Recently I spent a few days in Springfield, IL with my wife at a convention she attended. We had the opportunity to tour both the Lincoln House and the Lincoln Tomb. I'm sure many folks that read this have been to both places, if not, it is sure worth your while to see both sites if you are in the area. Lincoln lived a tragic life, with children dying at a young age yet he is widely considered to be the best president that the US has ever had. A gifted and eloquent speech writer, he came from very humble beginnings to become the President of the United States. The Gettysburg Address and the House Divided Speech are two of his most widely known speeches.

When Lincoln passed away the morning after he was shot in April, 1865, his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, uttered these words: "Now he belongs to the ages."

Amen.
We don't celebrate our American heroes of the past anymore, we try to make the freaks, and evil behavior the norm, and accepted as normal in our nation these days.
Blows me away the changes in our country in just the last 10 years or so.

Some of us still consider him the black republican.

Interested story of how they tried to steal his body for ransom. And how he was actually hid in a basement and forgot about. Actually wasn't finally buried until after 1900. Someone looked in the casket and said he looked the same but a bronze color. The bronze is supposed to br bruising from the gunshot. I watched some documentary on this story.

You were probably limited on time,,, but not far from Lincoln’s home, just a hop and a skip from the old state capitol building,,, is the Lincoln library and presidential museum. I can’t even begin to explain everything in there.. from life size dioramas of different stages of his life, to actual artifacts and interactive stuff. They have one room where it looks like it’s election night and what it might have looked like had there been actual tv coverage of the candidates, their platforms, early election returns,,, really cool,, another one is A room called “ the civil war in 5 minutes “ it has a massive screen that has a map,,, and starts out with secession, then the first shots fired on ft Sumter,,, then you start seeing the battles and skirmishes, territories held and lost, and down in the lower right it had a causilty count for both sides… extremely sombering. My absolute favorite part is over in the museum.. they have a presentation called “ ghosts of the museum “ there’s one part where they have the ghost of Lincoln walking behind the librarian who is also the narrator,,, it’s a 3d holographic ghost,,, not some el cheapo cardboard cutout,, gives you the chills. I highly recommend that if anyone who has never been there to please go. I think it is still around 13 bucks,,, my wife and I have yearly passes,, so we can go there unlimited times on it

We'll go someday

Thanks

Gerald, how was the convention?

See ya in a couple weeks, tell doreen I've got a nice ribeye I'll burn for her.

New Salem is a good place to visit too.