History center creates Lincoln guide for bicentennial

As Idaho prepares to join the nation in celebrating Lincoln’s 200th birthday, the Center for Idaho History and Politics and the Idaho Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission have joined to produce a book introducing residents to the programs, places and people that bear the stamp of “Honest Abe.”

“Lincoln Never Slept Here: Idaho’s Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Tour” takes a look at Lincoln’s creation of Idaho Territory, his appointment of several key players in shaping the state’s settlement and Indian policies and the influence of Civil War veterans from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line on the state’s early mining camps

and homesteads.

Following an in-depth introductory essay, readers are invited to explore Idaho’s highways and byways with a regional look at the places that reflect Lincoln’s influence, including the following:

Atlanta: Named for the Georgia capital and the 1864 battle that was one of the Confederacy’s most devastating defeats. Legend has it that the camp was named Atlanta because news of the gold strike was every bit as big as news of the battle that sealed the fate of the South.

Meadows: The location of Packer John’s Cabin, the site of the 1863 meeting of Idaho’s Democratic Party, where nominees for the newly established Idaho Territory were selected. Republicans, the party of Lincoln, held their convention there the following year.

Leesburg and Grantsville: Adjacent mining towns named, respectively, for the leaders of the Southern and Northern armies. The sons of the South eventually won out and the town

emerged as Leesburg.

Dubois: Named for Fred T. Dubois, territorial delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives and twice elected to the U.S. Senate. Dubois grew up playing with Lincoln’s children as a neighbor in Springfield before emerging as a key player in Idaho politics and unrepentant persecutor of the state’s early Latter-day Saints.

Bear River: This massacre site, located near Preston, is where the Union army attacked a Shoshone encampment in 1863 and represents the prevailing attitude at the core of the Lincoln administration’s Indian policy.

Idaho City: The town at the heart of the biggest mining boom in the history of the Pacific Northwest. The town was so populated with Copperheads (Southern sympathizers) that local newsman T.J. Butler wrote that Lincoln’s party was doomed. Republicans, he wrote, “stood about as good a show of carrying the election as Satan does of re-entering paradise.”

Written by Todd Shallat, director of the Center for Idaho History and Politics, and Kathleen Craven Tuck, in the Office of Communications and Marketing, the book includes a foreword by David Leroy, former attorney general for the state of Idaho and chairman of the Idaho Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. The book also features illustrations by Boise State art professor Bill Carman, as well as dozens of artifacts, photos, maps and engravings.

Additional contributors to the book include graphic designer Adele Thomsen, photographer John Kelly and researcher Amber Beierle.

The book was published with support from United Heritage Financial Group.

COMPILED BY ARBITER STAFF

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