The Lincoln Museum

	On Wednesday I needed to drive to Springfield, IL, on business. My meeting was done by noon and I decided I should take the opportunity to visit the Lincoln Library. (No, it's not made out of Lincoln Logs.) I bought the tickets inside an old train depot downtown.
	I had never been to a Presidential Library (other than peeking my head into Clinton's library one time as I was passing through Little Rock), and this year is the bicentennial celebration of his birth, so it seemed the appropriate thing to do while in Springfield.
	It turns out there was an actual "Lincoln Museum" next to the library. The museum is relatively new, having opened in 2005. I decided to take a tour through the musem.
	The first thing I noticed when entering the museum was the large replica of the white house, with wax figures of the Lincoln family out front. The figures were so life-like, it was easy to mistake them at first for generic visitors to the museum.
	As I looked to the left, I saw a life-sized replica of the one-room log cabin that Abraham Lincoln grew up in, complete with life-sized fake trees. You could walk through the log cabin and see what life was like for the young boy.
	It soon became clear that, unlike many museums that have a lot of artifacts with long descriptions, this museum was more "experiential" in nature. Instead of reading about Lincoln's life, the museum takes you through life-sized replicas of scenes from Lincoln's life. It was definitely a different kind of museum-going experience than I'm used to. Typically, I'm the kind of person that does like to read a lot when I'm in a museum, but I can see how this museum is helpful for teaching school-aged children about his life. You learn simply by walking through the chronology of hislife. (This scene shows Lincoln in his law office, where apparently he let his kids go wild.)
	This is a scene showing Lincoln presenting his draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to his cabinet.
	I thought the museum did a good job of talking about his wife and the deaths of three of his four children. This room showed the styles of dresses that Mrs. Lincoln's "rivals" in Washington, D.C. might have worn at the time.
	I think one of the things the struck me by going through the museum was the realization that Lincoln was not beloved, the way we think of him today. At the time, people hated him with their whole being. This was an actual effigy doll that was manufactured back then, complete with a "mask" over a "black face" to indicate that the Republican party was a bunch of "black lovers". (This is highly offensive to me. Thank you, God, for delivering our country from these sentiments!)
	Finally, I think my favorite item in the whole museum was seeing Lincoln's actual top hat. It even had two worn finger marks where he would tip his hat.