Lincoln still a magnet for tourists, statesmen alike

Feb 12, 2009, 17:17 GMT

US President Barack Obama (L) and his wife Michelle (2-L) look at Abraham Lincoln\'s bible after Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., 20 January 2009. . EPA/CHUCK KENNEDY - POOL

Springfield, Illinois - A bearded man in black with a stovepipe hat still draws a crowd around the world.

Even 200 years after his birth on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War-era president who freed Southern slaves and preserved the Union, continues to move and inspire people.

Alicia Erickson, international marketing manager for the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln's home town, often brings a Lincoln impersonator to foreign tourism conventions. It always makes a splash.

'People in droves come to have their picture taken,' Erickson said. 'Lincoln certainly has a worldwide recognition and appeal.'

In Springfield, where Lincoln practiced law, raised a family, was elected to the state legislature and later Congress, before winning the presidency in 1860, the Great Emancipator is both a cultural icon and a civic asset.

The many Lincoln sites in and around Springfield drew more than 1.5 million visitors last year, and up to 10 per cent could be international visitors, Erickson estimated.

The largest numbers of foreigners at Lincoln sites are from Canada, Britain and Germany, with significant numbers of Japanese and Latin American tourists, plus Chinese students enrolled in the United States.

'What we see is they all already know about Lincoln,' Erickson said.

Indeed, Lincoln's legend has travelled the globe.

William Pederson, director of the International Lincoln Centre at Louisiana State University in Shreveport, estimated that 70 per cent of countries around the world have some 'very visible' homage to Lincoln, naming streets and schools for him, erecting statues or printing postage stamps with his image.

'There's no other president that has that kind of visibility around the world. He's everyplace,' said Pederson, a political science professor and presidential scholar.

Pederson said that the country with the biggest Lincoln presence is, oddly, the communist island of Cuba, with which the US has not had diplomatic relations since 1961.

'Probably per square inch, there's more Lincoln stuff (in Cuba) than anywhere in the world,' Pederson said. 'It's just all over: statues, buildings, businesses.'

The enduring international reverence for Lincoln derives from his 1863 declaration freeing all slaves in the secessionist Confederacy. Recent generations of Americans have cited the Emancipation Proclamation's political and military expediency, and questioned Lincoln's personal commitment to racial equality, but his foreign admirers remain untroubled by such revisionism.

'Lincoln is identified, especially outside the United States, as the Great Emancipator,' Pederson said. It 'caught the imagination' that a white man wielding power 'should be so concerned with black people.'

Within months of his victory in the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro laid a wreath at the Lincoln Memorial during an April 1959 trip to Washington.

'Marxists have tended to be soft on Lincoln,' Pederson said.

The man Castro overthrew, military dictator Fulgencio Batista, shared his rival's affection for Lincoln. Rising from humble beginnings, like the log cabin-bred Lincoln, Batista seems to have imagined himself like the wartime leader.

'Often, it's military leaders who identify with Lincoln,' Pederson said. 'They appreciate Lincoln putting down the rebellion without appreciating the other aspects of what Lincoln was all about.'

Democratic leaders have also found inspiration in Lincoln.

Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, kept a small statue of Lincoln on his desk and a painting of the US president in his office. Both are still on display at Nehru's Delhi home, which is now a museum.

Amrit Tandon, a New Delhi-based scholar, describes Lincoln as a natural role model for Nehru, who had to grapple as prime minister with movements seeking secession from India.

Lincoln not only saved the Union but preserved American democracy, winning re-election in 1864, even as he infamously suspended certain key civil rights during crisis.

In November 2007, General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, imposed emergency rule in a television address in which he quoted Lincoln.

'As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of crisis, and this was to preserve the Union. Towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary power, he trampled individual liberties. His justification was necessity,' Musharraf said.

The newest leader to the international stage, newly inaugurated US President Barack Obama, has also wrapped himself in the legacy of his fellow Illinoisan.

Obama, who served as a state senator in Springfield, announced his presidential candidacy in 2007 at a rally on the steps of Illinois' Old State Capitol, using its sturdy, Greek columns of rust-tinged local limestone as a backdrop.

In the same building, Lincoln argued cases before the Illinois Supreme Court, worked as a legislator and delivered his 1858 'House Divided' speech against expanding slavery. There, too, the 16th president lay in state after his April 1865 assassination, just days after the end of the Civil War.

Still basking in the glow of his election as the first African- American president of the United States, Obama has the potential to become a new attraction in Springfield.

Since the start of his national campaign two years ago, 'we've had many people ask' where Obama lived, worked and socialized in the state capital, Erickson said. Some people have even inquired about where Obama, famous for his love of basketball, went to exercise, only to be directed to the very plain-looking local YMCA.