Presented by Thomas D. Mackie, Jr., former director of the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee. Americans’ memory of our 16th president dominates the over 70 museums, historic sites, archives, and libraries devoted to him. Scattered relics hoarded by groups of devoted Lincoln followers in the 19th and early 20th century created a pattern for his public memory and these museums’ collections, fashioning a merger between reverential shrines with circus sideshows or dime museums. Lincoln museums are so extensive in number and diverse in form that they provide a sampling of the entire public museum movement in America.
