The Lincoln Museum : 1990 annual report

THE LINCOLN MUSEUM

19 9 0 A N N U A L R E P O R

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THE LINCOLN MIISKUM ANNUAL RLFORT FOR 1990

lie year 1990 proved to be gratifying for institutions devoted to
the study of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War It began with the
Inaugural Lecture of the Presidential Lecture Series on the Presidency,
the subject of which was President George Bush's favorite president,
Lincoln. Professor David Donald of Harvard University delivered the
Lincoln lecture in the White House on January 7, and this event
seemed to set the tone for the year.

Autumn was marked by the phenomenon of some fourteen
million people viewing eleven hours of documentary television on
the American Civil War. Though there had been in recent years many
signs of increasing popular interest in the great conflict, from the
growing membership of Civil War Round Tables to the excellent sales
statistics for serious Civil War books, no one could have predicted the
popular reaction to Public Television's Civil War series. That a straight-
forward historical documentary relying heavily on the words of the
war's participants and almost entirely on period photographs and
paintings for visual effects, could not only attract such an audience but
increase it over five days of programming astounded the press and
television critics.

FIFTEEN TYPICAL DAYS IN A BANNER YEAR

IWl aturally The Lincoln Museum enjoyed a year of increased
attendance and nearly frenzied activity Out of curiosity three staff
members, Mark Neely, Director, Ruth E. Cook, Assistant to the Director,
and Marilyn Tolbert, Project Specialist, logged their calls and corre-
spondence for the period March 30-April 13, and found that they
answered 59 letters, 33 telephone requests, and 26 visitors' inquiries.
In the same period a researcher worked in the library on a paper
about Lincoln and Shakespeare.

The Staff of The Lincoln Museum (from left to right):
Yvonne White, Marilyn Tolbert, Mark Neely; and Ruth Cook.

At the same time attendance at the museum's exhibits numbered
733 persons (in what amounted to ten working days altogether). Two
personal tours were conducted by the staff, one of them for a group
of visiting Rotarians from Great Britain. On Sunday, April 8, the director
of The Lincoln Museum spoke at the 50th anniversary meeting of the
Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin on the subject of "Lincoln and the
Idea of Total War." In the same period the museum secured the services
of an intern from Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne,
Margaret Kennedy a history major who, in two short semesters of
diligent and tightly- focused work, subsequently catalogued hundreds
of our photographs and produced a special exhibit on Civil
War photography

There was nothing special about the period March 30-April 13 to
skew these statistics. The month of April stood only third in total
attendance for the year. Of the director's forty- five public appearances
for lectures and speeches in 1990, only three occurred in April. March
30-April 13 simply marked two event-filled weeks in a year filled with
Lincoln and Civil War events.

ACQUISITIONS

he popularity of Lincoln and the Civil War is reflected not only in
museum attendance figures and television-viewer ratings but also in
the prices realized for manuscripts, rare books, and other artifacts
associated with the sixteenth president and the war he guided. Like
world oil reserves, the supply of historical materials on the market is
always dwindling, and increased demand only makes natural price
increases unnaturally steep.

The environment for museum and library acquisitions has been
hostile for years. Manuscripts have attained unprecedented values, and
other categories have followed them — photographs perhaps almost as
rapidly, prints a bit more sluggishly, and books more slowly yet.

Thanks to the renewal of a generous five-year program for funding
acquisitions on the part of the Lincoln National Life Foundation, this
institution has been able to cope very well, and 1990's acquisitions
surely prove the point. January saw the acquisition of Abraham
Lincoln's legal wallet, a worn leather pouch with alphabetized accordion-
pleated paper compartments. Inside was a pocket-knife with a silver
blade and mother-of-pearl handle. 'A. Lincoln" is engraved in a small
silver panel on the handle. The items last sold at the famous auction of
Oliver R. Barrett's Lincoln collection in 1952. The purchaser discovered
the knife, not catalogued for the sale, in the "K" compartment of the
wallet — a buyer's dream and a seller's nightmare.

Photographs have figured largely in The Lincoln

Museum's acquistions in the last six years. In

1990 a dealer from Ohio brought in the

year's best acquisition in this category: an

imperial-sized ambrotype of Horace

Greeley in an old wooden frame with

a gleaming brass mat. Lincoln photo

graph authority Lloyd Ostendorf

pronounced it "the largest

specimen of its kind" that he had

seen in over fifty years of collecting

and studying photographs of the period

He further characterized it as "indeed a

real find, a once-in-a-lifetime item." The hey

day of ambrotypes, early photographs produced

on glass plates, was 1855-1860, and this portrait

therefore likely shows the famous editor of the New

York Tribune around the time that Abraham Lincoln was

troubled by Greeley's support for Stephen A. Douglas'

re election to the United States Senate. Lincoln wrote feelingly about

the Greeley problem on June 1, 1858:

I have believed — do believe now — that Greely [sic] ...would be
rather pleased to see Douglas re-elected over me or any other
republican; and yet I do not believe it is so, because of any secret
arrangement with Douglas. It is because he thinks Douglas' superior
position, reputation, experience, and ability, if you please, would
more than compensate for his lack of a pure republican position,
and therefore, his re-election do the general cause of republicanism,
more good, than would the election of any one of our better undis-
tinguished pure republicans. I do not know how you estimate
Greely [sic] , but /consider him
incapable of corruption, or false-
hood. He denies that he directly
is taking part in favor of Douglas,
and I believe him. Still his feeling
constantly manifests itself in his
paper, which, being so extensively
read in Illinois, is, and will continue
to be, a drag upon us.

Abraham Lincoln 's legal
wallet and pocket knife.

Ambrotype of Horace Greeley, whom Lincoln thought
"incapable of corruption, or falsehood."

The rarest book acquired in 1990 was Robert Todd Lincoln's copy of
/;/ Memoriam. Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President of the United
States, a compilation of the general orders about Lincoln's assassina-
tion issued to the army. The volume, consisting of 46 pages printed in
black mourning borders with a steel-engraved frontispiece portrait of
Abraham Lincoln from the Bureau of Engraving, was put together in
1882 for Abraham Lincoln's grandchildren by order of the Adjutant
General of the United States Army Only four copies were printed, one
each for Mamie, Jessie, and Jack, and one for Robert, who was their
father Robert was also the Secretary of War in 1882, when the book
was published, and the volume may well be characterized as a hand-
some gift to the boss and his kids from the Adjutant General, paid for
by the taxpayers of the United States! If Robert ordered the book's
publication, which seems quite unlikely, then the volume represented
a selfish conflict of interest on his part. Either way, the book tells a
sorry story and all too familiar-sounding today

The year's manuscript acquisitions included eighteen letters written
by two soldiers in the 100th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Solomon
Barnes and John Sutton, along with a photograph of this sturdy pair
in uniform. As an Indiana institution. The Lincoln Museum naturally
takes a special interest in Indiana's role in the Civil War Our nearby
patrons expect to find research materials on Indiana in the Civil War
here, and a program has been under way for several years to acquire
Indiana soldiers' letters and diaries as well as printed regimental
histories of Indiana units.

A particularly charming manuscript acquisition was a copy of James
Whitcomb Riley's poem, Lincoln, written in the Lloosier poet's hand.

Art works added to the collection this year included an oil portrait
of Lincoln's private secretary and biographer, John G. Nicolay painted
by his daughter A related acquisition was a handsome photograph of
Nicolay sitting with his daughter in an artist's studio in the 1880s.

NEW NAME, NEW LOOK

Ithough the times have been good in terms of public interest in
our subject, an institution, even one devoted to study of a historical
figure, must take care to keep up with the times. This year we became
"The Lincoln Museum," a familiar name by which most people have
called the place through the sixty-one years during which it labored
under different official names: the Lincoln Historical Research Founda-
tion, the Lincoln National Life Foundation, the Lincoln Library and
Museum, or the Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum.

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Tintype of Solomon Barnes
and John Sutton, Civil War
soldiers from Indiana.

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John G. Nicolay in an oil portrait
by his daughter Helen.

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James Whitcomb Riley^'s

poem "Lincoln," uritten on the

back oj apiece oj the poet's stationary.

To mark the change the institution also adopted its first official
logo: a black top hat in a gold frame. Readers can view it on the back
cover of this report — and soon also on our letterhead and on our
other publications.

Tlie museum still feels strongly its indebtedness to the first director,
Louis A. Warren. The research library is now called The Louis A. Warren
Library of Lincolniana. Warren served as director from 1928 to 1956,
purchased the original library collection back in 1929, and wrote
important books himself This seems an especially appropriate area in
which to honor his contributions to the Lincoln field.

AWARD

he Corporate Communications department of Lincoln National
Corporation provided indispensable aid in developing the new logo
and in other related museum programs. That work typifies the high
level of support given the museum over the years by Lincoln National
Corporation. It provides the operating budget, the physical home,
and through its Foundation, the acquisitions funds for The Lincoln
Museum. In September the American Association for State and
Local History recognized this contribution by giving Lincoln National
Corporation its Award of Merit "for lasting commitment to the support
and development of The Lincoln Museum."

R. GERALD McMURTRY LECTURE

LHJn May 24th John T Hubbell, Professor of History at Kent State
University, Director of the Kent State University Press, and Editor of
Civil War History, delivered the thirteenth annual R. Gerald McMurtry
Lecture. The subject was "War and Freedom and Abraham Lincoln." For
the third year in a row attendance exceeded 140 (and the seating
capacity of the lecture room). The 1989 lecture, Robert W Johannsen's
Lincoln and the South in 1860, is now available in printed form. Six
other lectures are still available as pamphlets: Don E. Fehrenbacher,
The Minor Affair: An Adventure in Forgery and Detection (1979);
Harold M. Hyman, Lincoln's Reconstruction: Neither Failure of Vision
nor Vision of Failure (1980); Robert V Bruce, Lincoln and the Riddle
of Death (1981); Ralph Geoffrey Newman, Preserving Lincoln for the
Ages: Collectors, Collections, and Our Sixteenth President {\^^i^\ Frank
E. Vandiver, The LongLoom of Lincoln (1986); and John Y Simon,
Liouse Divided: Lincoln and LLis Father (1987).

These lectures honor the work of Louis Warren's successor, R. Gerald
McMurtry who directed the museum's operations from 1956 to 1972
and who died on October 29, 1988.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

his report goes to press three weeks before the end of the year,
but museum attendance reached 13,891 by that time. Attendance has
climbed gradually since the disastrous oil embargo of the 1970s greatly
diminished the use of school buses for "field trips."

Special exhibits have helped to rebuild visitation. Each year The
Lincoln Museum provides small exhibits and special publications for
the December holiday season, for Black History Month, and for three
Fort Wayne festivals: Germanfest, Three Rivers Festival, and the Johnny
Appleseed Festival. Each event offers a special challenge for a Lincoln
institution whose greatest strength lies in its holdings in books,
manuscripts, photographs, and prints. Such materials do not lend
themselves readily to parades, street fairs, or crafts demonstrations.
The Christmas season presents an extra problem. Abraham Lincoln
often worked on Christmas Day, a holiday that did not have the signifi-
cance in the nineteenth century that it has today To provide a holiday
exhibit without distorting the historical record (or seeming Scrooge-
like to the modern public) requires ingenuity In 1990 the museum
featured highlights from a decade of collecting, 1890-1990, putting the
emphasis more on the New Year than on the Christmas holiday.

It is no secret that the power of Lincoln's image in America's black
communities decreased considerably in the late 1960s. Just at the time
some people in the civil rights movement were saying that Lincoln did
not go far enough fast enough on race issues, the tragic murder of
Martin Luther King, Jr, accelerated Dr King's rise to symbolic leader-
ship. Lincoln was nevertheless vitally involved in black history, and
The Lincoln Museum carefully notes that involvement each year with
an exhibit featuring photographs and prints showing Lincoln's
complex relationship to black history
in the LJnited States.

Germanfest does not offer the problems
it might appear to at first blush, because
Lincoln is an international figure — and
because the largest foreign-speaking
segment of the American electorate in the
middle of the nineteenth century spoke
German. Therefore, a substantial number
of Lincoln items were printed in German.
In the Three Rivers Festival, the museum
provided a parade entry and for the Johnny
Appleseed Festival it provided sets of
Lincoln's works to be given away by lottery

"Welcome Home," a Chicago print that formed part
of the special exhibit for Black History Month.

SCHOLARSHIP

he Lincoln Museum continues its emphasis on Lincoln
scholarship. Researchers this year worked on Lincoln's image in the
American mind; on Anson Henry, Lincoln's physician and political
associate; on the trial of Lincoln's assassins; on women abolitionists in
Indiana; on Abraham Lincoln's legal practice; on Lincoln bibliography;
and on ethnic images in engravings, lithographs, and cartoons — to
mention a few

Tlie library provides inspiration for visiting researchers and staff
members alike. The monthly bulletin, Lincoln Lore, featured the
writing of Sarah McNair Vosmeier before she left to work on the
Journal of American History 2ind to finish her Ph.D. in history
Matthew Noah Vosmeier, like his wife Sarah also a graduate student
in history at Indiana University now writes most of the issues of the
bulletin. Its circulation stands at 5,789.

The museum's director, Mark Neely has seen several projects reach
publication this year Oxford University Press published his book The
Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties in November In
the previous month Doubleday brought out 77?^ Lincoln Family
Album, based on photographs in The Lincoln Museum's collections,
with commentary by Neely and coauthor Harold Holzer Holzer, with
whom Neely frequently collaborates, aided Governor Mario
M. Cuomo in producing Lincoln on Democracy also published in the
autumn, by Harper Collins. One of the book's essays introducing
selections from Lincoln's works was written by Neely. Fulfilling a
promise made by Governor Cuomo to Solidarity Movement teachers
visiting from Poland, the work was simultaneously
published in Poland as Lincoln o Demokracji
The world appears to be changing rapidly,
but Abraham Lincoln still remains a figure
of international political importance.

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Book: "Lincoln O Demokracji."