Footsteps: Abraham Lincoln
This is the second in a series I call Footsteps where I focus on a historical figure whose life I’ve traced to a certain degree - traveling in their footsteps. The first one I wrote here was about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and this time around we’re focusing on Abraham Lincoln!
Several of these photos have appeared on this blog before as part of various roadtrips but several of them have not, and there are more sites associated with Lincoln I’d still like to see so I’ll update this when that happens!
Does Abe Lincoln need an introduction? He’s such a fascinating and complex figure that I think many of us are chasing him - trying to figure him out, to get closer to him, to know him. I’ve read two books about him in the last couple years including one where he’s not really the main character that I reviewed here.
So let’s get to it - and I’m going to try to do this in chronological order following Lincoln’s life.
Footsteps: Abraham Lincoln
Hodgenville, KY
The site of Lincoln’s Birthplace is managed by the National Park Service and it’s worth a visit - great museum and monument in Hodgenville, KY. We were there in April of 2009 and I seem to only have a couple photos… The first photo is of the original water spring (still running) which served as the Lincoln's water supply on their farm. The second one is of the monument there (the first Lincoln Memorial built 11 years before the one in D.C.) with 56 steps (one for each year of Lincoln’s life) and inside the monument there is a log cabin symbolic of the one he was born in. Yes those are my kids on the steps lol - they were 9 and 7.
The Knob Creek unit of the park was closed which we were a little bummed about. The best I could do was a photo from the entrance of where Lincoln spent his childhood and where his earliest memories were from. The family had to move here because they lost property in disputes and it seems this pattern repeated a few times.
Lincoln Home - Springfield, IL
We visited Springfield on our epic two week odyssey across America in 2023 and took a tour of the Lincoln home where Abe and Mary Todd lived from 1844-1861 when they left for Washington. The home itself as well as a portion of the neighborhood is completely preserved which is incredible. If you want to see the rest of the photos of the interior of the home click on the original post here from the road trip and scroll to the bottom. Here’s a panorama I took of the home and the street (remember a pano distorts it a bit - the home isn’t on a corner like this).
Here are a few more of the house. The first photo is the vantage point from which the most historical photos of the house were taken. The front corner fencing is where you see Abe and son Willie in the close up in the second photo. We then move to the front walk, the side and the back. The front parlor is mostly original furniture.
Around town in Springfield you can see the old state house where Lincoln served in the state legislature, gave his famous “House Divided” speech, operated his presidential campaign from and laid in state when his body was returned to Springfield after he was assassinated. Right by the state house we see the statue of Mary Todd making sure he looks good, and close by is the building where his law offices were. The law offices were on the third floor but there is a reproduction on the first floor that you can see. We finish with Lincoln leaving Springfield for the last time at the railroad depot (reconstructed to look like the original) to head to Washington.
Lincoln At Philadelphia
Lincoln’s journey to Washington was anything but stress-free. Many weren’t happy with the election result and there were threats of assassination so the route had to be secret and when he arrived in D.C. it was in disguise. But not before a final stop in Philadelphia were he spoke and raised a new 34 star flag with a star added for Kansas at Independence Hall. Here’s a photo of Independence Hall with me in it from a trip in 1989.
Washington D.C.
My most recent trip to D.C. I tried to get a close look at the White House which I’d never done in all my trips there. And this time……I still didn’t get close lol. I was hanging out close by by the Blair House and the authorities abruptly cleared everyone away before I could get a closer look - which I guess happens fairly often (?). Lincoln visited the Blair House on multiple occasions for meetings - the Blair family were close political allies. This was also the house where Robert E. Lee was offered command of the Union Army at the outset of the Civil War which he declined.
Meanwhile I do have a photograph of the White House that I took - from the top of the Washington Monument overlooking a snow-covered capital city on a trip in 1985! Obviously the White House is where Lincoln lived with his family while he was president. Lincoln was actually in attendance as a congressman on July 4th, 1848 when they laid the cornerstone for the Washington Monument, but when he returned in 1861 as president it was still unfinished, running out of funds in 1854 and not completed until 1876 when President Grant authorized federal funding to finish the job. On that same 1985 trip I got a picture completely by myself on the steps of the capitol building as well. The capitol is where he served a term in the House Of Representatives for Illinois from 1847-49, was inaugurated both times in 1861 and 1865, where the dome was completed during his presidency at his insistence while the Civil War raged, and finally where he lay in state on 4/19/1865, 5 days after he was assassinated.
Lincoln at Antietam
I haven’t visited the site of the Grove Farm where the famous photos of Lincoln and McClellan were taken after the battle at Antietam (not sure why I didn’t seek out that spot before) but I’ve been to the battlefield several times. I took this photo from behind Bloody Lane on my last visit a couple miles from the spot of their meeting. When I get to the Grove Farm I’ll update this post.
Lincoln at Gettysburg
So, between moves, hard drives, devices and Legacy Box fails, there are a few gaps in my photos and videos over the years. I’ve been to Gettysburg at least 3 times and I’ve been to the cemetery there where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. We also saw the David Wills house where he stayed the night before, but I’m not sure if I have (or if I can find) the photos. So instead, here is what I believe to be the very first livestream of Pickett’s Charge almost a decade ago! I have no proof that it’s the first one, but when Meerkat and Periscope launched a decade ago they were the first social livestreaming apps (well before you could go “LIVE” on Facebook or Instagram or any of the others). We jumped on Periscope within a week of its launch and quickly built a large following there, culminating in being invited to the Periscope Summit in San Francisco to speak. So here I am in 2015 livestreaming from Pickett’s Charge (it’s the raw feed but you can hear me responding to all the people who joined the stream which would happen any time we went live - without any notice).
But while we’re at it I want to call your attention to the labyrinthine story of the search for the exact spot where Lincoln DID deliver the Gettysburg Address… I came across this as I was going through my own Gettysburg photos. They don’t have proof of where the exact spot is although there are a couple of strong theories and people who dedicated a lot of time and made real progress in the search.
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Ball
Another current building that existed in Washington during Lincoln’s presidency is the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery which at the time was the U.S. Patent Office. The significance to Lincoln here is that this is where they held Lincoln’s second inaugural ball on March 6th, 1865. Today the National Portrait Gallery is one of my favorite museums and here are a couple of Lincoln items on display there.
Lincoln at Richmond
Lincoln arrived Richmond on April 4th, 1865 right after it fell and he stood and admired the impressive statue of George Washington right next to the Capitol Building. That was pretty cool to see.
Ford’s Theatre
I’m pretty sure my visit to Ford’s Theatre which I believe was around 2001 (?) could possibly be a casualty of our Legacy Box transfers of which over half seem to be just…..blank. If I can recover any photos or footage I’ll add it but I’m still including Ford’s Theatre here because I have indeed been there. I’ve also seen the chair Lincoln was sitting in that tragic evening which is currently on display here in Michigan at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
Lincoln’s Burial Site
Back in Springfield we did visit Lincoln’s gravesite but we were too late to go inside the tomb. You can take a virtual tour here.
More hopefully to come - I would still like to get to New Salem, the Soldier’s Home in D.C. and his boyhood home in Indiana for example. I also recommend the museum at Lincoln Memorial University, and I’ll leave you with the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. where I took pics of my kids when they were both 7 in 2006 and 2008. 🙂
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Footsteps! If you you are interested in reading further on Lincoln I have Amazon affiliate links (which I may get a commission on). The single volume bio that I really like by Ronald White is A. Lincoln: A Biography. There are obviously many books on Lincoln but that one and the other one I mentioned before that isn’t a bio but still a cool story of intrigue during his presidency is Lincoln’s Lie: A True Civil War Caper Through Fake News, Wall Street, and the White House by Elizabeth Mitchell. Those are the two I’ve sat down and read.
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