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WHAT
Lincoln and Idaho Exhibit.
WHERE
Idaho State Historical Museum, 610 N. Julia Davis Drive.
WHEN
Opens at 7 p.m. Friday. The exhibit will be at the museum through March 1. It will travel to other museums, libraries, schools and other venues throughout Idaho from March until December 2009.
ADMISSION
A $20 donation is requested on opening night to help defray exhibit costs. Regular museum admission after opening night is $4 for adults, $2 for seniors and $1 for children 6 to 18.
Winter museum hours are Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Sundays and Mondays.
As Dave Leroy sees it, Abraham Lincoln had a stronger relationship to Idaho than any other state.
That claim would launch arguments in Kentucky, where Lincoln was born, and Illinois, where he spent much of his life and is buried. Indiana, where he spent parts of his youth and early manhood, also would seem to have a greater claim to the Great Emancipator than Idaho - where Lincoln never set foot.
An exhibit opening Friday at the Idaho State Historical Museum will make Idaho's case.
"Those other states were places he was just passing through," Leroy said. "He created this one, and more than any other other state Idaho is related to him. This exhibit is prepared to defend that claim."
The "Lincoln and Idaho" exhibit is being presented in conjunction with "Forever Free," a traveling exhibit that opened Jan. 18 on Lincoln's efforts to abolish slavery. Its sponsor is the Idaho Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, which Leroy leads.
"It will have reproductions of rare historical documents never seen before in Idaho," Leroy said. "One is the act that Lincoln signed creating the Idaho Territory. The original is kept in the National Archives, much like the treasure in a hermetically sealed area at the end of a locked hallway in a locked room in the movie 'National Treasure.'
"There also will be letters, cartoons, books, photographs - actually six cases of artifacts that illustrate Lincoln's life chronologically and his relationship to Idaho."
The artifacts are on loan from the National Archives, the Idaho Historical Society, Leroy's collection and other private collections.
Idaho was on Lincoln's mind the day he was assassinated. On the afternoon of April 14, 1865, he took the advice of his friend William Wallace and appointed Milton Kelly to the Idaho Territorial Supreme Court. Wallace was Idaho's first territorial governor; Kelly later became owner of the Idaho Statesman. Lincoln invited Wallace and his wife to accompany the Lincolns to the play at which the president was fatally shot that evening, but Wallace's wife was ill and he declined.
Other Idaho connections detailed in the exhibit:
Lincoln appointed some 15 men to federal posts in Idaho. All were personal friends or legal or political associates. One of the last official documents he wrote was a note on the back of a letter, saying that in the event of a resignation on Idaho's territorial supreme court, Wallace's suggestion for a replacement should be followed. The exhibit will include a reproduction of the original.
Lincoln attended the meeting, in Wallace's Washington home, at which the name of the state was chosen.
In 1849, Wallace sought the governorship of the Oregon Territory, which included Idaho.
"They offered it to him and he was excited about it, but his wife said there was no way she was moving to the Wild West," Leroy said. "If they had and he had enjoyed the West as much as he thought he would, he likely would have stayed here or returned to Washington as a congressman or senator with a very different role. The course of history would have changed."
Fred Dubois, for whom the eastern Idaho town of Dubois is named, was a friend and neighbor of Lincoln's in Springfield, Ill. Dubois went on to become a U.S. senator from Idaho.
Mason Brayman, a colleague of Lincoln's who rented his home in Springfield while Lincoln was a congressman, became a governor of the Idaho Territory.
Lincoln's bodyguard attempted, unsuccessfully, to become governor of Idaho.
The oldest Lincoln statue in the western United States is in Boise.
A sampling of other artifacts in the exhibit includes an invitation to Lincoln's second inaugural ball, election ballots from both of his campaigns, a Lincoln-era stovepipe hat and a painting of his Indiana home.
Lincoln presenter Skip Critell will greet guests at the grand opening. Critell is about Lincoln's height and weight and resembles him enough that a woman at Lincoln's tomb in Springfield asked him if he'd had plastic surgery to enhance the resemblance. He hadn't.
"I'll mostly be meeting and greeting people at the opening," he said. "I'll speak in the first person as if I'm Lincoln, the way I do at my presentations."
Catapult 3, a Boise company that makes displays, is assembling the Idaho exhibit. Its sponsor is United Heritage Financial Group of Meridian.
Fred Fritchman, exhibits graphics designer at the historical museum, calls the exhibits "a legitimate opportunity for the public to see some very special things showing Lincoln's connection to Idaho and the evolution of his thinking that led him to believe it was a necessity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The exhibits are appealing visually and make it easy for visitors to get the Lincoln story. Anyone interested in learning more about him should make an effort to see it because it's just excellent."
Tim Woodward: 377-6409
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