A Few Appropriate Remarks

Library of Congress Lincoln Exhibit to Start Traveling This Summer

The Library of Congress has a new exhibit featuring eighteen seldom-seen documents related to Abraham Lincoln. These are on loan from the Benjamin Shapell Family Manuscript Foundation. It's the first time that so much of its Lincoln collection has been publicly displayed in one place. "With Malice Toward None: The National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition" opened on February 12, 2009.

The News Tribune describes the exhibit as "a landmark exhibit of letters, photographs, documents, and artifacts." This includes two handwritten passages from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address delivered on March 4, 1865, one from the beginning of the address and the other from the end. The famous "with malice toward none" ending, of course, is the line from which the exhibit gets its name.

"Also on exhibit will be the first ever public pairing of 11-year old Grace Bedell's letter to Lincoln suggesting that he grow a beard, and Lincoln's reply just four days later; Lincoln's humble acceptance of the 1860 presidential nomination; and his famous condolence letter to Miss Fanny McCullough on the death of her father at the battle of Fredericksburg."

"With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition" runs through May 9, 2009, at the Library of Congress. This summer, it travels to just four cities across the U.S.

I'll be headed to Sacramento to see the exhibit at the California Museum (June 24 through August 22, 2009).

After leaving Sacramento, the exhibit will travel to:

• Newberry Library in Chicago (Fall 2009)
• Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis (Winter/Spring 2010), new home of much of the collection from the Lincoln Museum formerly in Ft. Wayne, Indiana
• Atlanta History Center in Atlanta (September 2010)
• Durham Western Heritage Museum in Omaha (Winter 2011)

Just 20 Bucks for Allen Guelzo's Course on Lincoln

Six hours of lectures about Abraham Lincoln by noted Lincoln scholar Professor Allen C. Guelzo can be yours for $20. Dr. Guelzo is a professor at Gettysburg College, and a guest lecturer for the Teaching Company. On sale through April: "Mr. Lincoln: The Life of Abraham Lincoln."

The Teaching Company brings engaging professors into your home or car through courses on DVD, audio CD, and other formats. Since 1990, great teachers from the Ivy League, Stanford, Georgetown, and other leading colleges and universities have crafted over 200 courses.

Ordinarily, the Teaching Company lectures are expensive: most will cost you a few Benjamins. But the audio download version of Allen C. Guelzo presenting 12 lectures on the life of Lincoln will set you back just a few Lincolns.

From the web site description:

In addition to asking what it was like to know Lincoln, Professor Guelzo explores three themes:

• What ideas were at the core of his understanding of American politics?
• Why did he oppose slavery, and what propelled him, in the 1850s, into the open opposition to slavery that led to his election to the presidency in 1860?
• What particular gifts equipped Lincoln to lead the nation through the "fiery trial" of the Civil War?

The mechanism for downloading the MP3 files is kind of clunky, but it does work. The hassle factor is well offset by the quality of the course and the bargain price.