Lincoln Presidential Museum: An Immersive Experience

Scott: 00:00:00

So I'm going to lead off with another bad joke.

Jenn: 00:00:01

Oh goodness, did we get a review?

Jenn: 00:00:03

Is it a Lincoln joke?

Jenn: 00:00:04

Give me your best Lincoln joke.

Scott: 00:00:07

Oh, this is definitely not my best.

Scott: 00:00:08

This was the first super lame dad joke I could find on the internet.

Scott: 00:00:12

Something to do with Lincoln logs or something?

Scott: 00:00:13

So while walking to the Capitol building with some members of

Scott: 00:00:18

Congress, Lincoln picked up a crumpled piece of paper off the ground and

Scott: 00:00:23

he dusted off the note, read it, laughed to himself, and that was it.

Scott: 00:00:29

One of the men he was walking with.

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Asked Lincoln to share the humorous contents with the

Scott: 00:00:34

group and Lincoln resisted.

Scott: 00:00:37

He just said I'm not one to tell dirty jokes

Scott: 00:00:43

That's it.

Scott: 00:00:44

I did not say I did not promise that that was gonna be a good joke.

Scott: 00:00:48

It was a bad joke

Scott: 00:01:00

Welcome to top of history.

Scott: 00:01:03

I'm your host Scott here with my wife and historian Jen.

Scott: 00:01:05

Hello On this podcast, we give you insights to our history inspired,

Scott: 00:01:09

world travels, YouTube channel journey and examine history

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through deeper conversations with the curious, the explorers, and

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the history lovers out there.

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But, this is Bad Jokes, Good Reviews.

Scott: 00:01:22

This segment, we didn't get another good review.

Scott: 00:01:25

However, comma, hopefully the bad joke will prompt someone to leave

Scott: 00:01:29

us a good review because that's, that's what we're asking for.

Scott: 00:01:36

Jen, uh...

Scott: 00:01:37

We're kind of coming back from the West.

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We came back from Little Bighorn, we came back from Denver, and Wyoming,

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and all that stuff, and on our way back across the country, we wanted to stop

Scott: 00:01:51

at, uh, some place that had been highly recommended to us by a friend of ours,

Scott: 00:01:55

um, It, this was Abraham Lincoln's kind of presidential library museum.

Scott: 00:01:59

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:02:00

Springfield, Illinois.

Scott: 00:02:01

Yeah.

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We stopped in Springfield and went to the, decided to go to the

Scott: 00:02:06

museum and we were pretty blown away by what we experienced there.

Jenn: 00:02:12

So, the museum and library, they're right beside each other.

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They're right in downtown Springfield, Illinois.

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The museum is on, they're both on 6th Street and they're across the street.

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So you have 212 6th and 112 6th and it's the museum.

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Library.

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And we thought, Oh, this will be neat.

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We'll go in.

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We'll see the museum.

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It's a presidential museum.

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And we've been to a couple of presidential museums.

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So we kind of knew what to expect along that line.

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But when we walked into this museum, it felt more like Disney.

Jenn: 00:02:48

Like when you go see the Hall of Presidents,

Scott: 00:02:51

it literally felt like you had walked into a section of Disneyland or

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Disney World, you know, pick your poison.

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Yeah.

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And we kind of walked in and like, we're like, oh my goodness, like,

Scott: 00:03:01

what are we, what are we walking into

Jenn: 00:03:03

here?

Jenn: 00:03:03

And then they're like, you want to watch the movie first?

Jenn: 00:03:06

And we're like, okay, I guess, cause sometimes we don't watch the movie if

Jenn: 00:03:09

we've done the research before we go.

Jenn: 00:03:11

But you want to watch the movie here because it is

Jenn: 00:03:14

very much like a Disney ride.

Jenn: 00:03:17

It's like taking you on the story.

Scott: 00:03:19

It felt like if anybody growing up in the Los Angeles area,

Scott: 00:03:23

like I did, oh, Captain EO with Michael Jackson way back in the day.

Scott: 00:03:27

It felt like that with the hall of presidents.

Scott: 00:03:30

Yes, and we couldn't show it on the video So if you're if you watch the video, of

Scott: 00:03:35

course, it'll be in the show notes of this podcast episode You when you come in

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it's kind of off to the right But you're not allowed to film or take pictures do

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any any of that stuff in there They do show some clips of it on the website.

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Yeah, so that's kind of what that is I walked out of there and I was

Scott: 00:03:51

like, I turned to you and I was like, I don't know how they did that.

Scott: 00:03:54

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:03:55

It's, it's like you have a narrator who comes out and tells you

Jenn: 00:04:00

that a real person, a real person who talks about Lincoln and, and Lincoln's

Jenn: 00:04:05

life, but mostly like Lincoln's.

Jenn: 00:04:08

Legacy.

Jenn: 00:04:08

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:04:09

And like his papers and basically the stuff you're going to find at the library

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and things you want to preserve about Lincoln's life and that there's still

Jenn: 00:04:18

things out there about Lincoln's life.

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They're still finding stuff today and and that the office is pretty

Jenn: 00:04:24

much left the way Lincoln left it.

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You know, they kind of recreated the office there.

Jenn: 00:04:29

And then you learn that the narrator was someone who died in the Civil War.

Jenn: 00:04:33

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:04:33

And

Scott: 00:04:34

we, so we won't spoil the end of it, but it, it, it's seriously

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like the kids walked out and they had huge smiles on their faces.

Scott: 00:04:41

I walked out, I was like, I honestly don't know how they, it was, it was magic.

Scott: 00:04:45

It was

Jenn: 00:04:45

so cool.

Jenn: 00:04:46

The kids didn't know how they did it either.

Jenn: 00:04:48

It really, so if you go.

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You're going to be like, and it does set the stage for the rest of the

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story as you walk through the museum.

Jenn: 00:04:56

So really do not miss the movie if you go to the Lincoln Museum.

Jenn: 00:05:10

So what is the Lincoln Museum and why is it in Springfield, Illinois?

Jenn: 00:05:13

You know, Lincoln's not born in Illinois.

Jenn: 00:05:16

That's right.

Jenn: 00:05:16

He's born in Kentucky.

Jenn: 00:05:17

He's born in Kentucky.

Jenn: 00:05:18

He's born in Kentucky, February 12th, 1809.

Jenn: 00:05:21

And, but his life, his family is very much like these homesteaders.

Jenn: 00:05:27

Trying to make their way and we're actually they stay kind of his

Jenn: 00:05:32

grandparents actually start in Cumberland Gap So we're kind of in the same area.

Jenn: 00:05:36

Oh, yeah

Scott: 00:05:38

For those listening Jen and I are actually as we record

Scott: 00:05:41

this we are in the western tip of Virginia We are in Big Stone Gap.

Scott: 00:05:46

Yes, which is a fun little thing and we've got videos coming out on that But yes,

Scott: 00:05:50

he does make his way from Kentucky up to

Jenn: 00:05:52

Illinois up to Illinois.

Jenn: 00:05:54

And so it's like he goes from Kentucky to He's self taught.

Jenn: 00:05:58

He, you know, his, his, he's the second child born.

Jenn: 00:06:01

His mother dies when he's young.

Jenn: 00:06:05

He helps, you know, bury his mother.

Jenn: 00:06:07

His father quickly remarries.

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He has a very good relationship with his stepmother.

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But then his sister dies in childbirth.

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So he has a lot of loss early on.

Jenn: 00:06:15

And he really does, like, have to make, make his own way in the world.

Jenn: 00:06:20

And so he'll go to like New Orleans.

Jenn: 00:06:22

He will.

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And we depict that in the museum.

Jenn: 00:06:26

They really start with like two sides of Lincoln's life.

Jenn: 00:06:30

They do like his life before the presidency and then during the presidency.

Jenn: 00:06:34

And one of the very first things you're going to walk into is kind of

Jenn: 00:06:36

a recreation of the Lincoln log cabin.

Jenn: 00:06:39

Yeah,

Scott: 00:06:39

that was, it was really, and you literally walk inside.

Scott: 00:06:43

of this log cabin and feels so Disney.

Jenn: 00:06:46

It's like Disney Imagineers.

Jenn: 00:06:47

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:06:47

It's got the mannequins.

Jenn: 00:06:49

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:06:50

And so you see young Lincoln reading by the fire and self taught and what

Jenn: 00:06:55

his life was like on the frontier.

Jenn: 00:06:57

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:06:58

With, you know, in a small one room log cabin where he probably slept

Jenn: 00:07:03

in the loft with his sister and then his parents slept in the main room.

Jenn: 00:07:07

Downstairs, but by night he would sit by the fire and read and so you get to walk

Jenn: 00:07:12

in and see him do that You get to be in the presence of that which is super cool

Jenn: 00:07:17

Yeah, and then it'll kind of take you as he kind of he leaves his family After

Jenn: 00:07:23

his sister passes, he tries to make his way As a clerk he learns business and

Scott: 00:07:29

and they do kind of And part of that as well, they do show what

Scott: 00:07:35

a slave auction would look like.

Scott: 00:07:36

So

Jenn: 00:07:37

when he goes to New Orleans, right?

Jenn: 00:07:38

And they, they show as, cause he did some boat piloting along the Mississippi and

Jenn: 00:07:45

he would have gone down to New Orleans and he would have seen enslaved auctions

Jenn: 00:07:49

in New Orleans and they, they depict one.

Jenn: 00:07:51

So again, with the whole kind of imagineer full mannequin.

Jenn: 00:07:55

Uh, and they do a very graphic scene of a mother being torn

Jenn: 00:07:58

away from a husband and a child.

Jenn: 00:08:00

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:08:00

So basically you're showing the break up of a family and the trauma of that.

Jenn: 00:08:04

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:08:04

And the, and the,

Scott: 00:08:05

it's interesting.

Scott: 00:08:06

It, it felt to me like they showed that it was basically kind of right

Scott: 00:08:10

after the, the log cabin portion.

Scott: 00:08:12

So relatively early in his young adulthood, he experienced this and,

Scott: 00:08:17

and they had a quote from him basically saying like he could never really

Scott: 00:08:22

do that or hit a comment on that.

Jenn: 00:08:24

Yeah, he could never understand how a democracy could

Jenn: 00:08:27

be built on something like that.

Jenn: 00:08:29

Right.

Jenn: 00:08:29

So basically what it's showing you is he's young, he's impressionable,

Jenn: 00:08:39

he's learning to make his way in the world, and he's basically

Jenn: 00:08:42

becoming more world, worldly.

Jenn: 00:08:44

Right.

Jenn: 00:08:45

And so he's seeing things that he hadn't seen before on the frontier.

Jenn: 00:08:49

Um, parents were not of means not enslavers.

Jenn: 00:08:52

So, but he's seeing this for the first time and then he it's

Jenn: 00:08:55

making an impression on him.

Jenn: 00:08:57

So when he goes into business and he starts to learn bookkeeping and store shop

Jenn: 00:09:02

keeping, that's when he really gets into the law and starts reading the law book.

Jenn: 00:09:06

And from there, he's going to become a lawyer, a self made lawyer.

Jenn: 00:09:11

And, uh, and that's when he's going to eventually get to Springfield, Illinois.

Jenn: 00:09:15

He goes to a clerk in Springfield, Illinois, and he

Jenn: 00:09:20

really likes the shop there.

Jenn: 00:09:23

He moves upstairs and starts to practice law in Springfield, Illinois.

Jenn: 00:09:28

And that's why the presidential library is there because the longest span of his

Jenn: 00:09:32

life is in Springfield, Illinois from 1837 to 1861 when he moves to the White House.

Jenn: 00:09:38

So that is why his presidential library is there.

Jenn: 00:09:41

That's where his home is.

Jenn: 00:09:43

And we'll do another video about his home.

Jenn: 00:09:44

That's where his grave is.

Jenn: 00:09:45

So all the things like related to that.

Jenn: 00:09:49

And Lincoln are in Springfield,

Scott: 00:09:50

Illinois.

Scott: 00:09:51

Yeah.

Scott: 00:09:51

And they, and as you kind of walk through the museum, so you've walked out

Scott: 00:09:54

of the log cabin kind of by the slave auction, and then you walk in through

Scott: 00:09:57

his early life, his time on bookkeeping.

Scott: 00:10:01

And the more you learn, the more I've learned about Lincoln, the

Scott: 00:10:04

more I realized how many things he tried and how many things he did.

Scott: 00:10:10

Even as a young adult, really, even before he got into the law and into politics.

Scott: 00:10:16

I mean, yeah.

Scott: 00:10:17

Like you said, he was working on the river.

Scott: 00:10:19

He was, I mean, he was, he worked, he literally worked his way up into,

Scott: 00:10:25

into the highest office within the

Jenn: 00:10:28

United States.

Jenn: 00:10:29

Physically demanding jobs.

Jenn: 00:10:32

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:10:32

He was cutting wood.

Jenn: 00:10:34

Remember he gets hit in the head by the horse.

Jenn: 00:10:36

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:10:36

And they think he died for a short time died.

Jenn: 00:10:37

He probably knocked him unconscious.

Jenn: 00:10:38

Yes.

Jenn: 00:10:39

I mean, and he, he likes to wrestle.

Jenn: 00:10:41

Right.

Jenn: 00:10:42

So he does very physically demand, he works at the farm and then

Jenn: 00:10:45

he's working a pilot on a, a boat.

Jenn: 00:10:47

And that, that's a physically demanding job.

Jenn: 00:10:48

Absolutely.

Jenn: 00:10:49

And then he's bookkeeping, which, uh, in a store, which is not just keeping

Jenn: 00:10:53

tabs of the books, but it's inventory and stocking and putting stuff away.

Jenn: 00:10:57

So he's learning, he's learning business.

Jenn: 00:10:58

And he's doing the physical stuff as it moves into the more of the,

Jenn: 00:11:02

um, white collar kind of, uh, work where it's not as physically

Jenn: 00:11:07

demanding, but it's in Springfield that he's going to meet Mary Todd.

Jenn: 00:11:10

It's in Springfield.

Jenn: 00:11:11

He's going to marry Mary Todd.

Jenn: 00:11:13

It's in Springfield that all of their four boys will be born.

Jenn: 00:11:17

So it really is the place that he turns becomes a man.

Scott: 00:11:22

Yeah, and then from there They kind of do a good job of summarizing

Scott: 00:11:26

Kind of is his home life and his early work life up through the presidency

Scott: 00:11:31

and one of the things that we actually call out in the video when they start

Scott: 00:11:36

getting into his work and political life is How many times he tried and failed.

Scott: 00:11:40

Yes.

Scott: 00:11:41

And how many times he kind of succeeded and it was all interspersed throughout.

Scott: 00:11:45

It's not like he failed a lot early in the beginning and then all of

Scott: 00:11:47

a sudden had a slew of successes.

Scott: 00:11:50

It was like a success here and a failure there and then another

Scott: 00:11:53

failure and then another success.

Scott: 00:11:55

And it was, it was

Jenn: 00:11:56

so interesting.

Jenn: 00:11:57

It was very interesting.

Jenn: 00:11:58

They also really, they depict a moment.

Jenn: 00:12:01

That in Lincoln's life, which is kind of true about his whole life with his

Jenn: 00:12:05

children, where he wasn't very much of a disciplinarian, he allowed his kids

Jenn: 00:12:10

really to have free reign and be kind of, you know, unruly, unruly, and he

Jenn: 00:12:16

doesn't, so they're like destroying his office and they depict that.

Jenn: 00:12:19

And again, in the imagineer kind of setting, he's laying on the

Jenn: 00:12:24

couch reading law papers and his kids are destroying his office.

Jenn: 00:12:29

They're jumping on pens.

Jenn: 00:12:30

I mean, they're,

Scott: 00:12:30

they, they, they make it sound like they were being playful.

Scott: 00:12:33

Sure.

Scott: 00:12:34

Way more than what the average parents would say, like, Hey,

Scott: 00:12:37

don't throw my ink plot across

Jenn: 00:12:39

the office or whatever, you know?

Jenn: 00:12:41

And they said that he didn't want his children to have

Jenn: 00:12:43

adult worries like he did.

Jenn: 00:12:46

So you can really understand that.

Jenn: 00:12:48

And just like you had said, Lincoln will have these highs and lows.

Jenn: 00:12:52

Throughout his political career throughout his professional career and then a

Jenn: 00:12:57

really throughout his personal life.

Jenn: 00:12:58

Yeah, so Edward Robert Todd his oldest is born in 1943 Edward his

Jenn: 00:13:05

second son is born in 1944 Well Edward will die three years later in 1850.

Jenn: 00:13:09

He dies in the Lincoln home in Springfield, Illinois Yeah, so

Jenn: 00:13:13

he and then his His third son, Willie, is born that same year.

Jenn: 00:13:17

So his son dies early in 1850 and his third son is born late in 1850.

Jenn: 00:13:22

So he's, he hits these really highs and lows in every aspect of his life.

Jenn: 00:13:30

And you, when you start to see this about Lincoln, this is the pattern that will

Jenn: 00:13:35

follow him throughout his presidency.

Jenn: 00:13:37

This is really the pattern of his life.

Jenn: 00:13:40

It's.

Jenn: 00:13:41

He hits these amazing lows.

Jenn: 00:13:43

He loses his mother.

Jenn: 00:13:44

He loses his sister.

Jenn: 00:13:45

He finds work.

Jenn: 00:13:47

He gets a lot of promise.

Jenn: 00:13:49

He, he, he opens a law firm in Springfield.

Jenn: 00:13:52

He marries.

Jenn: 00:13:53

He has children.

Jenn: 00:13:54

He loses children.

Jenn: 00:13:56

He gets in the political field.

Jenn: 00:13:57

He loses elections.

Jenn: 00:13:59

He wins elections.

Jenn: 00:14:00

And you just see this perseverance through

Scott: 00:14:02

Lincoln.

Scott: 00:14:03

It's, it's pretty incredible.

Scott: 00:14:04

And it really speaks to the foundation that was laying

Scott: 00:14:08

for him to get him through.

Scott: 00:14:11

The Civil War.

Scott: 00:14:11

Yeah.

Scott: 00:14:12

And so from there, then they kind of, the first inkling you have of the, the

Scott: 00:14:17

next step of the political part of the museum is the Lincoln Douglas debates.

Scott: 00:14:21

Yes.

Scott: 00:14:21

So they should, they should, they kind of depict that with the mannequins or

Scott: 00:14:25

wax figurines or whatever they are.

Scott: 00:14:27

And then they start talking about, you kind of walk out of that section of

Scott: 00:14:30

museum and then you go over into what looks like the front of the White House.

Scott: 00:14:34

Mm hmm.

Scott: 00:14:35

And then we start getting into His presidency.

Scott: 00:14:38

His presidency.

Scott: 00:14:39

Now, one thing we didn't show was, um, and I think you'll probably

Scott: 00:14:43

remember this, that I, I, I didn't get to show in the video was, um,

Scott: 00:14:47

Mary Todd Lincoln and all her dresses.

Scott: 00:14:49

Oh, yeah.

Scott: 00:14:50

In that first section there.

Scott: 00:14:51

So there was a lot of Mary Todd Lincoln stuff that I didn't get to put in the

Scott: 00:14:53

video because it didn't quite fit.

Scott: 00:14:55

Well,

Jenn: 00:14:55

there's, there's two cool things you didn't really show.

Jenn: 00:14:58

You can take a picture with the whole family.

Jenn: 00:15:00

Yes, right, right up front, right in front of the White House.

Jenn: 00:15:03

They have the whole family.

Jenn: 00:15:04

You have the Lincolns, so you have President Lincoln, Mary Todd, and all four

Jenn: 00:15:09

boys, Robert, Edward, Willie, and Tad.

Jenn: 00:15:12

So, you can take a picture with all of, all of them.

Jenn: 00:15:15

And it's kind of, we took one as a family, so it was kind of nice.

Jenn: 00:15:18

And then when you go into the White House, yes, Mary Todd's dresses.

Jenn: 00:15:21

So Mary Todd was a upper class Southern woman and she did have enslaved.

Jenn: 00:15:27

So Lincoln never owned any person or had any enslaved.

Jenn: 00:15:30

Mary Todd had a woman who was her maid dressmaker who was an enslaved woman and

Jenn: 00:15:36

then be kind of transitioned into her, her and helped her dress and she paid her

Jenn: 00:15:42

and took care of her and I gave her more agency and choice about staying with her.

Jenn: 00:15:47

But Mary Todd was a.

Jenn: 00:15:49

upper class aristocrat woman, she was used to having means and

Jenn: 00:15:52

she was used to having money.

Jenn: 00:15:53

So she just well, and her dresses and her extravagant spending of

Jenn: 00:15:59

that was always a big, uh, thing in

Scott: 00:16:02

DC.

Scott: 00:16:02

And, you know, before we start getting into the, the details of his presidency in

Scott: 00:16:06

the civil war and kind of how he was seen.

Scott: 00:16:09

I, as I was doing research for the video and I was pulling up old

Scott: 00:16:13

pictures of the, of the museum.

Scott: 00:16:16

So there's actually some changes that have been made over the years that weren't

Scott: 00:16:19

there while we were, well, when we went.

Scott: 00:16:21

Oh wow.

Scott: 00:16:22

And when, um, I saw a picture of, if you remember in that foyer

Scott: 00:16:27

and go watch our video, you'll understand what I'm talking about.

Scott: 00:16:30

In the foyer, there's a lot, that's the log cabin off to the left, there's

Scott: 00:16:33

the, and there's a white house.

Scott: 00:16:35

It looked like previously they had had a figurine of John Wilkes Booth

Scott: 00:16:40

out front, kind of off to the side, leaning on the rail of the White House.

Scott: 00:16:46

Right?

Scott: 00:16:46

And so they had had him there, it looked like, for some period of time, right?

Scott: 00:16:50

Because he was kind People, there's multiple pictures on the internet.

Scott: 00:16:53

You can find it pretty, pretty easily.

Scott: 00:16:55

So there are aspects of this museum that they've changed

Scott: 00:16:58

a little bit over the years.

Scott: 00:16:59

I don't think that's

Jenn: 00:16:59

good.

Jenn: 00:16:59

It's not his story.

Scott: 00:17:00

Yeah, I would agree with that.

Scott: 00:17:02

But I just thought it was interesting, kind of a little bit of foreshadowing of

Scott: 00:17:05

what you end up seeing at the end, right?

Jenn: 00:17:07

So who they have on the porch now is Granton McClellan, two of

Jenn: 00:17:11

his generals from the Civil War.

Jenn: 00:17:14

And then they have Frederick Douglass, and I think it was Sojourner Truth,

Jenn: 00:17:19

and so they're kind of on the porch.

Jenn: 00:17:22

And then you go into the White House, and like you said, things

Jenn: 00:17:25

happen pretty quickly for Lincoln, and he, again, is riding this

Jenn: 00:17:30

rollercoaster of highs and lows.

Jenn: 00:17:37

He's elected November 1860, he leaves for the White House in February

Jenn: 00:17:42

1861, that's when he's going to leave the House in Springfield.

Jenn: 00:17:46

And what happens not even two months later is the civil war.

Jenn: 00:17:49

Not even two months later, like the civil war will break out.

Jenn: 00:17:54

So he's in the white, he barely probably had time to unpack.

Jenn: 00:17:57

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:17:57

Right?

Jenn: 00:17:58

And, and then I almost exactly a year after that happens, Willie dies.

Jenn: 00:18:05

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:18:06

And he dies in the White House and again, devastated.

Jenn: 00:18:11

They're family.

Jenn: 00:18:13

This is where you get a lot of this depression of Lincoln, the melancholy,

Jenn: 00:18:17

the, you know, the problem with his dreams, like he had problems sleeping,

Jenn: 00:18:21

he's up at all hours, and he's wearing the, um, morning band on his Top hats.

Jenn: 00:18:28

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:18:28

Which he will wear his entire life and he's wearing it the

Jenn: 00:18:32

night he's shot in Ford's

Scott: 00:18:33

Theater.

Scott: 00:18:33

The museum does a good job even before you get to that part of the museum

Scott: 00:18:37

where they show where his son Willie dies is because they walk you through

Scott: 00:18:40

this hallway where and in the video we kind of give it the title of like

Scott: 00:18:44

Lincoln is vilified by the public.

Scott: 00:18:46

Yes.

Scott: 00:18:46

Because there's, there's so much criticism of what he's

Scott: 00:18:50

doing, how he's handling things.

Scott: 00:18:52

And, I mean, we think the press is bad today.

Scott: 00:18:56

It was almost as bad back then.

Scott: 00:18:58

There's all these, like, negative articles, and they show pictures,

Scott: 00:19:01

and, and there's just, you know, caricatures of him that are not

Scott: 00:19:05

flattering and all this stuff.

Scott: 00:19:07

And so as you're walking through this hallway, there's actually voices.

Scott: 00:19:11

They get voice actors kind of saying these things about him.

Scott: 00:19:14

Mm hmm.

Scott: 00:19:14

And then you get up, you know, to where his, his son Willie dies.

Scott: 00:19:17

And so he's been dealing with this.

Scott: 00:19:20

Like you said, his entire time in his presidency, then he has a son that dies,

Scott: 00:19:23

like, I can't imagine what kind of, you know, mental strain that has on a person.

Jenn: 00:19:29

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:19:29

And you see when they depict Willie's death in the room, the Lincolns are, are

Jenn: 00:19:34

dressed to the nines because they had just gotten back from a event, a social event.

Jenn: 00:19:39

So here they are acting as president and first lady of the United States,

Jenn: 00:19:44

coming home to their child who's just about to leave the world.

Jenn: 00:19:49

Just showing you what he is dealing with constantly.

Jenn: 00:19:52

And, again, then it goes into the Emancipation Proclamation.

Jenn: 00:19:57

Yes.

Jenn: 00:19:57

Which we have talked about, which, again, highly criticized.

Jenn: 00:20:01

Did he go too far?

Jenn: 00:20:02

Did he not go far enough?

Jenn: 00:20:04

Even as historians, we debate the Emancipation Proclamation today.

Jenn: 00:20:07

We can have a whole podcast just about this.

Jenn: 00:20:10

Real quick, it did not free all the enslaved, it only did free the enslaved in

Jenn: 00:20:15

local, in, in, in five designated areas.

Jenn: 00:20:19

All those areas were in the South, all those areas were not under Lincoln's

Jenn: 00:20:22

control at the time, and he did that.

Jenn: 00:20:25

to start kind of an uprising.

Jenn: 00:20:28

So when you think the Emancipation Proclamation wasn't like everybody

Jenn: 00:20:31

who is enslaved is now free.

Jenn: 00:20:32

That's not what it was.

Jenn: 00:20:33

It's the precursor to that.

Jenn: 00:20:35

It will evolve into more, but that's not what it was.

Jenn: 00:20:40

What was happening is he was.

Jenn: 00:20:42

He was losing ground.

Jenn: 00:20:44

Yeah in the south and he was losing.

Jenn: 00:20:46

So he had to make a big move So he had to make a big move And so he thought if

Jenn: 00:20:48

this information could get out to the enslaved in the south and they would

Jenn: 00:20:53

realize that they have been freed Maybe they would revolt become contraband

Jenn: 00:20:59

of war which is what they will become they make their way to certain areas

Jenn: 00:21:04

Fort Monroe, and then they in turn start to fight for the north which

Jenn: 00:21:08

54th Massachusetts is a good example of

Scott: 00:21:11

that.

Scott: 00:21:11

Yeah.

Scott: 00:21:11

And if folks are curious, we mentioned Fort Monroe.

Scott: 00:21:13

We have a, I think we have a previous podcast episode on it and video on it.

Scott: 00:21:17

I'll, I'll link that.

Scott: 00:21:18

If you're curious about kind of how this, the, the enslaved in the South,

Scott: 00:21:22

how they would escape Fort Monroe was basically kind of on that border, you

Scott: 00:21:26

know, it's a union held Fort kind of in Southern territory, but it's still union

Scott: 00:21:31

held and, but they would escape there.

Scott: 00:21:34

There's, there's kind of, we have a whole podcast and a

Scott: 00:21:35

whole video video about that.

Jenn: 00:21:37

So that's where that controversy comes in.

Jenn: 00:21:39

He didn't do enough because he's not freeing everybody.

Jenn: 00:21:42

He's not making a declaration to free everybody.

Jenn: 00:21:44

And it, and it was too much because people are like, you don't even have

Jenn: 00:21:49

control of that area that you're staking that you're freeing people for.

Jenn: 00:21:53

So that's where, and again, it's.

Jenn: 00:21:56

big bold letters.

Jenn: 00:21:57

It's criticism because today we think Emancipation Proclamation.

Jenn: 00:22:02

Awesome.

Jenn: 00:22:02

Great.

Jenn: 00:22:03

How wonderful.

Jenn: 00:22:04

But

Scott: 00:22:04

there was so much conflict.

Scott: 00:22:05

And they, I mean, it's so much so that, you know, they're depicting a

Scott: 00:22:11

scene as you're walking through the museum of, of him with his cabinet

Scott: 00:22:14

and how conflicted his cabinet was.

Scott: 00:22:16

And then you go to a whole nother section of it.

Scott: 00:22:19

The Declaration, and it's on both sides.

Scott: 00:22:22

You've got people for, hey, you should have gone further.

Scott: 00:22:24

They got people against, hey, you shouldn't have done it at all.

Scott: 00:22:26

And there's these peoples and these actors that kind of like these, uh,

Scott: 00:22:30

almost like ghostly images, but they're, they're video, you know, talking.

Scott: 00:22:34

We show a little bit in the video and it's really well done.

Scott: 00:22:37

And then it's Lincoln kind of all by himself.

Scott: 00:22:39

Yes.

Scott: 00:22:40

In this big dark room with just.

Scott: 00:22:42

Constant conflict.

Scott: 00:22:44

Yes.

Scott: 00:22:45

On, on, on each side.

Scott: 00:22:46

Yes.

Scott: 00:22:46

And that's, and it's him standing there just kind of, and I kind

Scott: 00:22:49

of put in the video that he just kind of stayed resolute.

Scott: 00:22:51

He was

Jenn: 00:22:52

resolute and he even his most trusted devices, like you

Jenn: 00:22:54

said, the cabinet was conflicted.

Jenn: 00:22:57

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:22:57

And what.

Jenn: 00:22:58

What I think the museum does a good job of, and what we stress here,

Jenn: 00:23:01

is what we think of Lincoln today, memory of Lincoln, history of Lincoln,

Jenn: 00:23:06

is not what Lincoln lived through.

Jenn: 00:23:08

Absolutely.

Jenn: 00:23:09

It's not what he was in the moment.

Jenn: 00:23:11

And it's so much more amazing now, when you think about him now, but

Jenn: 00:23:14

then what he was going through.

Jenn: 00:23:16

It was no, it was much more, uh, contentious than what,

Jenn: 00:23:22

what we even think about today.

Scott: 00:23:23

Yeah.

Scott: 00:23:24

So then, then from there, they kind of anchor on that.

Scott: 00:23:26

They talk about how some African Americans would start joining the army.

Scott: 00:23:31

They go through kind of briefly how he would sit.

Scott: 00:23:34

And so, you know, he to kind of get these semi live updates of what's going

Jenn: 00:23:39

on.

Jenn: 00:23:39

He was very, again, he doesn't sleep a lot because of everything happening.

Jenn: 00:23:44

And, uh, yeah, he really liked to get, I mean, that was the most up

Jenn: 00:23:48

to date information at the time.

Jenn: 00:23:50

And so he wanted to get that most up to date information.

Jenn: 00:23:53

And then we talk about him delivering the Gettysburg address.

Jenn: 00:24:01

So Gettysburg is that turning point of the war.

Jenn: 00:24:04

Right.

Jenn: 00:24:04

July 1863.

Jenn: 00:24:06

And this is where really the South is making its big push into the North, right?

Jenn: 00:24:12

The South is making a big push into Pennsylvania and the North

Jenn: 00:24:16

prevails, pushes them back.

Jenn: 00:24:19

And that's when so many men died.

Jenn: 00:24:23

And so in November, Lincoln comes out to dedicate the cemetery and his speech,

Jenn: 00:24:29

probably his most famous speech, probably one of the most famous speeches in

Jenn: 00:24:33

the world, period, two minutes long.

Jenn: 00:24:36

242 words.

Jenn: 00:24:37

I mean, the man didn't have to say much to make a statement.

Jenn: 00:24:40

And it's so fast that even for the historic photography at the time, they

Jenn: 00:24:45

don't have a very good picture of it.

Jenn: 00:24:47

Because the photographers weren't expecting him to get

Jenn: 00:24:50

off the stage so quickly.

Jenn: 00:24:51

Yeah, I

Scott: 00:24:52

think the only picture, good picture they have there is

Scott: 00:24:54

like of him going and walking off the stage in the crowd.

Scott: 00:24:57

In the crowd.

Scott: 00:24:57

Yeah.

Scott: 00:24:58

I think he, his hat's even off.

Scott: 00:24:59

Yeah.

Scott: 00:24:59

Or something like that.

Scott: 00:25:01

And, and you kind of like the, I think we've done previous videos there, we'll

Scott: 00:25:05

link some of those in the show notes here, but you show that, and I remember kind

Scott: 00:25:09

of having to circle it when I edited the video originally, because it's hard to see

Jenn: 00:25:13

Lincoln.

Jenn: 00:25:13

So today.

Jenn: 00:25:15

You know, I'm just gonna talk real quick about the library is there's a

Jenn: 00:25:19

lot of papers Lincoln, especially his presidency But you can imagine there's

Jenn: 00:25:23

still a lot of papers out there that do exist about Lincoln because he was

Jenn: 00:25:26

a lawyer And so he was writing things and he was signing things but I think

Jenn: 00:25:31

the most valuable writing you will ever find at Abraham Lincoln will be

Jenn: 00:25:35

his Drafts of the Gettysburg Address.

Jenn: 00:25:39

Oh, okay.

Jenn: 00:25:40

And, and again, not everything has been found, and that's kind

Jenn: 00:25:44

of what the movie went into.

Jenn: 00:25:46

Things are still out there.

Jenn: 00:25:48

There are still private collectors of those things, and there are people

Jenn: 00:25:51

who have donated a lot to the Library of Congress and to the library.

Jenn: 00:25:55

So thank goodness we have those, but you never know.

Jenn: 00:25:58

If you ever find a Lincoln signature somewhere.

Jenn: 00:26:02

So it goes pretty quickly from Gettysburg to the 13th Amendment.

Jenn: 00:26:07

It fast

Scott: 00:26:08

forwards to the end of the war.

Jenn: 00:26:16

So the war is over.

Jenn: 00:26:18

So the 13th Amendment happens in January of 1865.

Jenn: 00:26:23

The war is over by April of 1865.

Jenn: 00:26:27

And again, Lincoln's got no time, he has no time to just Was it

Scott: 00:26:33

April 9th Appomattox was?

Jenn: 00:26:36

And then he's at Fort Slater April 15th.

Jenn: 00:26:39

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:26:39

So he has not He doesn't even have a week.

Jenn: 00:26:42

Doesn't even have a week.

Jenn: 00:26:43

And, but I, when we, we show it on Instagram, real quick as a real,

Jenn: 00:26:48

and it's a great part of the video.

Jenn: 00:26:51

And we've talked about this before.

Jenn: 00:26:53

They were supposed to go to another show.

Jenn: 00:26:55

It's one of the first videos we did for Walk With History.

Jenn: 00:26:56

They were supposed to go to another show that night, plans to go to Ford's Theater

Jenn: 00:27:01

instead because they want to see a comedy and Our American Cousin is a comedy

Jenn: 00:27:05

and Mary Todd wants Lincoln to laugh.

Jenn: 00:27:07

They are very amorous at the time because they're like,

Jenn: 00:27:11

now we can have time together.

Jenn: 00:27:13

Now we can enjoy the presidency.

Jenn: 00:27:15

Now we can, and he had just been reelected, just been reelected.

Jenn: 00:27:18

We can mourn our son together.

Jenn: 00:27:20

He was like, let's take some time.

Jenn: 00:27:22

Let's take a trip.

Jenn: 00:27:23

You and I, let's just be together.

Jenn: 00:27:25

And she was very, and they even joke about it at Ford's theater because they go there

Jenn: 00:27:30

with another major and his fiance and they're hugging and kissing and touching.

Jenn: 00:27:35

And the major and his fiance are not even touching each other and Mary Todd's

Jenn: 00:27:38

like, what are, what will they think of

Scott: 00:27:39

us?

Scott: 00:27:39

Well, I mean, if you think about it, they've had this huge weight

Scott: 00:27:43

lifted off their shoulder.

Scott: 00:27:44

The war is over, like the South has surrendered and it's, you're through what

Scott: 00:27:49

you know is going to be the most difficult part of your presidential career.

Scott: 00:27:53

Yes.

Scott: 00:27:54

And

Jenn: 00:27:54

you're like, we did it.

Jenn: 00:27:55

And if you think about them as parents, Robert Todd has just come back.

Jenn: 00:27:58

He was there at Appomattox.

Jenn: 00:28:00

And so he's home at the White House and their other son, Tad, went

Jenn: 00:28:04

to go, took the other tickets.

Jenn: 00:28:06

They were going to, and so they have both boys home, both the

Jenn: 00:28:09

boys that are still living home.

Jenn: 00:28:10

And so they're having this like a great night.

Jenn: 00:28:13

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:28:13

A date night.

Jenn: 00:28:14

This museum does a fantastic job of when you turn the corner,

Jenn: 00:28:18

you see John Wilkes Booth.

Jenn: 00:28:20

Behind the door of their presidential box.

Jenn: 00:28:24

Yep.

Jenn: 00:28:24

And then you can kind of get another vantage point where you can see where

Jenn: 00:28:28

he would jump from the stage, from the box onto the stage, and then run back.

Jenn: 00:28:33

And in that moment how quickly, boom.

Scott: 00:28:42

Yeah.

Scott: 00:28:42

And, and, and was kind of one of my favorite parts that

Scott: 00:28:45

I was making of the video.

Scott: 00:28:47

Because, one, I found a good song that kind of shows the rising tension,

Scott: 00:28:52

you know, and then it goes to, to boom, you know, the, the president

Scott: 00:28:55

shot and the president's dead.

Scott: 00:28:57

And then kind of, again, it, it, it quickly steps on to, you know, from there.

Scott: 00:29:02

They don't give John Wilkes Booth kind of a ton of airtime inside the museum.

Scott: 00:29:07

They don't really kind of bring him up too much.

Scott: 00:29:08

They just kind of show his character a little bit.

Scott: 00:29:11

Yep.

Jenn: 00:29:11

And I don't even think they talk about the trial at all.

Jenn: 00:29:13

So again, if you want to see about the trial and where it took place,

Jenn: 00:29:16

we have a whole video on that.

Jenn: 00:29:17

But what it goes into is just his...

Jenn: 00:29:20

death.

Jenn: 00:29:21

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:29:21

And how the coffin lied in state.

Jenn: 00:29:24

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:29:24

And what it looked like.

Jenn: 00:29:25

And the funeral train.

Jenn: 00:29:26

And the funeral train.

Jenn: 00:29:27

Which was very long.

Jenn: 00:29:28

It was very long.

Jenn: 00:29:29

It kind of took the same path that he took for his inauguration,

Jenn: 00:29:33

because he left Springfield to D.

Jenn: 00:29:35

C.

Jenn: 00:29:36

and he took this big, long trip before he became president.

Jenn: 00:29:39

Yeah.

Jenn: 00:29:39

It almost took the same trip.

Scott: 00:29:41

It kind of goes up basically north up to Buffalo and then traces

Scott: 00:29:46

the Great Lakes all the way down

Jenn: 00:29:47

to Springfield.

Jenn: 00:29:48

Yes.

Jenn: 00:29:48

And you might wonder, why do we always talk about Erie?

Jenn: 00:29:50

It's because we were, we lived in Erie.

Jenn: 00:29:52

We were stationed in Erie when Scott had his CO command, his commanding officer.

Jenn: 00:29:56

Job tour was in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Jenn: 00:29:59

So we're always interested in what will

Scott: 00:30:01

happen The funny thing is is a lot of historical things happened through

Scott: 00:30:04

Erie because they used to build big, large parts of the railroads and trains there.

Scott: 00:30:10

Yes.

Scott: 00:30:10

So they used to build large parts of that.

Scott: 00:30:12

So of course the train tracks would go through there.

Scott: 00:30:15

Yes.

Scott: 00:30:16

And so in that era, the late 1800s, early 1900s, all through the 1800s really, that

Scott: 00:30:22

was actually a fairly significant part because one, it was on the Great Lakes

Scott: 00:30:27

and two, They're, for some reason, that's where they were building large train parts

Scott: 00:30:31

and rail station parts and it connects

Jenn: 00:30:33

Buffalo and Cleveland, which at the time were some of

Jenn: 00:30:36

your two big industrial cities.

Scott: 00:30:37

There's a lot of history that happened through there.

Scott: 00:30:39

So he, Lincoln's funeral train goes kind of up north and traces the

Scott: 00:30:42

Great Lakes down to Springfield.

Scott: 00:30:44

And they bury him in Springfield.

Scott: 00:30:46

They bury

Jenn: 00:30:46

him in Springfield.

Jenn: 00:30:47

So you get to see what the coffin looked like and what George

Jenn: 00:30:51

Washington's portrait over it.

Jenn: 00:30:54

And then that's really the end of the museum.

Jenn: 00:30:57

And I think it really does a good job of showing you just

Jenn: 00:31:00

how abrupt civil war is over.

Jenn: 00:31:04

The union is brought back together and we, then we lose the president who did that.

Jenn: 00:31:09

And I almost, it's, it's to me, it's kind of serendipitous of America.

Jenn: 00:31:14

We talk, I talk about this at the end with no struggle, there's no progress.

Jenn: 00:31:18

He got us through.

Jenn: 00:31:19

That's why people consider Abraham Lincoln the greatest president we have ever had.

Jenn: 00:31:24

He gets us through this, our country, resolves it, and then he's gone.

Scott: 00:31:35

Well, and, and he, we've talked about it a couple times, you know,

Scott: 00:31:38

and then we'll wrap things up, that he didn't try to imprison or execute

Scott: 00:31:44

any of the leaders of the South.

Scott: 00:31:46

Nope.

Scott: 00:31:46

Right?

Scott: 00:31:47

He immediately wanted to move on towards healing and in a leader like

Scott: 00:31:52

that, setting the stage and setting really the culture of what the

Scott: 00:31:56

next steps of the country will be.

Scott: 00:31:59

I think people don't recognize that enough.

Scott: 00:32:02

And I, and the more I learn about him through doing this channel

Scott: 00:32:06

and the podcast and that is, is there's so much forethought in that.

Scott: 00:32:12

Because you could very easily continue that cycle of bitterness and hey,

Scott: 00:32:18

you're not, you know, you're not ours.

Scott: 00:32:21

Like, we surrendered.

Scott: 00:32:22

You, we didn't want this.

Scott: 00:32:24

Yeah.

Scott: 00:32:24

And then if he had continued and like executed Jefferson Davis and if he had

Scott: 00:32:28

executed generals and this and the other, like, It just would have made it worse.

Scott: 00:32:31

Yeah.

Scott: 00:32:31

So it was very smart of him not to do that.

Scott: 00:32:33

He

Jenn: 00:32:34

was, and it was, it says a lot about a character of a man.

Jenn: 00:32:37

It really does.

Jenn: 00:32:37

So it was a forgiveness without malice.

Jenn: 00:32:39

Remember we talk about that at Appomattox and we, we've done a whole

Jenn: 00:32:42

story about Jefferson Davis and Lee.

Jenn: 00:32:45

And I think if he would have executed those men because how much

Jenn: 00:32:48

they were beloved in the South, he would have created martyrs.

Jenn: 00:32:52

And he would have created a lot.

Jenn: 00:32:53

I mean, it wasn't reconstruction was more like deconstruction.

Jenn: 00:32:58

I think it would have been much worse to have these martyrs to

Jenn: 00:33:01

to hold on to for much longer.

Jenn: 00:33:04

Yeah, Lincoln and I thank goodness Johnson kind of took that from him and

Jenn: 00:33:10

was kind of resolute about the same thing.

Jenn: 00:33:12

But it's an amazing museum.

Jenn: 00:33:14

It is

Scott: 00:33:15

a must see.

Scott: 00:33:16

It's so interactive and friendly for kids and plus we didn't even

Scott: 00:33:21

get to go to the library portion.

Scott: 00:33:23

It was closed that day and we had wanted to go.

Scott: 00:33:26

You could, it, if you were in that part of the country, even if

Scott: 00:33:29

you're not, you should, you really should make a dedicated effort to

Scott: 00:33:32

go see that museum and the library.

Scott: 00:33:34

It's absolutely incredible.

Scott: 00:33:36

It feels like going to Disneyland for half of a day.

Scott: 00:33:40

It's incredible.

Scott: 00:33:41

Um, so, so thank you again to everybody listening.

Scott: 00:33:45

If you guys enjoyed this podcast episode, please share it with a friend.

Scott: 00:33:48

Um, we've got more Lincoln topics coming up.

Scott: 00:33:51

We got to go inside of his home.

Scott: 00:33:53

So if you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe because we

Scott: 00:33:56

got more on that coming up.

Scott: 00:33:58

We appreciate you.

Scott: 00:33:59

Um, and we rely on your community to grow and we appreciate you all every day.

Scott: 00:34:03

We'll talk to you next time.

Scott: 00:34:05

Thank you.

Scott: 00:34:06

Transcribed

Jenn: 00:34:07

by https: otter.

Jenn: 00:34:07

ai