A Piece of the Action
Nestled in the middle of rural Spencer Country, Indiana, west of Christmas Lake Village, and just off State Route 162, is a small, unassuming bit of parkland. Inside, you’ll find meandering trails; a replica of a 19th century farm (complete with live animals!), and yet another shrine to Abraham Lincoln. And why not? Here, on this plot of land, the 16th President of the United States grew from a boy into a man. Here, young Lincoln worked the farm, built fences, attended school, went to church, was inspired to practice law, and lost his mother to milk sickness.
It took about 40 years for the country to fully appreciate and honor Abraham Lincoln, and boy did they appreciate him! The Lincoln Head Penny was first struck in 1909, the Lincoln Memorial was funded by Congress in 1910. Lincoln, Nebraska was early to the game, renaming itself from Lancaster in 1869, but dozens of counties and innumerable schools, streets, avenues, and parks weren’t renamed until that first decade of the 20th Century.
There apparently was a fight for “hometown rights” amongst several towns and states. He was born on Feb. 12, 1809, in LaRue Country, Kentucky. But his father, Thomas, packed up the family and moved them to Indiana in 1816 (partly to avoid competing with slaveholding farmers, and partly because land titles in Kentucky were, shall we say, flexible). Lincoln lived in Indiana for the next 14 years of his life, and then went on his own, moving to New Salem, Illinois. Illinois would remain his home state until he made his fateful move to the White House some thirty years later. Once “Lincoln fever” struck, all three states & towns wanted a piece of the action, and tried to claim the President as their own. Each of them built their own shrines, and claim they were “Lincoln’s home”. All are now in the National Park System, and hey, the more parkland and historic properties we can preserve, the better.
There is a bit of philosophy buried in this saga: what marks the life of a person? Is a person’s life dictated by the circumstances of their birth? Or is it in childhood, those most formative of years, whilst under the care of one’s parents? Or is a person truly formed in adolescence, when one learns to work and function in society? Or is a person what they made themselves into as adults, through labor or service or duty? The pragmatic answer, of course, is a life is in continual formation, from birth in a continuum through to death, but that seems like a dull answer, as 19th century philosophy goes.
Up next: an exploration of Franz Joseph Gall’s developments in phrenology.
(No, not really, but we will talk more about Lincoln in the next post).
It all started with the settlement of interior North America. The French got their first and got busy. By the mid-18th century they had settlements from modern-day Quebec down the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to New Orleans. They also had spots on the Ohio River and other tributaries. They were in a pretty good position actually, but their settlers were more concerned with fur trapping and trade than continental domination. The Seven Years’ War with England (called the French and Indian War by us Yanks) came along, the French got beat pretty badly and, in the Treaty of Paris, England gained possession of all those forts. Of course, the Brits being the Brits, they figured they could just plop some redcoats in the forts and claim lordship over the lands. The French settlers still worked their farms, collected fur pelts, and paddled up & down the river in trade like they had for a generation, while theoretically under British “control”.
America In Context 