Exhibition: Lincoln and New York
The New-York Historical Society, through March 25, 2010, designer: American History Workshop, chief historian: Harold Holzer
On a visit to New York City in February 1860, Abraham Lincoln accomplished two things in a single day that would forever change how the world viewed him: He posed for a now-famous portrait in photographer Mathew Brady’s Broadway gallery, and only hours later gave a rousing antislavery speech at the recently opened college at Cooper Union. Evincing a remarkable grasp of the importance of both the printed and spoken word, Lincoln had his speech typeset by the New York Tribune, which allowed it to be published as a pamphlet and widely circulated afterward. As Lincoln later remarked, “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me President.”
What those two events also did was lodge Lincoln’s image in the minds of New Yorkers. Lincoln’s significant and volatile relationship with the city is the subject of a thoroughly engaging new exhibition at the New-York Historical Society, “Lincoln and New York.” In the five years that followed Cooper Union, New York would be directly affected by many of Lincoln’s decisions, and the actions and opinions of its denizens would in turn influence Lincoln’s presidency. In editorials and political cartoons, as well as in the city’s streets, New Yorkers both praised and vilified Lincoln, uniting in their opinion, it seems, only after he was assassinated.
Despite its significance, the Cooper Union speech is still one of the lesserknown aspects of Lincoln’s career. It is fitting that the exhibit opens with several key artifacts from this period, including the original telegram inviting Lincoln to New York, the lectern at which he stood to deliver the speech and a Brady-era camera. A map showing Lincoln’s movements through Manhattan that day is also intriguing.
Once Lincoln is elected and the Civil War erupts, the exhibit shifts into its most prominent and successfully executed theme—how newspapers and magazines shaped New Yorkers’ (and subsequently Americans’) views of the new president. In one display, editorials from the period are shown on a series of hanging newspapers that appear as if they have just rolled off the presses. The exhibit features several political cartoons lampooning or lauding the “RailSplitter,” including his affiliation with the New York-based “Wide Awakes,” a pro-Lincoln paramilitary group. Notorious cartoons pillorying Lincoln for playing down his anti slavery platform are displayed as well, but they are balanced by the inclusion of one of the few extant copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and displays on the African-American response to Lincoln.
New York was known as “the northernmost battlefield of the war,” which was never more evident than during the 1863 Draft Riots. A series of four maps of lower Manhattan pinpoints and details the locations of several violent scenes, painting a gruesome picture of the scope of the unrest. Less successful is a small theater-in-the-round that forces visitors to crane their necks to watch a series of quotes about the riots, unevenly read by actors.
The final gallery deals with the outpouring of grief in New York over Lincoln’s death. Among the artifacts is a recently discovered scrapbook by one New Yorker who acted as a “roving reporter,” capturing comments and tributes that poured in after the assassination. The exhibit ends with a reproduction of Walt Whitman’s memorial poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” The inclusion of poetry seems astonishing in this modern sound-bite era, but it serves as a fitting coda to an exhibit that is as much about the man as it is about the words and images that shaped him.
Originally published in the February 2010 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.
