Lincoln's 200th will be 'teachable moment' for Vermonters
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By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: December 13, 2008
MONTPELIER – In order to mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, a number of groups and organizations will coordinate contests, speeches and readings around the state over the next year.
The bicentennial will be celebrated without state money, a necessary result of the current economic climate, said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College and the head of the state committee coordinating the events.
"This entire program of events has been put together without a penny of state money," he said. The program of events begins with an essay contest at Hildene, the Lincoln family house in Manchester.
But despite the lack of state money – organizers had originally hoped for about $50,000 – the series of events will be "far from the modesty we would expect" in the absence of public money, McCardell said.
The bicentennial of Lincoln's birth is "a teachable moment that can re-engage the public" McCardell said, an event made more teachable by the fact that President-elect Barack Obama is about to assume the presidency and, like Lincoln, will appoint a cabinet that includes former rivals.
"It is a remarkable coincidence that in the 200th birthday year of Abraham Lincoln a black person from the state of Illinois assumes the presidency," agreed Howard Coffin, a historian who joined other members of the Lincoln bicentennial committee in the Statehouse's Cedar Creek Room Thursday.
"It is one of the remarkable coincidences of the country that I think will be long remembered," Coffin added.
Lincoln did not visit Vermont as president. But his wife Mary Todd Lincoln had visited Hildene in Vermont and planned to come again before her husband was assassinated, Coffin said.
"He would have come to Vermont had it not been for John Wilkes Booth," he said. And, of course, Vermonters played a pivotal role several times during the Civil War, Coffin added.
"Vermont probably saved Grant's Army at the Wilderness, and perhaps saved Lincoln's re-election at Cedar Creek," he said, referring to two major battles that involved Vermont troops. Voters of the state voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln even though Stephen Douglas – Lincoln's Democratic opponent in 1860 – was born in Vermont.
More than two dozen performances, contests and readings are expected to be part of the program of Lincoln events and more will likely be added, the committee members said.
For instance, the Vermont Humanities Council is having a series of literacy programs, including some for schoolchildren, adults and inmates at prisons based on writings about Lincoln, said Peter Gilbert, executive director of the organization.
Gilbert said it is interesting to see how the idea outlined in "Team of Rivals," the title of the book about the Lincoln administration by Doris Kearns Goodwin, has brought that understanding of the Lincoln administration into being – and how often it is used now in reference to the coming Obama administration.
"Would that have happened if her book has not come out?" he asked.
Although the site is not active yet, the schedule of events will be posted at www.lincoln200vt.org, organizers said.
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