Thinkin' of Lincoln
Insights on Illinois' favorite son

by Scott Summers

Here in McHenry County, Illinois, we'll be celebrating the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth during all of 2009.  I'll be writing a series of columns on our sixteenth president.

In my offerings, I intend to veer from traditional biographical and historical information about Lincoln.  Instead, watch for background and nuance and subtlety about the man from Springfield.

Some of it will be whimsical.   Some of it will be wistful.  Some of it will be enigmatic and puzzling.  Some of it will be absorbing and entertaining. 

Much of it, I think, will be new and illuminating for many readers.  A bit of it, I fancy, will be inspiring.  All of it, I hope, will be educational and enlightening.

I welcome your suggestions -- and your help.  Please email your ideas for future topics to me.  And if a few of you are so inclined -- I'll gladly turn this space over to occasional guest authors.

Let's start "Thinkin'".

As it so happens -- Lincoln is out campaigning.  Right now, here in the summer of 2008.  And on into the autumn.  All across Illinois.

Yes, it's the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Re-enactors will be tracing the travels of The Railsplitter and The Little Giant and performing at each of the seven debate sites.

The events nearest to McHenry County will be in Ottawa between August 22 and 23; Freeport between August 29 and September 1;  and Galesburg between October 3 and 5.   Information about the programs statewide is at http://www.enjoyillinois.com/LDR/index.html.

Of the seven debate sites, only one remains in the original -- the Old Main building at Knox College in Galesburg.  Here's a bit of whimsy:  at Old Main, the platform erected especially for the debate ended up blocking a building doorway.  The debaters and the platform party were obliged to climb out of a first floor window in order to reach it. 

Lincoln, of course, had barely a year of formal schooling.  As he climbed through the window and onto the platform, he quipped:  "Now I can say that I have successfully passed through college."

Remarkably, there are two other stories about Lincoln going through windows.

"(L)egend surrounds Lincoln's jump from a window. Lincoln did jump from a window of Springfield's Second Presbyterian Church, the temporary location of the House of Representatives, in December 1840. The motive of the rash action, for which Lincoln suffered considerable humiliation, was to break a quorum when Democrats called for a vote to cripple the Whig-favored state bank.

"No evidence besides oral tradition (claiming at least one notable Vandalian as an eyewitness to the leap) places a similar Lincoln jump at Vandalia. In the Vandalia legend, Lincoln jumped from a statehouse window in order to break a quorum when a vote was called to keep the capital at Vandalia." 
http://www.lib.niu.edu/2000/ihsp0012.html

And so, readers -- my hope is that throughout 2009, you will find this little column to be a window on Lincoln's life.  And I hope that you will enjoy your gazes through it.