All Lincoln All the Time

for heading outdoors and exploring all the possibilities of the season.

On a chilly hike, it's the littlest comforts that make a big difference.

One small addition to your hiking pack is a hand towel that you can use to make a clean

seat anywhere.

It's a fraction of the weight and size of a camp chair, and it turns the dirtiest rock,

log, or stretch of ground into a perfect seat for a quick rest.

For more tips, easy how-tos, and inspiring stories, visit LLBean.com slash guide.

The National Park Service protects some of the most iconic landscapes in the United States,

but the scope of National Park Service sites extends far beyond the big national parks.

The collection includes many historical sites where visitors can learn unique aspects of

our country's history, or delve deep into a well-known topic or person.

One prime example is Abraham Lincoln.

From birth to death and many intermediate milestones, the National Park Service leads

us on an odyssey along the timeline of Lincoln's life, political career, achievements, and

legacy, weaving a ribbon through Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and beyond.

I'm Jason Epperson, and today on America's National Parks, a look across the National

Parks system at Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator, the Rail Splitter, the Congressman from Illinois

who would become the President, who would take the country through one of its most trying

periods, who would free the slaves, preserve the Union, and ultimately become the first

American President to meet his demise at the hands of an assassin.

Nestled in the woods of Hodgenville, Kentucky, is the site of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

Although the original cabin has not survived the intervening centuries, a memorial, the

first Lincoln Memorial, rises above the landscape.

The memorial, which contains a notional replica of the one-room cabin where Lincoln was born,

rises from 56 granite steps, one for each year of Lincoln's life.

It was built not with government funds, but wholly funded by donations from private citizens

who cared about preserving the legacy of Lincoln and the town where his story began, on the

site of the Lincoln family's sinking spring farm.

A century after his birth, more than 100,000 people contributed to the memorial, some in

very small measure, to immortalize the man whose life began in a one-room cabin and ended

at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Sinking spring was a substantial farm, and Thomas Lincoln, Abraham's father, was also

a successful carpenter and cabinetmaker.

But Abraham Lincoln's family background was far humbler than many preceding Presidents,

leading him to say years later that he was living proof that any father's child could

live in the White House.

The park has two units, one containing the memorial and replica cabin, and one containing

the site of Lincoln's next home, Knob Creek Farm, where the family relocated following

a land dispute.

What unique tidbits come out of this National Park Service site?

Certainly the notion that Lincoln came from a middle-class frontier family, and was not

quite as destitute as a lot of the folklore postulates.

But also that Lincoln was so beloved in his place of origin that the citizens were willing

to pay from their own pockets to erect a memorial.

And for history buffs in general, and people interested in the genealogy of the Lincoln

family, the park offers insights into Lincoln's recent ancestors and other branches of his

family.

In fact, several well-known Americans appear on Abraham Lincoln's family tree, including

the Wright Brothers, President Gerald Ford, playwright Tennessee Williams, poet Robert

Frost, both Presidents Bush and John Hancock.

The next phase of Abraham Lincoln's life, the Indiana years, is represented at the Lincoln

Boyhood National Memorial.

Three interesting features of the park take us on a journey from boyhood to statesman.

The Living History Farm is a representation of a typical 19th-century Indiana farm, drawing

the tone for the physical setting of the second half of Lincoln's childhood.

Five stunning bas-relief sculpture panels represent different phases of Lincoln's life.

The Kentucky panel illustrates the early childhood years.

The Indiana panel shows the boyhood days.

The Illinois panel captures the years of political ascendancy.

The Washington panel shows the years of command.

And the Central panel, titled, And Now He Belongs to the Ages, depicts Lincoln's legacy.

A quirky feature of the park, the Trail of Twelve Stones, highlights important events

in Lincoln's life through stones from landmarks associated with the events.

A stone from Sinking Spring Farm, a stone marker from the Indiana Boyhood Cabin, a stone

from the foundation of a store where Lincoln worked as a teenager, a stone from a printing

press, from a building of a store Lincoln co-owned as a young man, bricks from Mary

Todd's home, a stone from the White House, a stone from the cottage where Lincoln penned

the Emancipation Proclamation, a stone from the battlefield at Gettysburg, a stone from

the old Capitol building in D.C., a stone from the house where Lincoln died, and a granite

remnant from Lincoln's tomb.

Supplementing these visual attractions, the story of Lincoln's boyhood is told in the

exhibits in the Visitor Center, focusing to a large extent on the death of Lincoln's

mother and the impact that had on his life, along with the family's anti-slavery position

even back then.

The Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois, represents the only

house that Abraham Lincoln owned during the course of his lifetime.

This park aims to present another side of Lincoln.

Most of our public places that honor Abraham Lincoln focus on his life in public service.

The Lincoln Home draws visitors, quite simply, into the life of a man.

It strives to make Lincoln more accessible, more relatable.

During his time in Illinois, he was a student of the law, a surveyor, a postmaster.

Three of his four sons were born during their time there.

One, sadly, died there.

Lincoln's life in Illinois reflects events in the life of many Americans, both his peers

and also those of us today—marriage, studies, jobs, children—just striving to define yourself

and the potential contributions you can make to your family and to society.

Lincoln's public service is honored at two heavily visited National Park sites.

His imposing statue, set against his famous words, occupies the Lincoln Memorial at the

end of the reflecting pool on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Here surrounded by monuments and memorials to other singularly important presidents and

American leaders, Lincoln's impact on United States history can be contemplated in the

context of a cohort of America's most beloved, and sometimes controversial, figures.

Sixteen hundred miles west, Lincoln's image is chiseled into the face of the granite boulders

at Mount Rushmore National Monument, alongside the faces of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,

and Theodore Roosevelt.

When contemplated on multiple levels, Mount Rushmore can present a conundrum regarding

all the presidents represented on the sculpture, but most particularly Lincoln.

Widely recognized, with some controversy, as the president who ended slavery, his likeness

is represented here on a site that is, among some communities, considered stolen land.

National Geographic says, quote, built on sacred Native American land and sculpted by

a man with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, Mount Rushmore National Memorial is fraught with

controversy.

Visitors to Mount Rushmore can contemplate what this means in relation to the liberty

and equality that Abraham Lincoln spoke of so passionately throughout his political career.

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Although Abraham Lincoln said, quote, the world will little note, nor long remember

what we say here, in Gettysburg, the Gettysburg Address remains one of the most recognized

artifacts of Lincoln's presidency, or of any American president.

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation,

conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

In July of 1863, a three-day battle ensued at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, widely regarded

as the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

The Battle of Gettysburg represented a turning point in the conflict.

Gettysburg National Military Park preserves the history of the battle itself, the stories

of the people who fought there, who triumphed there, who fell in defeat, who died there.

The topography of the battlefield remains, the heart-wrenching fight for the very survival

of our country laid bare in the poignant memorials and artifacts.

More than 51,000 soldiers died at Gettysburg, and were buried on the site at the Soldiers

National Cemetery.

On November 19th, four and a half months after the battle, the cemetery was formally dedicated.

Abraham Lincoln was asked to make a few remarks.

The Gettysburg Address is remarkably brief, a mere few hundred of the most profound words

in our history.

It was not a triumph, not a celebration of victory, merely a pouring forth of despair

and hope in the darkest chapter of our history.

Lincoln asked us to consider whether a nation conceived in liberty could, in fact, endure

given the grim circumstances of a country so divided.

He said that he and those who survived could not consecrate the hallowed ground, that in

truth the ground needed to be dedicated to the unfinished work of those buried there.

The address ends with the famous line,

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under

God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the

people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

These sparse words forever tie the man to the site and his words to the very lives and

ideals at stake as the struggling country and its leader sought to redefine itself.

The final step in the Lincoln National Park journey is a humble 665-seat theater on 10th

Street, a short six and a half blocks from the White House.

On April 14, 1865, just a few days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, President Lincoln

was assassinated at Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth while attending a show with his

wife, Mary Todd, along with Clara Harris and Henry Rathbone.

The placards at the theater take us on a timeline of Lincoln's final day.

At 8 a.m., Lincoln breakfasts with his family.

At 11 a.m., Booth strolls to Ford's Theater, picking up his mail.

He learns of a letter delivered to Ford's that morning, confirming that the President

and Mrs. Lincoln will attend that evening's performance of Our American Cousin.

At 8.30 p.m., the Lincolns arrive at Ford's Theater.

The production stops, and the orchestra plays Hail to the Chief.

At 10 p.m., Booth enters the lobby of Ford's Theater and heads up the stairs to the dress

circle.

He hands his card to Lincoln's footman and enters the back of the President's theater

box.

Also at 10 p.m., Lincoln and Mary hold hands.

Mary wonders what young Clara will think about the play, and the President replies,

she won't think anything about it.

And the final words on the placard, there were the last words Lincoln spoke.

The tension moving along this timeline is palpable.

Before we walk this hallway studded with singular moments of that fateful day, in fact, before

we even arrive at Ford's Theater, we all know what happened here.

And yet the little details catch us, the Lincoln family eating breakfast together, the production

pausing to honor the President's arrival, the fact that the Lincolns were holding hands.

These details put us in the moment, at the scene of the crime, at the enormity of a nation's

grief.

We are present at the horrifying end of one of the most well-known lives in American history.

The parks highlighted in this episode don't fit neatly into a single road trip or vacation.

Lincoln's early life can be traced on a trip to Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.

The Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home National Memorial in Indiana is a two-hour drive from

the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site in Kentucky.

Because the birthplace site is just outside of Louisville, it can be combined with an

exploration of the city, which has many museums, restaurants, and activities.

From the boyhood home, the Lincoln Home in Indiana is another four-hour drive, with many

other local activities available in Springfield.

Lincoln's political years can be covered on a trip to Washington, D.C., with a side

trip to Gettysburg.

Ford's Theatre is less than two miles from the Lincoln Memorial.

In fact, Ford's Theatre is still operating, with a season of theatrical works presented

on the stage each year.

This episode of America's National Parks was written by Lauren Eisenberg Davis, and I'm

your host, Jason Epperson.

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If you're looking for photos and tips about visiting national parks, check out our America's

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Today's show was sponsored by L.L. Bean.

Follow the hashtag BeAnOutsider and visit LLBean.com to find great gear for exploring

the national parks.

And by Solostove.

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