Abraham Lincoln, in Places

It's Abraham Lincoln's half-birthday today.  This occasion takes me back 10 years and 12 days ago when my family was headed south to spend a few days on vacation in Nashville, TN.  While passing through Kentucky, we stopped at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, near Hodgenville, KY.  The site is nestled among some wooded areas and fields at what was once Sinking Spring Farm.  Visitors can see that spring, and ascend 56 steps (one for every year of Mr. Lincoln's life) up a hill to a structure that houses a replica of the log cabin in which Mr. Lincoln was born.

As the NPS ranger led our tour, he stopped by a wall near the visitor's center, which had some quotations in which Mr. Lincoln described himself.  After reading them, the ranger asked us what our impressions were of him based on the quotations.  As I considered them, I couldn't help but notice how self-effacing Abraham Lincoln was.  The words he used suggested he didn't think too highly of himself.  In fact, he claims the circumstances surrounding his birth would fit a line from Gray's Elegy, "The Short and Simple Annals of the Poor".  Yet from such humility, he rose to become an important leader who played a significant role in a momentous time in our nation's history.

The summer before, in late July 2005, I had another opportunity to get to know Mr. Lincoln when my parents and I visited the Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, IL.  We went there just a few months after it opened.  The depth of the two main exhibits on his life gave so much insight into what formed his character, especially the circumstances of the times in which he lived.  The part about his years as president opened up about all the criticism he and even Mrs. Lincoln received.  The two multimedia shows also illuminated the importance of his story in American history itself.  As we walked through the exhibits, there were signs indicating the location of where certain events being discussed occurred, and their distance from the museum.  While some were nearly 800 miles away in Washington, DC, some were just blocks away in Springfield.  It was really cool to see that how much history related to Mr. Lincoln happened so close by.  And how wonderful a privilege it is to have these institutions and historical sites that evoke a physical sense of place that helps us consider the significance of the history that impacts our today, especially in regards to places and circumstances that shaped people like Abraham Lincoln.