ILLUSTRATION by CHRIS BRITT While tourists bustled in and around the museum side of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum on a recent summer day, the library portion was quiet. Just two people perused newspapers in the Steve Neal Reading Room, named after the late Chicago Sun-Times columnist who crusaded against the ALPLM becoming […]
Civil War
Posted inOpinion
Lincoln’s Union problem
The Quartet by Joseph Ellis Bells in Springfield – church bells, hand bells, even cell phone ringers – rang at 2:15 p.m. on April 9 to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of major Civil War fighting. Except, as I explored in part in “Naming rights and wrongs” (July 9, 2015), the Civil War […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Telling tales
Enjoy the spoken word and song during Illinois Historic Preservation Agency’s Once Upon A Prairie storytelling program at the Old State Capitol State Historic Site, Aug. 17. Internationally acclaimed storyteller, author, historian and naturalist, Brian “Fox” Ellis will share Civil War stories in Representative Hall, where Abraham Lincoln once worked. Ellis will recite poems by […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Memory traces
Springfield’s oldest home, Elijah Iles House, has a new exhibit about Camp Butler that includes artifacts from soldiers who were at the camp. A few of the items on display are photographs, uniforms, medical gear, cartes de visite, sword and gun display, and an original mourner’s badge from Lincoln’s funeral. April 13 from 6-9 p.m., […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Civil War artifacts
This week the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library opened its third installment of the Boys in Blue Civil War exhibit. Featured is the Battle of Vicksburg, Emancipation Proclamation, Civil War prisons and prisoners, immigrant and Jewish Union soldiers and Gen. U.S. Grant. Artifacts from the library’s collections and other objects on display include such items as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Spielberg’s powerful portrait of Lincoln the man
Surprisingly intimate yet dealing with moral questions of epic proportion, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is a movie befitting its subject as we know him. At once warm and folksy, at others fierce and impassioned, this is perhaps the most accessible film yet made about the Great Emancipator in terms of presenting him as a man – […]
Posted inArts & Culture
19th century soldiers
An impressive Civil War exhibit fills the first and second floors of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library during 2012. Weekdays, visit the display titled, “Illinois Answers the Call: Boys in Blue.” The vast collection features artifacts such as letters, diaries, sketches, songs and the faces of Illinois soldiers including African-American regiments. Highlights are an original […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Excavating the past
Local authors Kenneth Farnsworth, Dr. John Walthall and Robert Mazrim sign copies of their recently published books in The Museum Store. Farnsworth and Walthall’s book, Bottled in Illinois: Embossed Bottles and Bottled Products of Early Illinois Merchants from 1840-1880, describes and illustrates nearly 1,100 different Illinois embossed-bottle varieties produced before, during or after the Civil […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Blast for the past
The 10th Illinois Volunteer Cavalry marches into formation with the Springfield Art Association to fire up the Edwards Place mansion for Haunted Nights of History Oct. 20-21. Commemorating the Civil War’s 150th anniversary, the brigade is setting up the historical rooms with a light-hearted, spirited look at the past during this era. Rumor has it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rebirth of a rivertown
Walking down the main business street in Cairo, Ill., it’s tempting to think that this spring’s floodwaters of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were sent to put the languishing town out of its misery once and for all. Many buildings along Commercial Street in Illinois’ southernmost town have long been abandoned, left to decay since […]
