Everybody's History: Indiana's Lincoln Inquiry and the Quest to Reclaim a President's Past

Chapter 2: A Crowded Field

37 } 2 A Crowded Field On Lincoln’s birthday in February 1924, half a dozen of the Lincoln Inquiry’s able workers met for a “smoker” in Evansville. For two hours the assembled lawyers, insurance agent, former state senator, artist, and journalist examined their “historical and society work and the outlook in southwestern Indiana.” The outlook was not good. An eightpage memo documenting the evening’s exchange reveals that the men agreed unanimously that the Indiana State Historical Commission had “deliberately snubbed” the society’s workers and introduced a new “policy of restrictions” in an effort to censor the society’s work and control its agenda. Redirecting Eggleston’s imagery onto state bureaucratic officers , the memo lambasted “the provincialism of Indiana schoolmasters, from the eastern, central and northern part of the state”who failed to recognize that the Lincoln Inquiry’s work came out far in “advance of anything which is being furnished at Indianapolis.” Another tension went unspoken in the meeting. Just as state officials had grown jealous of the society’s agenda, only four years into their enterprise its leaders had grown jealous of one another. In particular, the society ’s founding president, the grizzled corporate lawyer John Iglehart, and his elected successor, the wealthy socialite Tommy de la Hunt, had ceased speaking to each other. Only the state’s treacherous attack could temporarily suspend the “antagonisms” felt between them.1 The Evansville smoker of 1924 did not feature a pilgrimage, or pioneer relics, or even physical facilities planning. Leaders of the Lincoln Inquiry had discovered that the public practice of history necessarily involves politics and power. Though twenty-first century commentators often frame debates over museum exhibits or school curricula as the outgrowth of modern “culture wars,” the public interpretation of history has always been contested. John 38 A Crowded Field Adams and Thomas Jefferson offered different interpretations of the Revolutionary War during the contentious election of 1800, and Republicans claimed both Lincoln and the moral high ground by “waving the bloody shirt” in the decades after the Civil War. In the field of Lincoln studies, James Randall’s effort to rhetorically claim the field for academics came after dozens of others claims had already been made by Lincoln’s acquaintances , by his biographers, by state and local historical associations, and by the Lincoln Inquiry. By recruiting members, setting agendas, conducting research, and publishing their findings, participants in the Lincoln Inquiry made a bid for the rhetorical historical territory that had already been claimed by previous historians and historical institutions. Numerous state agencies and institutions were already trying to preserve and tell the history of Indiana . In the field of Lincoln studies, the 1920s witnessed a surge of work by genealogists, collectors, monument builders, and biographers. The external pressures and enticements coming from the state history community and the Lincoln community threatened the internal cohesion of the Lincoln Inquiry. Once a paper was read at a meeting, could anyone scoop its findings for their own book or newspaper column? Who had the right to edit a paper, or to decide whether it was good enough to be published? Why should someone present research findings at a meeting in southern Indiana when a famous author might pay for the work in cash or compliment ? These and other questions forced themselves upon the Lincoln Inquiry as it became yet one more competitor in an already crowded field of contenders seeking scarce funding resources, access to publishing outlets , and the power of defining the goals and outcomes of public historical work. A General Mania for Lincoln The Lincoln Inquiry began its work at a time of growing public interest in Abraham Lincoln. The twentieth century opened with a widely popular two-volume biography of Lincoln authored by journalist Ida M. Tarbell that moved with quick prose over the solid foundation of documents, portraits, and relics. Collectors of Lincoln memorabilia became increasingly active in searching out new sources and cataloging their holdings.The centennial of Lincoln’s birth in 1909 witnessed the creation of the Lincoln penny, a new postage stamp, and dozens of books and poems; it also fostered a handful of associations that remained active in promoting Lincoln. The Lincoln Farm Association had raised money to purchase his A Crowded Field 39 Kentucky birthplace and by 1911 had dedicated a reconstructed log cabin within a massive Greek temple on the site. Progressive Era reformers used Lincoln as...