Our Abe
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After his family left Indiana in 1830 , Lincoln vary rarely returned. He passed through one last time after his death in 1865. When the funeral train arrived in Indianapolis, rain was so heavy photographers had to later re-create the scene with a fake coffin in front of the Stathouse. |
Even creating a definitive itinerary for the campaign trip Lincoln made through the state in 1844—the time that moved him to poetry—has proved difficult. He spent about two weeks stumping for Henry Clay, meandering southeastward from Vincennes toward the Ohio River and then settling in for an extended stay around Gentryville, a town (named for the father of the madman Matthew) near his boyhood home and his mother’s grave. Stories of that trip have been passed down—of Lincoln waiting out a Democratic mob in Bruceville, addressing the Clay Whig Club in Evansville, conducting a little legal business at the Daviess County courthouse—but the only contemporary account we have is a five-sentence report from the Rockport Herald of November 1, 1844.
Imagine then the problem of filling in the 14 years that young Abraham spent living in a rude pioneer community, where the residents would have had no reason to carefully preserve memories of one particular boy’s growth into manhood. Only after Lincoln enters onto the national stage—about the time he writes those “poetic” letters to Andrew Johnston, wins a seat in the U.S. Congress, and sits for his first photograph—does history begin to bring the man into focus. And as for Lincoln’s exploits in Indiana, history clearly documents only his visit to Indianapolis en route to Washington in February 1861, a stopover that would be tragically mirrored four years later following his assassination.
To get a fuller picture, one might try returning to the Southern Indiana park known today as the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial. Located outside Lincoln City, it is one of the few places where a visitor might hope to encounter the real Lincoln. The park has shaped the Lincoln experience for generations of tourists, and, combined with the work of Weik, Beveridge, and Warren, it succeeds in making real a vanished way of life and resurrecting the story of a man whose own career was irrevocably intertwined with Indiana.
