The Lincoln Home in Springfield: Where Lincoln Became Lincoln

The Lincoln Home. Courtesy of Lincoln Home National Historic Site

Abraham Lincoln came of age as a private citizen in Springfield, Illinois. Here he settled, built a family and a law practice, and lived as a husband, father and neighbor with the same hopes and troubles people have today. Many of his social and political beliefs took shape in the house at Eighth and Jackson Streets. His belief in freedom and democracy, his eloquence and the support of family and community carried him to the White House — and it was to Springfield that a funeral train brought him to be buried.

Even in his lifetime, when the lawyer became president-elect, people came to this corner to see him and his home, and reporters and photographers came to explain the little-known Lincoln to the rest of America. Today hundreds of thousands visit every year.

Before Springfield

Where Lincoln lived before his presidency. Courtesy Lincoln Home National Historic Site

He had about one year of frontier schooling, and was the first president born west of the Appalachians.

Springfield in 1860, drawn by an artist from research into how the town may have looked. Courtesy Lincoln Home National Historic Site

The house at Eighth and Jackson

On November 4, 1842, Lincoln married Mary Ann Todd. By May 1844 they had bought a small Greek Revival cottage on the corner, their home for the next 17 years. They enlarged it as the family grew — a downstairs bedroom in 1846, and in 1855 a second full story on the story-and-a-half cottage.

There was a dog, too: Fido.

Lincoln became one of the state's best courtroom lawyers. Riding the Eighth Judicial Circuit — a traveling court that sat for three months at a time each spring and fall in county seats across central Illinois — kept him away for long stretches, and Mary often felt alone. She ran the household, with the kitchen at its center, and furnished the whole house with care, in the taste of a prosperous mid-19th-century family.

The road to 1860

Lincoln was elected to Congress as a Whig in 1846 — the party (1832–1856) that held Congress supreme over the President, and that the question of slavery in the territories eventually destroyed — then came home to the law. In the early 1850s he held no office and wanted none, though he still spoke for other candidates.

Peace between slave and free states rested on compromises:

In 1854, Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act let settlers in those territories vote on slavery — potentially allowing it north of 36° 30′. Many Northerners were furious. Lincoln said the repeal of the Missouri Compromise roused him as nothing had before. He won a seat in the Illinois legislature in 1854, resigned it to run for the U.S. Senate — his long-held goal — then withdrew to help block a rival who backed the act.

He joined the new Republican Party, which opposed the spread of slavery, and in 1858 ran for the Senate against Douglas himself. Accepting the nomination in the Illinois State House on June 16, 1858, he said:

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

Seven debates with Douglas around Illinois caught the nation's attention. Lincoln lost the race but wrote, "I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone." In April 1859 he wrote, "I do not think myself fit for the Presidency"; a year later he admitted that "the taste is in my mouth a little."

At the Republican convention in Chicago on May 18, 1860, he was nominated; a committee of delegates came to Springfield and formally notified him in his own parlor. With the Democrats split between a Northern and a Southern candidate, the result was all but assured. On November 6, 1860:

Slave and free states, 1860. Courtesy Lincoln Home National Historic Site, from the Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization project

The 1860 election by state, with Illinois by county. Courtesy Lincoln Home National Historic Site, from the Abraham Lincoln Historical Digitization project

Words written in Springfield

Lincoln researched, drafted, redrafted and rehearsed his great speeches while living here.

Cooper Institute, New York, February 27, 1860 — to the Young Men's Central Republican Union; it introduced him to Eastern audiences:

Let all who believe that "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it.... Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861 — trying to avert war, he assured the South he opposed only slavery's spread, not slavery where it existed:

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.... We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory ... will yet swell the chorus of Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The house in the news

In the summer of 1860, Boston photographer John Adams Whipple photographed the house with Lincoln and Willie behind the fence and Tad peeking from behind a corner post. Reporters described what they saw. The New York Evening Post found "a handsome, but not pretentious, double two-story house" with "long rows of books, which told of scholarly tastes." The Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican saw the home of "a man who has battled hard with the fortunes of life," furnished "rather in solid substance than in showy display."

The Lincoln Home in the summer of 1860, with Lincoln and Willie at the fence. John Adams Whipple. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum.

On August 8, 1860, a Republican rally paraded past on its way to the state fairgrounds and stopped for a photograph. One wagon carried 33 women in white, one for each state in the Union; behind them, in a small buggy, a lone woman stood for Kansas, with a sign: "Won't you let me in." The Woodstock Sentinel reported "A MASS MEETING of 80,000":

From there we adjourned to Old Abe's residence where for three mortal hours a procession of almost countless numbers passed by, every wagon load or company cheering Mr. Lincoln enthusiastically, that distinguished gentleman standing on his door steps, gracefully acknowledging their compliments.

The parade had 22 companies of Wide Awakes, a full-rigged schooner with sailors, a power loom run by a live steam engine, a wagon drawn by 26 yoke of oxen, and men splitting rails.

The Republican rally of August 8, 1860, stopped outside the house for a photograph. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum.

An artist from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper drew three ground-floor rooms, published on March 9, 1861. The National Park Service used that engraving, with other evidence, to restore the formal parlor where Lincoln learned of his nomination.

The front parlor, drawn for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, published March 9, 1861.

The formal parlor as the Park Service restored it from the engraving and other evidence. Lincoln Home National Historic Site.

Farewell, February 11, 1861

About 1,000 friends and neighbors met him at the Great Western Railway station on a rainy morning. At five minutes to eight, the Daily State Journal reported, he stepped onto the platform of his car, took off his hat, and waited until he could control his feelings:

Friends, no one in a like position, can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from my youth until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all my children were born; and here one of them lies buried. To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange chequered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. Today I leave you; I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved on General Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him, shall be with and aid me, I must fail. But if the same omniscient mind, and the same almighty arm that directed and protected him, shall guide and support me I shall not fail, I shall succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To him I commend you all - permit me to ask that with equal serenity and faith, you will invoke His wisdom and guidance for me. With these few words I must leave you - for how long I know not. Friends one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.

"We never saw him so profoundly affected," the paper wrote. At eight o'clock the train pulled out.

Coming home, May 1865

On April 12, 1861, Confederates fired on Fort Sumter. On February 20, 1862, Willie died of a malarial infection. Lincoln issued an emancipation proclamation that declared slaves free in most of the Confederacy, spoke at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, and won re-election a year later. Days after the Union's victory, on April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford's Theatre; he died the next day in a rooming house across the street.

His funeral train, carrying his body and Willie's, took 12 days to reach Springfield. On May 3 he lay in the Representatives' Hall of the State House; on May 4 the procession passed the buildings of his life, draped in mourning, to Oak Ridge Cemetery, where father and son were buried. Crowds visited the house, hung with mourning colors and evergreens, and a delegation of a hundred from Chicago was photographed in front of it. The Daily State Journal wrote:

Funeral dignitaries in front of the Lincoln Home, May 1865. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum.

From our midst, a little more than four years ago, President Lincoln was called to the highest office in the gift of the people. Yesterday, all that is mortal of him returned to us wrapped in the habiliments of the grave.... Illinois receives her murdered son again to her bosom, no less loving than when she sent him forth to the most distinguished honor. To-day we lay him reverently to rest amid the scenes he loved so well. Millions will drop a tear to his memory, and future generations will make pilgrimages to the tomb.

Visiting

The house, restored to its 1860s appearance, stands in a four-block historic neighborhood that the National Park Service is restoring to look as Lincoln knew it. Tours start from the Lincoln Home Visitor Center, 426 South Seventh Street; see the park's website for hours and tickets.

For teachers

This page comes from a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places lesson for units on the presidency, mid-19th-century party politics, the coming of the Civil War, or Lincoln's life (1831–1865), linked to National Standards for History Era 4 (3B) and Era 5 (1A). Questions to use with it:

• The maps: In which direction did Lincoln's family move, and why might families have moved west then — or move today? How far was his walk from home to the law office and the State Capitol? How many slave and free states were there in 1860, and how does the election map compare?
• His rise: Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act bring him back to politics? What did "a house divided" mean, and do you agree? Why did the Democrats' split help him? What connects his speeches?
• The house: Why would reporters and rallies come to a candidate's home — and why doesn't that happen now? Was the Woodstock Sentinel reporter a supporter? How might restorers choose colors from a black-and-white engraving?
• Farewell and funeral: How long was the farewell address, and how does it change your picture of Lincoln? How did Springfield feel about him — and did the whole country?

Activities:

1. Front page — research and write a newspaper story on the "House Divided" speech (1858), the nomination or election (1860), the farewell (1861), or the funeral (1865).
2. A hometown politician — invite a local official to talk about their background, what drew them to politics and the crises they have faced; compare them with Lincoln, and write a news story on a current local issue.

Sources

Based on "Lincoln Home National Historic Site: A Place of Growth and Memory," a Teaching with Historic Places lesson by James A. Percoco, social studies teacher at West Springfield High School, Virginia, edited by Timothy P. Townsend, historian at Lincoln Home National Historic Site, and the Teaching with Historic Places staff, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Lincoln's words are from Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln; the newspaper accounts are from 1860–1865. The lesson dates Lincoln's inauguration to March 3, 1860, against the March 4, 1861, it gives for the First Inaugural Address, so only the address date is used here; the date it gives for the emancipation proclamation is left out. The photographs of 1860 and 1865 and the 1861 engraving are in the public domain; the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum supplied the lesson's copies. The lesson labels the parlor engraving 1860; it was published on March 9, 1861.