Washington celebrates Lincoln's 200th birthday

February 12, 11:22 AMDC Art Travel ExaminerMarsha Dubrow

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Lincoln watches celebrations of his 200th birthday at Lincoln Memorial

Washington grandly celebrated Lincoln's 200th birthday February 12, beginning with an early morning wreath-laying, a Michael Feinstein performance, and poetry by Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni at the Lincoln Memorial.

Feinstein performed his own version of the National Anthem, backed by the U.S. Marine Band, and then sang a poem Angelou wrote especially for the event.

"We dreamed these days...now we are sensing freedom in the palms of our hands. We dared to dream these days," Feinstein sang Angelou's words.

Three-time Grammy winner Angelou is best known for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".

(Later, Feinstein performed Gershwin and other American favorites at a breakfast on the Memorial grounds. The event raised funds for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Foundation, which co-sponsored the Lincoln Memorial event with the National Park Service.) 

Giovanni read the work she wrote for the Lincoln Bicentennial, "At This Moment". Her poem "rejoiced" about President Obama and offered "this plea For Light And Truth And Goodness".

Giovanni says she is most proud of being a "black American, a daughter, a mother, and a professor of English" at Virginia Tech. 

At the Lincoln Memorial last month, the Obamas rocked along to a pre-inaugural concert. In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech at the memorial.

And in 1939, opera star Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) barred the African American from performing at DAR's Constitution Hall. Contralto Anderson said that she had not agreed to the Lincoln Memorial appearance “easily or quickly…I had become, whether I like it or not, a symbol, representing my people.” Anderson recalled also that for her and the 75,000 people who attended, "it seemed that everyone present was a living witness to the ideals of freedom for which President Lincoln died."

The 70th anniversary will be commemorated on Easter Day with a Marian Anderson Tribute Concert by another great opera star, Denyce Graves. The tribute concert is one of many Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission events throughout the year -- including rededication of the Lincoln Memorial itself on May 30.

Now, back to birthday openings: The National Gallery of Art opened an exhibit "Designing the Lincoln Memorial: Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon", with French's final (six-foot-high) plaster model of the Lincoln statue, and Bacon's original wood model of the memorial.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went on display -- for five days only because it is so fragile -- at the National Archives. The proclamation, delivered on January 1, 1863, declared that "all persons held as slaves" (only within the rebel states) "are, and henceforward shall be free".

President Obama joined a Congressional tribute in the Capitol Rotunda where Lincoln's body lay in state in 1865. The first African-American chief of state noted that the Capitol was "Built by artisans and craftsmen, but also by immigrants and slaves". He reminded Congressionals that the rotunda had served as a makeshift hospital for Union soldiers who slept in House and Senate chambers. The President recalled that "Lincoln never forgot, not even in the midst of civil war, was that despite all that divides us -- north and south, black and white -- that we were, at heart, one nation and one people, sharing a bond as Americans that could bend but would not break." 

The newly renovated Ford's Theatre, reopened just in time to commemorate the bicentennial, held its first free open house on the big day. The Federal City Brass Band played Lincoln's campaign tune "First Out of the Wilderness" and his inaugural march on Civil War era instruments. Ford's began its many bicentennial and reopening celebrations earlier this week. Missed them? Here's a virtual tour.

In the evening, the Library of Congress opened its Lincoln exhibition "With Malice Toward None". The absolute highlight is the Lincoln family Bible used for Obama's swearing-in ceremony. The exhibit of rarely displayed items from the Library of Congress' archives runs through May 9, and then will travel to five other U.S. cities. Fascinating items include:

     -- Daguerreotype photographs of the Lincoln family -- his father Thomas, long estranged from his son, could only "bunglingly sign his own name", Lincoln noted. 

     -- Contents of his pockets on the night he was shot at Ford's Theatre. 

     -- Iconic portraits of Lincoln doing manual labor like piloting a flatboat along the Mississippi River in his early life, and reading throughout his life. Also, political cartoons and illustrations, some with racist fervor.

     -- His grammar book, early attempts at poetry, his handwritten self-edited Gettysburg Address and inaugural speeches.

    -- Walt Whitman's Civil War diary and verse.

The exhibition and its exquisite companion book, "In Lincoln's Hand: His Original Manuscripts with Commentary by Distinguished Americans" (Library of Congress in association with Bantam Dell Publishing Group) offer many vivid images, and an intimate, intriguing insight into Lincoln's thought process. "We see him in motion -- straining for precision, balancing grim determination with an allowance of optimism. We see him thinking, revising, pleading," note leading Lincoln scholars Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk who edited "In Lincoln's Hand".    

One of the most moving among all the documents is a fragment on the Dred Scott case, developing Lincoln's opposition even before the Supreme Court's decision authorizing nationalization of slavery and ruling that blacks could never be American citizens.

The book's commentary is from John Updike (who died January 27), Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow, among other authors; Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and both Bushes; historians including Doris Kearns Goodwin who wrote "Team of Rivals"; Steven Spielberg and Ken Burns; actors Liam Neeson and Sam Waterston; among others. As Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" once said, Lincoln's words were "worthy to be inscribed in letters of gold."

Also on February 12, the first of four new versions of the Lincoln penny was issued. The coin shows the one-room log cabin in Kentucky where the 16th President was born. U.S. Mint Medallic Sculptor Jim Licaretz's other works are represented in the Smithsonian Institution, the British Museum, and other institutions. 

However, only one cent for one of our most important, beloved Presidents on his 200th birthday? One cent symbolizes one union. And e pluribus unum (out of many, one). Plus, in this economy, as we all know, every single cent counts.

FYI, Lincoln shares his birthdate with Charles Darwin who created the theory of evolution. Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species" (shortened title evolved from "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle of Life") and "The Descent of Man".

On the 200th birthday(s), we all celebrate the ascent of all men and women.