Gov. Bruce Rauner was front and center at the Lincoln funeral reenactment events last weekend, proclaiming his admiration for Abraham Lincoln and his ties to Springfield where, the governor said, Lincoln grew up. This is the governor who is proposing major funding cuts for state history programs and elimination of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. As one local historian points out in this issue (see Letters, p. 5), the success of the funeral reenactment shows that history and the Illinois economy are closely linked. Cutting the state’s already small history budget is shortsighted, especially by a governor who loves the Lincoln spotlight. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in May 7-13, 2015.
