Americans celebrated Presidents Day on Monday, Feb. 19, 2024. The federal holiday was originally a celebration of George Washington’s birthday, on Feb. 11, but many state governments also added Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, Feb. 12, to the celebration.
If you are looking to find some history and general introduction to the Civil War, then the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum makes for a wonderful weekend trip. Located in Springfield, Ill., it is a bit on the longer side of a car ride. But the drive is an easy one.
The Lincoln Museum is unique from the Truman or Eisenhower Museum. It has one of the best introductory videos I’ve eve r seen at a museum but shows the audience it is geared for. This museum is not for academic historians. Rather, it is for the general public. Unlike Truman’s Museum in Independence, Mo., the Lincoln Museum has very few artifacts on display or lengthy placards to read about the history of Abraham Lincoln and his presidency. It is most similar to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in its narrativization alongside many replicas and mannequins. But the level of funding is very obviously higher for Lincoln.
There are two exhibits worth mentioning. First is “The War Gallery.” The gallery is an interactive screen in a room of at least a hundred photos from the Civil War. The wall is digitally recreated on the screen and the photos can be selected and examined up close. The scans are high-resolution and look beautiful. The captions are lacking, however. Most captions are no longer than a title or a sentence describing the character or scene depicted. But you can tell the quality of the original source through the scan, with the folds, creases, tears and fading of the original reflected in the scan.
The other exhibit is the “Campaign of 1860.” It is a very fun mock newscast of the election of 1860. It covers all four candidates, Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, John C. Breckenridge, and John Bell and their platforms in an easy-to-understand way. There are even cheesy campaign ads for each candidate that smack of late-night, early 2000s infomercials. While the content of the exhibit is surface level, it was obviously not meant for the historian.
At first, I was underwhelmed by the museum. I thought it would be on the level of the Gettysburg Museum or the Truman Museum. Instead, the Lincoln Museum seemed like an inflated version of the Herbert Hoover Museum. There is a lot of spectacle, but very little substance to the museum. But I was not the intended audience for the Lincoln Museum. This museum was built for school field trips and the general public who have never been to a Presidential Museum. There were several children at the museum and the exhibits seemed to occupy the exact right amount of time for them to get some knowledge and some entertainment.
Is the Lincoln Museum worth the trip? On its own, probably not. But there is a lot of history in Springfield. After the visit to the museum, I took a quick ride to his tombstone. And you can visit several historic homes and locations from Lincoln’s time.
