Happy birthday Abraham Lincoln. He’s 216. The McLean County Museum of History is hallmarking Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthday with the start of a coloring contest to celebrate Lincoln and work on a mural showing a famous speech he made in Bloomington.
The artwork people will color is from the design of a mural that will go up in downtown Bloomington depicting Lincoln delivering his famous "Lost Speech." The address happened in 1856 at Major’s Hall, where the Lincoln parking deck stands today. The contest deadline will be the end of March. The VFW Auxiliary will judge it.
“Each of the three winners in each age category will receive a little unique piece of history, a piece of brick from the original foundation to the Miller-Davis building, which is adjacent to where the lost speech happened and where the Eighth Judicial Circuit lawyers hung out when they were in town doing circuit business,” said Julie Emig, executive director of the museum.
The contest, the mural, and the planned display of two Lincoln documents at the museum are all part of the run up to next year's 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The speech is called "lost" because there is no transcript. People who were present at the time said Lincoln was very passionate.
“It was a call to end slavery's expansion into the western territories. And it represents the birth of the Republican Party. And we at the museum are committed to sharing the whole of history, the full sweep of our past, and we are excited that this mural will give us an opportunity to do that,” said Emig.
The Lost Speech was a significant event in Lincoln’s rise to power. In 1849, he had finished his lone term in Congress. He went back to his legal practice. Then in 1854, Democratic U.S. Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. That would end the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allow slavery to expand into new western territories. Lincoln started a speaking tour against the act, among them the Lost Speech.
“This is one of the top four speeches that elevated Lincoln to the presidency, that being the Peoria speech of 1854, the Lost Speech of 1856, then the House Divided speech in 1858 when he accepted the nomination of the Republican Party to run for Senate. And then the Cooper Union speech, which really introduced Lincoln to the eastern part of the country in a way that helped him gather votes, I think, for the presidency,” said Museum Development Director Norris Porter.
By all accounts, Lincoln's speech was a stem-winder, very passionate. Porter noted that was a change in direction for Lincoln.
“They talk about Lincoln being impassioned, inspired, and that he was on fire. His eyes were ablaze, and it was not the common way you would think of Lincoln at the time giving a speech. In fact, he had argued the point against slavery from a statesman's point up until that time. That was the spark that led him to thinking of slavery as an eternal wrong,” said Porter.
Some scholars believe the speech was lost on purpose, that Lincoln discouraged any effort to make a transcript because the unwavering abolitionist sentiment was considered radical. Other historians suspect Lincoln wanted it kept close because he crafted it for a select audience, members of the then-forming Republican party.
“What he was trying to do was to fuse together former Whigs, Know-Nothings who didn't like immigrants, and Democrats who departed from their party because they didn't like slavery … and the fear was that some of the speakers at this convention were going to be too radical, more abolitionist oriented, and the new party wouldn't happen. But what Lincoln was able to do was to convince everybody that they could be part of the party,” said Porter.
Whatever the intent, the speech helped catapult Lincoln to a leadership role in the party.
“Just weeks later, in the 1856 presidential nomination process for the new Republican Party, Lincoln would get, like, 100 votes for vice president. And Lincoln would say that must be to some other Lincoln, not me, right, but it helped launch him into the national stage,” said Porter.
It also led to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. In fact, Porter said, it is arguable that the Lost Speech is the most important event, not just political event, that ever happened in Bloomington.
“It led to Lincoln becoming president, to Lincoln emancipating slaves, eventually to the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments …. Then you can take it all the way through reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation … and the Civil Rights Movement leading to the Civil Rights Act of 1964-1965. What people forget is that spark was flamed and happened right here in Bloomington,” said Porter.
Emig said the speech is also a useful connection to the upcoming President’s Day on Feb 17, a time to reflect on presidential leadership and the moral core Lincoln brought to the overriding issue of his time. On President's Day, the museum will offer free admission and feature two authentic Lincoln document given to the museum by Guy Fraker. The first is a document from a debt collection case that captures Lincoln’s legal work, Emig said.
“It's an incredible document. It's his own writing. He's writing to Kersey Fell of Bloomington. Lincoln and Fell were working out a payment schedule for the judgment,” said Emig.
The second document is a pleading from the 1851 case Funk v. Rutledge.
“It is a good example of the everyday routine kind of law that Lincoln did … but the wording is pretty interesting. If people use the magnifying glass we have and so it's easier to read through the glass, I think they'll enjoy getting a feel and flavor for Lincoln's tone and language,” said Emig.
The dedication for the Lincoln mural will be May 29. That's the anniversary of the Lost Speech in Bloomington. The images resemble a woodcut, and Emig said it will have a sepia tone to it.
