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Editor's Note: Essay on Lincoln Also Honors a Founding Father of Illinois Issues

Dana Heupel
NPR Illinois

We are honored this month, which marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of our 16th president, to publish an essay by one of the nation’s most distinguished Lincoln scholars, Allen Guelzo, the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.

Guelzo’s work for our magazine, while focusing on why Lincoln’s 
legacy endures, also honors another great Illinoisan, the late U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, one of the founders of Illinois Issues. Funded through contributions from our readers, our periodic Paul Simon Essay delves into topics about which Simon was passionate, with the intent of examining their moral and philosophical cornerstones. Simon himself wrote about how Lincoln’s time in the Illinois legislature prepared him for greatness, and Guelzo’s essay analyzes the qualities that made Lincoln one of history’s most-revered leaders once he achieved the nation’s highest office.

I won’t attempt here to cast my insignificant thoughts about the Great Emancipator into Simon’s and Guelzo’s shadows because I only came to learn about Lincoln later in life. In fact, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that when I moved to Springfield 17 years ago, I didn’t even realize he was buried in the city.

I’ve always been enamored with politics and government, and I came here from Indiana by way of California to work for a newspaper in the state capital. Not long after I arrived, I telephoned a California friend and mentioned that Lincoln’s tomb was just down the street. She seemed more impressed to learn that Springfield was the embarkation point of the Donner Party, whose story occupies a significant — albeit gruesome — place in California history. I, however, was enthused enough by the Lincoln connection to begin my own educational journey.

In my defense, I did know before I moved here that Lincoln hailed from Springfield, but I believed the popular myth that he ascended to the presidency straight from his log cabin, not as a relatively wealthy central Illinois lawyer and politician. Despite my early ignorance, I quickly began to learn more about him, often simply through osmosis. In Springfield, Lincoln is omnipresent and unavoidable.

Aside from his tomb, which is a state-run historic site in the city’s largest cemetery, there is Lincoln’s home, which the federal government manages near downtown. Lincoln’s law office, another state historic site, is across from the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln served as a legislator and proclaimed, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The train depot, where Lincoln spoke fondly about Springfield when he left for Washington, is operated as a historic site by the newspaper where I worked. I parked my car next to it every day for years. And a true Lincoln aficionado can even visit his family’s pew in the First Presbyterian Church.

Lincoln’s New Salem, the reconstructed village of log cabins where he lived as a young adult, is a 30-minute drive northwest. And for years, as travelers entered the city from the south on Interstate 55, they couldn’t miss a huge billboard featuring Lincoln’s modernized visage — a makeover that was controversial early on to many purists — inviting them to “Walk Where He Walked.”

Now, of course, there’s the $150 million Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum complex, designed as an attraction for scholars and tourists alike, on which the city pins its hopes for revitalizing downtown. The Springfield Convention and Visitor’s Bureau estimates more than a million visitors travel to Springfield each year to bask in Lincoln’s aura, as well as spend money in hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. Tourism generated more than $320 million for the Springfield-area economy in 2005, according to a state estimate, and much of that can be attributed to Lincoln.

Immersed physically in Lincolniana, if not intellectually, I soon felt compelled to learn more. I cut my teeth on Carl Sandburg and Jim Bishop; later David Herbert Donald, Garry Wills and Guelzo. Time constraints have prevented me from finishing Doris Kearns Goodwin’s A Team of Rivals — it has been a little busy in Springfield lately with a couple of other political figures — but I do intend to. And Guelzo’s eloquent thoughts in these pages on “What made Lincoln Lincoln?” only makes me more eager to venture further.

I harbor no intent to ever become a Lincoln expert. Just as with professional baseball and blues music, I am thoroughly content as a casual enthusiast. But years ago, when I moved to central California, I soon realized I had to learn at least enough about a local economic staple — wine — to carry on a polite conversation. And I now know that living in Springfield and following politics and government, I need to understand more than a little about Lincoln.
 

James Otis, a founding advisory board member of Illinois Issuesmagazine, serving from 1975 until 1994, died December 19. He was 85. 

He received his law degree from Northwestern University in 1951 and practiced law in Chicago. He was appointed to the Illinois Constitution Study Commission before the state’s Constitutional Convention in 1969-70.

Former Illinois Comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch, also an Illinois IssuesAdvisory Board member, attended law school with Otis and says he always was interested in Illinois government. They had been discussing current events in Illinois politics as recently as the last few weeks of Otis’ life.

“He remained passionately interested in politics in the broad sense of the word,” Netsch says. “He was just interested in what went on in the public arena.”

Otis also served on the board of the Chicago-based Better Government Association and on the Committee on Illinois Government, which consisted of members whom Netsch describes as “liberal, good-government-type Democrats.”

We mourn his passing.
 

The above information on Mr. Otis was compiled by Jamey Dunn, one of our new master’s degree interns from the Public Affairs Reporting program at the University of Illinois at Springfield. She holds an associate’s degree from Lakeland College in her hometown of Mattoon and completed her bachelor’s degree at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, with a major in speech communications and minors in journalism and marketing.

Our other PAR intern is Hilary Caryl Russell. Born in Puerto Rico, she didn’t learn English until age 4 when her family moved to the Midwest before settling in Florida. She has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from the University of North Carolina and has worked at several television stations and community newspapers.

Also please welcome our new research assistant, Melissa Weissert, who is pursuing a master’s degree in history at UIS after earning her undergraduate degree in that subject from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Among other jobs, she has worked as a park guide at the Lincoln Home site in Springfield. 

Also helping us is Nicole Harbour, the graduate assistant for UIS’ Center for State Policy and Leadership. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is pursuing a master’s degree in English at UIS.

 

Funded through contributions from our readers, our periodic Paul Simon Essay delves into topics about which Simon was passionate, with the intent of examining their moral and philosophical cornerstones.

 
 
Dana Heupel can be reached at heupel.dana@uis.edu.

Illinois Issues, February 2009

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