Looking for Lincoln

Having recently completed a lesson about William Howard Taft for CET, I’m now working on a lesson about President Abraham Lincoln for the station. This will coincide with a new PBS series called Looking for Lincoln coming in February 2009 to mark the bicentennial of his birth.

So now my antenna is up for anything Lincoln-related. Have you ever noticed that when you begin to show interest in a subject, all of a sudden information about it begins to pop up everywhere on your radar screen? That’s certainly been my experience these last couple weeks in regards to Lincoln information. First, I saw a lot of discussion in the news about President-elect Barack Obama’s choices for Cabinet heads, with many commenting that he seems to be modeling Lincoln’s notion of a “Team of Rivals” to shape his Cabinet. Obama appears to be a big fan of Lincoln, not surprising since both have political roots in Illinois. Soon after, I pull the November 24 issue of Newsweek from my mailbox to see Lincoln and Obama on the cover with the line that Obama is “channeling the 16th President.” Interesting premise, I wonder if I can work any of that into a lesson? Next, my periodic online newsletter from the Gilder Lehrman Institute popped up in my email. Want to guess what the featured document of the month was? The Gettysburg Address. Then I see a flyer about the American Bar Association’s Law Day program for May 1, 2009. No surprise. Its theme is A Legacy of Liberty: Celebrating Lincoln’s Bicentennial.

So it looks like this Lincoln bicentennial is going to be big. The CET staff tells me the PBS series is to be based in large part on a new book, Looking for Lincoln: The Making of an American Icon. So I checked it out of the library. Looks like great stuff in it, in short easy-to-read chunks. I also learned of another pertinent book, Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated with Our Greatest President. What a cool title!

I’m on a roll!

- Karen Regina