincoln "in a very interesting, imaginative way." Academics weighed in formally, too, with John R. Decker, in the Journal of American History accusing Simon of "throwing out the baby with the bath water" and, among abundant praise, noting the lifelike figures "are not a cheap gimmick but, instead, provide visitors with an immediate and humanized point of contact in the museum space" to create an "empathetic link." Myron Marty similarly asserted in the Public Historian: "If the critics will set aside their preconceptions and look and listen again, they will likely discover that the historians and designers responsible for interpreting Lincoln to visitors of all ages do him justice and serve the inquiring visitors very well." Then–Congress member and future cabinet secretary Ray LaHood of Bloomington, Illinois, waxed poetic: "This museum and library are more than a shrine or memorial for Abraham Lincoln; this is a living, breathing extension of the life and lessons of Lincoln for all the people of the world. This is a facility 'for the people.'" Visitors, too, connected with the overall presentation, and many eloquently summarized the overall experience. "It's that closeness to history," reflected Diane Ayers, among the first wave of visitors, "the chance to touch, mingle, and interact with many of the exhibits—that makes this new museum so unique."⁴⁰

This coverage suggests ALPLM had resolved 150 years of conflict over how Springfield should effectively and respectfully shepherd Lincoln's legacy. With this museum, its expansive view of the Lincoln story, and its groundbreaking design, Springfield had affirmed its place as the geographic center of the Lincoln world. What's more, the museum's embrace of both tourism and education expanded beyond its walls—at least in intent. Instead of outshining the more traditional historic sites that served as its neighbors in Springfield and the rest of the state, the designers consciously included mounted labels throughout the permanent exhibit directing visitors elsewhere to learn more. As the museum reportedly outpaced attendance predictions—reaching a million visitors in its first two years—so, too, did attendance reportedly jump in other Illinois sites. Downtown Springfield also received a boom, just as it had sought in 1865. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what forces came together around the turn of the millennium to get things right, but Springfield and Lincoln's fortunes seemed brighter than ever as the nation geared up to celebrate his two-hundredth birthday.⁴¹

This is not to say Lincoln and Springfield lived happily ever after. While criticism of the museum's interpretive choices was mostly drowned out after it opened, those who had worried a state bureaucracy wasn't ideal for shepherding Lincoln's legacy were [End Page 36] more on the money. US Senator Peter Fitzgerald, for instance, filibustered its federal funding in Congress in 2000, fearing corruption in its spending and contracts while also warning it would become a patronage dump. "There could be no worse or uglier irony," he said, than to have a Lincoln museum "in which a bunch of political insiders wind up lining their pockets with taxpayer money." These suspicions continued even after the museum's opening, with the state investigating up to $15 million in potential overspending, including a last-minute increase of $10 million to Rogers above his $46.7 million contract.⁴²

Leadership issues had also started to appear even before the dedication. Maynard Crossland, executive director of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, resigned early in the process, claiming that the new institution was a "vacuum" for state funds and he was being pressured to fill staff positions with political appointees. His successor, Susan Mogerman, was well liked and instrumental in shepherding the project but was also run off in the political jockeying following the museum's dedication. Conflicts emerged, too, between Smith and Rogers over interpretation, casting a shadow that marred some of the media coverage and left a mark on the museum's future direction. Smith also grew increasingly frustrated with navigating Illinois's bureaucracy, which, in turn, inspired dissent among some library and museum staff. "I don't think he ever really got it," recalled Blanchette of Smith's relation to the state system, "or if he got it, he just refused to … play the game." Director of Education Erin Bishop noted how this affected daily operations, with requests for even the smallest supplies seeming nearly impossible and negative interactions with leadership frequent. "You never knew if you had any money," and "you had to ask permission for everything you did," she recalled. "It was just very stifling." Turnover soon became a fact of life at ALPLM, with Smith departing after only a year (and reportedly wanting to leave sooner) and a steady wave of resignations and firings at all levels continuing since.⁴³

Anxiety about the collection also reemerged, as ALPLM's planners, administrators, and historians began worrying they lacked objects significant enough to continually attract visitors. Collector Louise Taper had enjoyed a long relationship with Hickey and his successor Schwartz, and, just as her objects were included in the "Last Best Hope" exhibit, so, too, were many on display when ALPLM opened. Most notable among them was a stovepipe hat, which Hickey sold to Taper, that had reportedly been owned by Lincoln. Seeking to improve the collection, Schwartz and Smith's successor Rick Beard naturally turned to Taper and in 2007 convinced the museum's foundation to purchase most of her collection for just over $23 million. The anxieties that inspired the purchase—old and new—were starkly evident in how ALPLM talked about the acquisition. "It is a very compelling response to those who say the museum is a 'Disneyfiction' of Lincoln without a lot of stuff," asserted Beard before declaring, "Now we have a lot of stuff." Schwartz focused more narrowly on the stovepipe hat. "People always ask: 'Where's the hat?' Everyone just expects a Lincoln museum to have one." Questions about provenance arose almost immediately, especially concerning the stovepipe hat, and the enormous debt hamstrung the foundation for years. After over a decade of conflict and scandal, ALPLM terminated its relationship with the foundation before the collection was paid off, resulting in its removal from the museum.⁴⁴

All of which is to say April 2005 was a triumphant moment for Lincoln and Springfield—when stewardship and economic gain aligned to produce something that responsibly benefited both—but ALPLM did not permanently reconcile the toxic potential of these forces. In the end, perhaps Lincoln's legacy is simply too weighty, too meaningful, to be handled effectively. It's certainly a lot of weight for a struggling city of about two hundred thousand people—including its environs—and there must be some acknowledgement that the [End Page 37] margin of error is high. After all, even Lincoln's family could barely handle such a massively symbolic inheritance.

Yet, as stated at the outset, these issues influence public history everywhere. The enormity of Lincoln's legacy simply magnifies them in Springfield, making it an excellent case study for how place, intent, leadership, politics, personnel, and more can shape the ways public historians and their sites tell their stories and preserve their collections. I've left my own experience out of this as much as possible, but one thing I can say with confidence is my time navigating Springfield and the wider Lincoln world prepared me for a host of situations I've faced since and will surely face in the future. Every choice I made had to balance a long list of interests, contexts, and contingencies, not least being that because Lincoln commands such enormous attention, I had to ensure almost everything I did treated his story with adequate care and respect.

I suppose that's the main lesson I'll end with. If Springfield's sometimes rocky, sometimes healthy relationship with Lincoln can teach us anything, it's that history carries heavy, often contested weight beyond our four walls and even beyond our communities. Whatever story you're telling, whatever collection you're managing, and whatever audience you're engaging has a historical context and implications for the future. The fight over Lincoln's burial left lessons for Robert Todd Lincoln and Osborn Oldroyd, just as their fight left lessons for ALPLM. It doesn't seem many of the players in those dramas knew those lessons were out there, and my experience has shown that's still true. They would have been well served, though, to have noted the landmines their predecessors buried—intentionally or otherwise. Careful stewardship, interpretation, and community-building are paramount when publicly engaging with the past, especially at an institutional level, and we'd all benefit from being more mindful of them as we tread these increasingly fractured times.

Christian McWhirter is a historical consultant and currently serves as the historical initiatives consultant for the Lincoln Presidential Foundation. He previously served as the Lincoln historian for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and as editor of the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. He is the author of Battle Hymns: The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War.