In the public mind, Abraham Lincoln’s presidency was the political equivalent of a steamy romance novel. Lincoln’s tenure is idealized perhaps more than any in the nation’s history amid the delicate line he walked within it “” for many, restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery were different sides of the same coin, and a beleaguered Lincoln was cast squarely in the middle of the convergence.
“Now he belongs to the ages,” Secretary of War Edwin Stanton reportedly said upon Lincoln’s death. One wonders if the phrase is less a testament to the nation’s sadness and more an expression of the president’s eternal relief.
“Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation,” the current exhibit at the downtown branch of the San Diego Public Library, features perspectives on the nature of Lincoln’s work. It includes reproductions of rare historical documents, period photographs, engravings, lithographs, cartoons and other politically oriented material. Fascinating stuff on view for free through Nov. 24 at the branch’s venue at 820 E St. “” and not necessarily designed to paint the 16th president’s administration in a completely positive light.
Lincoln was actually an abolitionist moderate as he was elected to the presidency in 1860 “” he’d found it necessary to assert that the Civil War was a fight to preserve the Union and not to free the slaves. Any full support of abolition, he feared, would irreparably damage the North’s effort to suppress the secessionist movement. The best interests of the nation were soon top of mind, and despite the wartime footing, Lincoln proclaimed emancipation that has touched every American administration since.
But some Lincoln-era vestiges aren’t as apparent. Pockets of the immediate postwar South experienced inflation rates as high as 7,000 percent; effective child labor laws were many years away; and Northern financiers were only too happy to lend capital to Southern entrepreneurs at ridiculously inflated interest rates. Clearly, Lincoln’s story isn’t always steeped in nobility “” but one library official suggested that the chinks in the president’s armor bolster his modern credibility.
“The San Diego Public Library,” said library director Anna Tatar, “is pleased to have been selected as a site for this exhibition. The Civil War and slavery are topics which must constantly be revisited in order to help “¦ Americans better understand their causes and most clearly see how their effects are still with us today.”
Launched in 2003, the exhibit was organized by the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., and New York’s Gilder Lehman Institute of American History in cooperation with the American Library Association’s public programs office. San Diego is among the 40 stops on the tour.
Several special events remain on the exhibit agenda, including a film entitled “The Language You Cry In.” The movie, to be shown Monday, Nov. 6, at 6:30 p.m. in the library’s third-floor auditorium, features images, instrumental music, song, interviews and narrative as it seeks to retrace links between African-American and African culture. A discussion on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel, is set for Monday, Nov. 13, at 6:30 p.m. in the library’s Wangenheim Room. A lecture on Lincoln in the minds of today’s African-Americans will take place Wednesday, Nov. 15, at 6:30 p.m. in the third-floor auditorium. It will feature Camille Forbes, UCSD assistant professor of 19th-centure African-American literature and culture.
More information is available at (619) 236-5800 or at www.sandiegolibrary.org.