Abe Lincoln’s fourth trip to Indianapolis

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Side-by-side exhibits to open Feb. 12

Abraham Lincoln visited Indianapolis in September 1859 to deliver a speech in his campaign for the U.S. presidency, then returned in February 1861 as president-elect during the ceremonial trip to Washington, D.C., for his

The relationship between President Abraham Lincoln and his son, “Tad,” is obvious in this photograph taken Feb. 5, 1864, by Alexander Gardner. This image, an imperial photographic print from a glass plate negative, was one of five the president sat for on that day. Those were the last posed photographs taken of President Abraham Lincoln. This artifact is one of hundreds to be seen in the Indiana State Museum’s “With Charity for All” exhibit opening Feb. 12 in concert with “With Malice Toward None,” the traveling exhibit of the Library of Congress. The chair in which Lincoln is sitting is part of the “With Charity for All” exhibit.

inauguration.

His next visit – in April 1865 – would be a significantly more somber event: His funeral cortege, when the people of Indiana, as many as 50,000 of them, paid homage to “our martyred president” who lay in state at the Indiana State Capitol.

Lincoln will return once more – at least in spirit – on Friday, Feb. 12, with the opening of what R. Dale Ogden calls the most comprehensive museum exhibition done anywhere in the country on the man historians believe is the most important American president in history.

“For Lincoln enthusiasts, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” said Ogden, chief curator of cultural history at the Indiana State Museum, where not one, but two, exhibits will open on that day, the 201st anniversary of Lincoln’s birth:

– “With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition,” mounted by the Library of Congress and making the fourth of six stops in Indianapolis as part of the year-long commemoration of Lincoln’s birth.

– “With Charity For All: The Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection,” an exhibit mounted by the Indiana State Museum, which last year became the permanent home of the massive collection of Lincoln artifacts maintained for many years by the former Fort Wayne-based company known as Lincoln National Life Insurance Co.

The two exhibits will complement each other. The Library of Congress exhibit, Ogden said, focuses on “Abraham Lincoln the leader, Lincoln the world leader – Big A, Big L. Our collection will focus on Lincoln the man, Lincoln the father, the husband, the law partner, the friend. It will also tell the story of President Lincoln the incredibly indulgent father, as well as the story of his strained relationship with his own father and his somewhat distant relationship with his oldest son, Robert, who was in college by the time Lincoln went to the White House.

“With the two collections,” Ogden said, “you really get a much more comprehensive figure” than viewing either exhibition separately.” The dual exhibits will run through April 11 – although “With Charity for All” will continue solo through July 25.

“With Malice Toward None” will bring to Indianapolis several truly memorable artifacts of the American saga: the final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, handwritten copies of Lincoln’s first and second inaugural addresses, and Lincoln’s handwritten poem, “My Childhood Home I See Again.” (Because it is about Indiana, the poem is making its only appearance in the traveling “With Malice Toward None” tour at the Indiana State Museum.)

The Indiana State Museum’s “And Charity for All,” however, will be rich with artifacts of its own, including a signed copy of the 13th Amendment; the Lincoln family photo album; Lincoln’s own framed photos of his two beloved sons, Willie and Tad; photos of his older son, Robert; and toys played with by the children themselves.

“And Charity for All,” in fact, will feature about 200 artifacts gleaned from what are thousands of items in the Lincoln Financial Foundation collection. How that collection came to be in the hands of the Indiana State Museum is a vital part of the story.

It began when Lincoln National Life was bought by a Pennsylvania-based company which moved the headquarters to Philadelphia. The headquarters of the Lincoln Financial Foundation remained in Fort Wayne – but gone were the funds necessary to operate the kind of museum the expansive Lincoln collection deserved.

The competition for the collection – valued at $20 million – was predictably intense, with such entities as the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives, and museums in Springfield, Ill., and Gettysburg, Pa., in the hunt. In all, there were 40 proposals.

“We thought we started out as a decided underdog,” Ogden said. “We were in some pretty fast company.”

The Indiana State Museum’s advantage: It would maintain the Fort Wayne artifacts as a dedicated collection of its own – not blended into a larger Lincoln collection as would have happened at those larger institutions. (In fact, the collection will be displayed periodically in the renamed Lincoln Financial Foundation Gallery, which is replacing what was called “Tomorrow’s Indiana,” an exhibit which never reached its full potential and has been shut down. The new gallery will give the museum a chance to display more of its huge collection, including occasional viewing of the Lincoln collection.)

Among other factors, Ogden said: The collection would stay in Indiana, and the executives from Philadelphia on their visit here were hugely impressed not only with the Indiana State Museum but with Downtown Indy as well.

Finally, a partnership with the Allen County Public Library paid dividends as well. The Fort Wayne organization is the nation’s third largest genealogical archives, with the ability to place much of the collection on-line. Because of that, the library will house such items as photos and news clippings, while the three-dimensional artifacts will stay at the museum.

“We put together an extraordinary proposal,” Ogden said, passing much of the credit to Susannah Koerber of the Indiana State Museum Foundation. As a result, “we own the whole collection on behalf of the people of Indiana.” In hindsight, Ogden said, “we had some things going for us we didn’t appreciate – and then we did a really good job.”

Now, the challenge is to live up to the expectations. Ogden has been busy preparing the text for the major exhibit. He and the rest of the staff at the Indiana State Museum are ready. “If as an historian you’re not inspired by the chance to write 15,000 words on the life of Abraham Lincoln,” he said, “you really do need to think about another line of work.”

The problem, he added, “is there was about three years of work condensed into less than nine months” sorting through the thousands of sculptures, works of fine art, prints and lithographs, pieces of sheet music and countless other types of artifacts.

“On one hand, it’s easy because there’s so much material,” Ogden said. “But it’s also hard because it’s difficult to get a handle on the man, to separate the mythology. We want to convey his stretch, the impact he had – but that can be difficult without falling into the ‘legend’ trap.”

There is no shortage of mythology. Included in the Fort Wayne collection are such items as a splinter-sized piece of wood bearing a notation that it was part of the table which held the slain body of assassin John Wilkes Booth. And two pieces of blood-stained dress which someone believed to be worn by Laura Keene, the star of “Our American Cousin” who raced to from the Ford’s Theater stage to cradle the wounded president’s body.

The dress is provably bogus, and the wood may also be a fake, Ogden said. But, for the first time in his 25 years as a state museum curator, Ogden is willing to put potential fakes on display. “The fact that they may not be real doesn’t matter, because it’s part of the mythology.” The artifacts are evidence of the nation’s devotion to its slain president – comparable to the medieval hucksters selling splinters of wood they claimed came from the cross of Jesus Christ.

Not that there aren’t more truly significant pieces in the Fort Wayne collection, which Ogden called “the premier acquisition this museum has ever made.” He said the collection contains about a hundred objects, any one of which would be the museum’s best acquisition of the year.

“And there are ten to twelve objects – any one of them is the best the museum has ever collected.”

- Bill Brooks