WASHINGTON, (AFP) - America is honoring its revered and rough-hewn president, Abraham Lincoln, with a year-long whirl of conferences, biographies, and museum exhibitions marking the 200th anniversary of his birth.
Lincoln, born 200 years ago on Thursday on February 12, 1809, is seen by many historians as the most beloved of American presidents for his steadfast leadership during the country's greatest crisis, the Civil War.
Referred to by some as the Great Emancipator for freeing the slaves in 1862, he also managed, against all odds, to keep the fractious American union intact at the cost of a half-million lives lost during the conflict.
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| The 16th US President Abraham Lincoln |
His presidency was abruptly ended when Lincoln was fatally shot in Ford's Theater on April 15, 1865 by actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth.
But a century-and-a-half after his death, Lincoln remains for many admirers part man, part myth imbued with an aura of humility, benevolence and wisdom.
"He's absolutely the greatest president," said historian and Lincoln specialist Harold Holzer. Lincoln hagiography -- always a high American art -- will rise to new levels this year, according to historians and officials planning the celebrations.
In an age when America has been flooded by Obama memorabilia, there is no shortage of iconography dedicated to the man schoolchildren here grow up learning about as "Honest Abe."
There will be dozens of new books on the late president, as well as newly-commissioned Lincoln plays, television documentaries, and a newly-minted Lincoln penny.
The year also marks the reopening of the Ford's Theatre where Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded and the re-dedication of the house where Lincoln completed his immortal Gettysburg Address.
"Before this year-long celebration ends, we will see major conferences on Lincoln from Springfield to South Florida, to Oxford and Belfast, and from Howard University to Harvard," said US Senator Dick Durbin, the dean of lawmakers of the Illinois delegation.
Devotees like Durbin love pointing out that in all of recorded history, only Jesus Christ has been the subject of more books. "More than more than 10,000 books have been written about Abraham Lincoln an average of more than one book each week from the time of his presidential election in 1860 until now," said the Illinois senator, who also is co-chair of the federal commission planning the anniversary events.
Durbin's former Senate colleague and now US President, Barack Obama, also counts himself among Lincoln's most ardent admirers.
Obama, who has spoken frequently about how Lincoln inspires him, has praised the 16th president as a transcendent figure who came to "represent so much of who we are as a people and so much of what we aspire to be."
Obama, who last month was sworn as America's 44th president on a Bible once owned by his idol, often invokes Lincoln and has said he takes heart in confronting the current daunting challenges from the example set by his hero.
Not that there wasn't any controversy surrounding Lincoln. "He became a figure that transcended human experience, but was a very controversial figure, criticized for his positions on slavery," said historian Marc Miccozzi, a former director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, where some Lincoln artifacts are on display.
He was also widely believed to have suffered from chronic depression, and some historians have speculated that he was homosexual. But part of Lincoln's appeal comes from the fact that he embodies the American myth that anyone, however humble their beginnings, can ultimately attain the highest office in the land.
Lincoln bio: “not much of it’
Born and raised in poverty in the Kentucky wilderness, he became a Mississippi river boat ferryman, country lawyer, and later Illinois legislator.
Yet the man about whom so many scholars have spilled ink, penned only a thin two-page autobiography when asked to write about himself.
"There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me," said Lincoln, a picture of unsurpassed modesty.
He was also noted for his remarkable appearance -- six-foot-four inches tall, plus another foot when he wore his trademark stove pipe hat, and a plain but kindly face adorned by a chin-curtain beard.
According to lore, Lincoln grew that iconic beard in response to a letter written by an 11-year-old girl, who thought that it would soften the features of his craggy face. It did, perhaps helping him win the White House, and change the course of history. |
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