Review
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Title: Looking for Lincoln in Illinois
Author: Byron C. Andreasen
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Genre: History, Mormon Studies
Number of Pages: 115
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 978-0-8093-3384-4
Price: $19.95
Reviewed by Laura Bayer for the Association for Mormon Letters
Author Byron Andreasen assembles two sets of materials developed to explore the intersection of Lincoln with the Mormons in Illinois. The introductory section of the volume consists of a slightly revised version of an address titled “Did Abraham Lincoln Meet Joseph Smith,” which Andreasen originally presented in 2005 to commemorate the bicentennial of Joseph Smith’s birth. The remaining sections contain a series of vignettes originally prepared as storyboards for a proposed “story trail” in the western region of the Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area. As a result of funding shortages, various mishaps, and a limited number of submissions from the local communities, the story trail project was never completed. This volume presents the vignettes geographically, with sections on Nauvoo, Carthage, Greater Hancock County, the Nauvoo to Springfield Travel Route, Springfield, and the Zion’s Camp Routes.
Andreason is to be commended for attempting to move beyond earlier studies “from an LDS interpretive framework of providential history” that tended “to overestimate Lincoln’s relationship with Mormons,” “overreach the evidence,” and “give more interpretive weight to fragmentary, ambiguous sources (often hearsay) than these sources can bear.”(22) The research appears carefully done, and the text generally avoids much earlier faith-promoting mythology (with the exception of the familiar quote about plowing around the Mormons, a phrase which seems to have been first uttered, not by Lincoln, but by General James B. Fry in 1886. In the author’s defense, that phrase does generally reflect Stenhouse’s description of Lincoln’s approach to Brigham Young and expresses his policy so cogently that if Lincoln didn’t say it, perhaps he should have).
Fans of LDS and Lincoln-related trivia may find many details of interest in this volume, but all too often, the vignettes amount to little more than an identification of places where the young Lincoln might have encountered Mormon leaders or future leaders during his Illinois years. The text describes buildings and landscapes that played a role in later Mormon history, which Lincoln may or may not have visited, and Mormon social gatherings that could have included Lincoln or his wife though no source documents their presence. Too often, the sections note the lack of evidence for direct contact, offer some speculative comments, and conclude that, “It is impossible to know” (15) whether the future president was actually present and how the event might have affected him. The volume is indexed and the introduction includes detailed notes, which have been updated to reflect more recent sources, but the vignettes are not annotated, so readers may have difficulty identifying the sources of information with which they are unfamiliar. Those seeking a linear narrative or a detailed analysis of the impact of early contacts on the president’s understanding of the Mormons will be frustrated.
The book’s greatest strengths lie in its design and its graphic resources. Maps created by Tom Willcockson of Mapcraft Cartography, which clearly identify the sites for which storyboards were prepared, will no doubt be helpful to those seeking to follow the trail of Lincoln and the Mormons in Illinois. The text is generously illustrated with well-reproduced photographs, paintings, and images drawn from a wide range of sources, including the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, the Community of Christ Archives, the Illinois State Military Museum, the Knox county Historical Museum, LDS Church History Library and Museum, the Library of Congress, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, the Utah State Historical Society and a variety of public domain publications. The well-chosen images help bring to life the young Lincoln’s colleagues, relatives, associates and rivals as well as the emerging leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the landscape through which they traveled.
By their nature, these story board narratives offer only fleeting glimpses of that world, a brief introduction to some of the key sites and players in western Illinois in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s. With luck these nuggets will inspire future researchers to study the connections in greater detail.