Can you spot the difference between the Lincolns and The Lads? I bet you can’t.

16 | Abraham Lincoln (1861 - 1865)

Visited on January 18, 2025.

The Plan

Illinois is flat. Like, “a piece of paper with some trees sticking out of it” flat. (I was never great at metaphors.) It’s so flat that on a good day, the 350-foot-tall Hilton hotel in Springfield can be seen from deceptively far away. At the foot of the Hilton (and in the surrounding area) about a half-dozen sites revolve around not just one of the U.S.’s most famous presidents, but one of its most famous people. 

Abraham Lincoln. 16th president. Top hat and beard guy.

We (a couple of The Lads and I) went in January to kick off my presidents’ tour. We planned to visit the following sites, all in Springfield, Illinois:

These are within a few blocks of each other, but I also wanted to stop by:

Given later events, we only got to the library-museum. Technically, just the museum. I’ll explain later.

The library. We didn’t go here.

The museum. We did go here.

The Place

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum is big. The outside is a stone-and-blue-glass structure that, as a kid, I pretended was a UFO that had landed on the street corner. Hurrying inside from the January chill, we bought tickets in the lobby and went down a long hall into the Rotunda.

The Rotunda is a colossal circular room, lit by a skylight. It enters into two interactive theaters, and the museum itself in two parts:

  • Lincoln’s early life, country lawyer, and politician - and the uptick in slavery and rise of a national conflict. You enter through a model of his childhood log cabin.

  • Lincoln’s presidency through the Civil War, resulting in his assassination and funeral. You enter through a two-story facade of the White House.

And you walk through all of it. Life-size figures and dioramas take you through the whole way. As a kid, I thought it was the coolest museum ever. As an adult, having heard a bit of controversy from a few museum purists on how theatrical the museum is (because it is theatrical), I was curious to see how this place held up. 

I’m thrilled to report it still does! The reproductions, mannequins, etc, don’t give an ounce of poor taste. The two informational theatre productions (one of which I still can’t wrap my head around) use cutting-edge technology to cultivate fascination before and during the walk through. The museum itself - specifically, the reproductions - not only brings the historical periods new life, but sets the tone in a rare way.

The cabin you walk into sets a tone of quiet before the storm. (Even if you know almost nothing about Lincoln, you know his life wasn’t all peaceful skies, right?) Disgust, tension, pity at Lincoln’s attempt at a peaceful life are presented in (seemingly) living color, in the first room.

The 1860 election - an election where the country was being pushed in about four different directions - is presented in modern-day news coverage, with the help of the late, great Tim Russert. It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a museum. (Also, Lincoln obviously won the election. Do I need to say that?)

Now, this isn’t a blog about Lincoln’s life. I can’t do a better job than the whole friggin’ bookshelves people have written about him, and I don’t plan to. 

What I will say is that the Democratic Southern states were so pro-slavery they hated their own party’s candidate (Stephen Douglas) because he wasn’t pro-slavery enough. 

I’ll also say that Lincoln was a Republican, a party that was founded on abolition - anti-slavery. (The Republican Party was teenaged at the time.) 

And I’ll say that before he even stepped into the presidency, the thought of him as President was so controversial that South Carolina (one of the states mentioned above) took off from the United States. Like, up and left. Said, “We’re making our own country.” The nation was shocked. Could you do that? 

Turns out, the answer was yes. When Lincoln took office, seven states were now the Confederate States of America, and a month after Lincoln stepped his size-14 feet into the White House, South Carolina rebels attacked a U.S. fort in the state. This led to Lincoln calling in thousands of federal troops, which led to skirmishes, which to four more states seceding, which led to Lincoln doing some stuff that we still aren’t sure how legal it was, which led to battles, which led to Lincoln doing some stuff we’re fairly sure wasn’t legal to pass the Emancipation Proclamation and Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. 

Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

You know what the difference is between those two photos? Two percent of the nation dying in four years.

The White House section of the museum starts - starts - with a list of political cartoons of Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd, and we all owe her an apology for blaming her depression solely on insanity. (Call it a hunch, but I feel like losing two sons and being called a pig and a demon by the media might’ve had something to do with it.) From there you pass through the White House kitchen, Cabinet Room, a few dioramas of things getting progressively more grim, ending with a big day-by-day video map of the Civil War - where the battles happened, and how many deaths. 

And finally, it ends! You turn a corner and see a man peeking through a door. The sounds of a play carry in the background.

The full tour ends in a dark half-rotunda with Lincoln’s casket in the middle, dressed in full funeral garb. It’s quiet. You walk back out into the Rotunda you came in on, and something feels off. You’re not sure what it is - it’s not quite like being at a funeral, but it’s a long, heavy moment you know you shouldn’t shrug off. After a while, though, it hits you - Abraham Lincoln may have really been the most important, most necessary person in our history. And he was, but only because the situation he walked into may have been the most important event in our history. It needed him - maybe it couldn’t have worked out with anyone else.

As we left, I got to wondering - did he have any other choice? By the time we left, I was getting a big theme of personal life vs duty - there was a huge part of him who was romantic, wanted to be a dad and a country lawyer, settle down and enjoy life at his own pace. And then there was the other part of him, the part that saw a slave auction on a riverboat as a kid and couldn’t not feel a certain way, the fresh lawyer who had to say something about the lynchings of Francis McIntosh and Elijah Loveloy (what? You don’t know about them?), the weary past-his-prime parent who woke up one day as president and decided to break the law to change the supreme law of the nation because damn it, keeping this place together is good, but not at the cost of all these people, right? He couldn’t just not do something, right?

Anyway, it’s as much a Civil War museum as it is a Lincoln museum, and war museums are never the most cheerful.

Abraham Lincoln in 1865.

Now, we had a plan to get to all the other places on that list up there, but when we got back to our parking garage…the doors were shut. We circled the block trying to get in. Nothing. The place was locked - on a Saturday morning. No one was picking up the phone. Eventually, another of The Lads was willing to drive the 90 minutes to come pick us up, and I’d just come back on Monday to grab my car. After lunch at a shockingly good local pizza place, we hurried over to the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, several city blocks where Lincoln and his neighbors’ houses were preserved in uncanny detail. (Except, you know, the dioramas inside.) We’d have loved to do some more exploring, but it was hitting a balmy 15 degrees outside, so we holed up in a microbrewery and waited for the fourth Lad to show up.

When the fourth Lad picked us up, he drove us by the parking garage doors - just in case the doors were up. And they were up! I jumped out of the car like Van Diesel, shot down the ramp, whipped my car around and, if you’re paying close attention, did not drive out the entrance ramp. That’d be unsafe.

Anyway, I’ll be making a return trip here to round out Lincoln. I can cross him off the list, but there’s just too much else there to ignore.

Where Was He At My Age?

Man was 28 in 1837. He’d started a few failed businesses, moved to Springfield a year ago to practice law, and had been a member of the Illinois House of Representatives for a few years. (Thankfully for my own love life, he also hadn’t seemed to have much luck yet.)

Favorite Food?

Chicken Fricassee. (I don’t know what what it is, either.) Also, supposedly apple pie.

Where Else To Go: