Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday may have come and gone, but the festivities continue at the John Hay Library. "Abraham Lincoln: The Man, The Myth, The Making of a President," an exhibition that draws entirely from the Hay's impressive Lincoln Collection, will be open until March 6.
"Lincoln" traces not only the 16th president's extraordinary life, but also his vibrant afterlife as a symbol whose meaning Americans have been constructing and reconstructing for almost 150 years. With the Obama presidency just reaching the end of its first month, it's easy to see the legacy of Lincoln is still very much with us.
The Hay exhibit begins with Lincoln's childhood and upbringing, featuring photographs of the two log cabins the Lincoln family called home. Though he had little formal education, Lincoln was a polymath and autodidact, training himself in a wide variety of areas and pursuing them with great ingenuity. One of the items on display is a copy of U.S. Patent No. 6,469, a device for improving the buoyancy of boats - Lincoln invented it, making him the first and only president to hold a patent.
As the exhibit progresses, Lincoln's future as a public servant emerges, first in government journals and proceedings from conventions he attended, then in printed copies of his speeches, including his career-making "House Divided" speech at the 1858 Illinois
Republican Convention. The chaotic 1860 presidential election, which Lincoln won, is represented by party ballots, campaign pins and a dramatic photograph of the future president and a mass of supporters outside his Illinois home.
Some of the most moving and appealing items in the exhibit are the manuscripts - Lincoln's telegraphs and drafts of documents, which should be comforting to anyone who thinks his bad handwriting is going to hold him back in life. More than any photograph, these objects bring Lincoln to life, revealing the personal struggles of the man behind the image.
One of these documents is the "Meditation on Divine Will," a remarkable fragment preserved by John Hay himself, who served as one of Lincoln's personal secretaries. On a piece of plain, lined paper, in 1862, Lincoln wrestled with the inscrutability of God, fate and human responsibility, all in about 150 words.
"I am almost ready to say that this is probably true," Lincoln wrote, "that God wills this contest (the Civil War), and wills that it shall not end yet."
The Hay owns a number of portraits of Lincoln, including six paintings done from life, which aren't included in the main exhibition but are on view by appointment in the library rooms devoted to the collection. They're worth the extra effort it takes to see them. The portraits present six very different visions of Lincoln - some soft and pensive, others harsh and formidable. According to North American History Librarian Holly Snyder, who curated the current exhibition, the paintings reflect "the range you get in Lincoln iconography - a little bit of everything."
Snyder highlighted the way the portraits represent, to varying degrees, "Lincoln the person" versus "Lincoln the icon," a theme that is prevalent throughout the public exhibition.
Even those who can't make it to the Hay can still get access to the Lincoln collection online. Through the Center for Digital Initiatives, all of "Lincolniana at Brown" is available on the Brown University Library Web site.
