Learning Lincoln

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. ~Abraham Lincoln

This year marks the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Until I went to Washington at the end of last month, I really didn't pay much attention to Lincoln. He was just another one of those presidents we learned about in school, a carving on a coin or a drawing on a bill, flat, cold, and without much interest. Yes, granted, he was the leader for our country in one of its greatest times of crisis, but for whatever reason, possibly for the very reason of those early school lessons in which we were exposed to him and to Washington as almost cartoon-like, mythic icons instead of real individuals, I've never wanted to know more about the man behind the caricature.

When I went to Washington, I had the chance to visit Ford's Theater. We didn't get to take the guided tour, but while I was there, I sat in the lobby for quite some time waiting for the tour to begin (because I was on crutches and couldn't stand up in the line outside with the rest of my group). In the lobby, one of the artifacts on display is the coat Lincoln wore the night he was assassinated. It was made by Brooks Brothers, and it has an elaborately embroidered inner lining. For some reason, that coat was the beginning of my interest in Lincoln.

I started thinking about him getting it as a gift, and what he thought about that eagle pattern on the interior. I wondered if he'd paused when he was getting dressed and run his fingers over the pattern and thought about the war that was just over. I wondered if he'd been happy to be able to go out to the theater with his wife and just enjoy it without the horrible burden of ongoing battle looming behind him like a blood-soaked spectre. In that moment, the cartoonish image of an overtall man in a stovepipe hat became somehow a real person to me, and I wanted to know more about him.

Since I got home, I've seen two specials on the History Channel about him, and I'm also reading a really wonderful biography about him simply called Lincoln. The more I know about him, the more I admire him. He was an extremely complex man, which, I suppose, is probably something of a "duh" statement, but as I learn, I feel both admiration and sympathy for him at different times in his story. It is compelling.

I look forward to continuing my new line of research. I feel that learning about him is a way of learning more about the country as a whole as well, something I need to do. It's time now as an adult to put away the childish understanding of my nation and its past and try to understand it more fully.