Redford's 'Conspirator' opens next week

Robert Redford’s “The Conspirator” (opening across America on Friday, April 15 — the 146th anniversary of Lincoln’s death), looks at the immediate aftermath of America’s first presidential assassination. The story explores the military tribunal that tried and convicted four people accused of conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to murder Lincoln. In a Salt Lake Tribune interview, Redford talked about “The Conspirator,” the political parallels between the 1860s and today, and “what story sits underneath the story we think we know.” • Article

Recalling Lincoln's journey to Washington

This month marks the 150th Anniversary of the trip by then President-elect Abraham Lincoln from Springfield, Illinois to Washington, D.C. The National Park Service will commemorate the journey by sponsoring programs from February 11 to February 23 in sixteen cities and towns where Lincoln made stops and remarks during the trip. • Article

Archives: Date of Lincoln pardon altered

The National Archives says a longtime Abraham Lincoln researcher has confessed to tampering with a 1865 presidential pardon for a court-martialed soldier so that he could claim credit for finding a document of historical significance. • Article

150-year-old photo mystery

Here's an interesting yarn from a gentleman who challenges assertion no photos exist from Nov. 6, 1860, the day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th president. • Article

Savannah website reviews 'The Conspirator'

Wednesday night's feature at the Savannah Film Festival - kept secret until just before the projector rolled - was "The Conspirator", the Civil War drama about the Lincoln assassination directed by Robert Redford. Most of the film was shot in the Georgia city. • Review

Election Day primer: Start with A. Lincoln

Election Day is upon us. Analyses will be written tonight, new careers will be born, others will fade away.

Monday, on the eve of the voting, I drove down to the Atlanta History Center to see the Library of Congress exhibit, “With Malice Toward None,” honoring the enduring legacy of the 16th president.

The show moves on after Sunday and I figured I’d never have another chance to see such an assembly of Abraham Lincoln writings, photographs, sketches, personal items and, yes, the items found in his coat pockets after he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre.

Lincoln was a consummate politician and a lawyer. He knew the shrewd game of give and take.

His sole term in the U.S. House of Representatives was a disappointment. But he learned as he went and persevered.

Few Americans knew Lincoln’s name in 1858 when he debated Stephen Douglas seven times during his unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois.

His speeches lifted him to the national stage, even in defeat, and a familiar line made itself into the American lexicon.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.”

“With Malice Toward None” opens with a multimedia presentation that explores the myth and realities of Lincoln. Video commentaries reveal personal connections to the documents the 16th president wrote.

Photos throughout the exhibit depict Lincoln over the years, with the Civil War’s heavy toll evident in an Alexander Gardner portrait taken several weeks before he died.

A cane-bottom chair from an old law office tells you a lot about the man from Springfield, Ill.

“The strength and durability of furniture is said to have interested Lincoln more than its appearance.”

The exhibit has the powerful documents we know so well: Drafts of his second inaugural address, the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address.

But the “little” letters speak of Lincoln’s humanity.

In October 1860, Grace Bedell (left, during the 1870s), a young girl from New York, wrote to candidate Lincoln asking him to grow whiskers because his face was so thin.

“All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President,” reads a portion of the letter, which is in the exhibit.

Shortly afterward, Lincoln grew his now-familiar beard.

In December 1862, as the war wore on, the president wrote to Fanny McCullough, the daughter of a friend killed in battle.

“I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time,” Lincoln wrote. “You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again.”

I make no political statement here. It's my hope at the end of today that we appreciate the resiliency of our political process. And that we continue to turn to Lincoln for lessons in statesmanship, discourse and love.

Abraham Lincoln's forgotten fort

Fort Stevens — located in a working-class neighborhood near President Lincoln’s summer cottage at the Soldiers’ Home in Washington — had been neglected in recent decades. Some stimulus money came its way, and the National Park Service cleaned it up in hopes of making it more visitor-friendly. The Civil War Preservation Trust fears that a five-story building planned by the Emory United Methodist Church next door will make it harder for visitors to visualize history. The pastor has defended the expansion. • Column

Definitive Lincoln show stops in Atlanta

One hundred and forty-five years after his death, Abraham Lincoln still speaks to us.

-- His grammar book recites the determination of a young farm boy struggling to master English.
-- A gold Tiffany necklace and bracelets whispers of his affection for his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, who gave the president three sons, one of whom died during the Civil War.
-- A Bible (photo below), used by Lincoln at his 1861 first inauguration and again by President Barack Obama at his 2009 inauguration, is a sermon on faith in America.
-- Two pair of spectacles, a pocketknife, newspaper clippings and other items in Lincoln’s coat on the night of his April 1865 assassination tell of his humanity (photo below).

The items are from the Library of Congress’ traveling blockbuster Lincoln exhibit, which comes Sept. 4 (Saturday) to the Atlanta History Center and runs through Nov. 7

“There are really big ticket artifacts,” says Gordon L. Jones, senior curator of the history center, which is hosting the only Southern stop of “With Malice Toward None.”

There are far too many national treasures to describe here, but among the most prominent are life masks, drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s handwritten farewell address when he left Springfield, Ill., to assume the presidency in 1861.

The bicentennial traveling exhibit opened in 2009.

“With Malice Toward None” opens with a multimedia presentation that explores the myth and realities of Lincoln. Video commentaries reveal personal connections to the documents the 16th president wrote.

The Atlanta History Center hopes to get a membership boost and a spillover effect from “Malice.”

The AHC’s “War in Our Backyards” exhibit, which lasts through September, gives visitors a glimpse of wartime Atlanta and what remains. The permanent “Turning Point: The American Civil War,” has hundreds of military artifacts collected by the DuBose family.

“You get a very broad view and a local view,” says Hillary Hardwick, vice president of marketing.

There are actually two Bibles in the exhibit. One is the Lincoln family Bible and the other is the one Lincoln and Obama used at their inaugurations (that is the one pictured in this blog).

The "Lincoln/Obama" Bible appeals to younger and diverse patrons.

“For them, that connection makes sense,” said Jones.

Civil War aficionados will find plenty to peruse, including the famous Antietam “Lost Orders” by Gen. Robert E. Lee. A Union soldier found them wrapped around cigars, but Gen. George B. McClellan was unable to exploit the discovery.

Another letter speaks to Lincoln’s amazing discernment and judgment.

After the Union’s victory Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln wrote a letter to Gen. George Meade (below), showing his frustration with the latter’s failure to pin down Lee’s retreating Confederates.

“Again, my dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.”

Lincoln put the letter aside. He never sent it to Meade, who may well have resigned.

“He would write stuff down to get it out of his system,” said Jones.

The AHC , in conjunction with the exhibit, is planning an opening day celebration from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and later events for teachers and families.

“When you know the story ... it starts to tickle the emotions,” said Jones.

The Lincoln exhibit will run through Nov. 7. Information: 404-814-4000, atlantahistorycenter.com

Lincoln show features Bible, items he carried

Atlanta is celebrating Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday a little late. But details of the exhibition about the 16th president, coming to the Atlanta History Center, make it seem well worth the wait. "With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition," opening here Sept. 4, should appeal to both fans of Lincoln and those interested in the difficult Civil War-era chapters. • Details

Rare Tad Lincoln photo goes on display

Tad Lincoln, the youngest child of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, was known to be the couple’s rowdiest child and usually had unkempt hair. But one would never know that in a rare and newly acquired photograph of the 8-year-old boy acquired by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. • Article

Memoirs of Union POW donated to museum

The Civil War memoirs of a Union soldier who spent time in Confederate prison camps in Georgia and South Carolina has been donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. • Article

Spotlight on Lincoln's war chief

The National Archives put out this informative and entertaining snapshot of Edwin Stanton, the secretary of war during the Civil War. Did you know Stanton, who shook things up a bit during three administrations, was the first American lawyer to successfully use the plea of temporary insanity to protect his client? • Article

'Conspirator' follows drama of Lincoln death

Any grade-school student can tell you the story of the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater. But what happened next? Robert Redford's new film, "The Conspirator", follows the race to hunt down the band of Confederate sympathizers behind the attack. James McAvoy stars as a Union soldier who agrees to defend one of the accused, boarding-house owner Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), whose son was the lone conspirator to escape the manhunt. • Article

Lost movie on Lincoln found in barn

A contractor cleaning out an old New Hampshire barn he was about to demolish found the only known copy of a 1913 silent film about Abraham Lincoln. "When Lincoln Paid" was directed by and starred Francis Ford, the older brother of famed director John Ford ("The Grapes of Wrath," "The Quiet Man"). In addition to battle scenes between Union and Confederate forces, the film's plot includes the mother of a dead Union soldier requesting that Lincoln pardon a Confederate soldier whom she had initially turned in. • Article