Lincoln’s 200th will be ‘teachable moment’ | TimesArgus.com

MONTPELIER – To mark the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, a number of groups and organizations will coordinate contests, speeches and readings around the state over the next year.

The bicentennial will be celebrated without state money, a necessary result of the current economic climate, said John McCardell, a history professor and former president at Middlebury College and the head of the state committee coordinating the events.

“This entire program of events has been put together without a penny of state money,” he said. The program of events begins with an essay contest at Hildene, the Lincoln family house in Manchester.

But despite the lack of state money – organizers had originally hoped for about $50,000 – the series of events will be “far from the modesty we would expect” in the absence of public money, McCardell said.

The bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth is “a teachable moment that can re-engage the public” McCardell said, an event made more teachable by the fact that President-elect Barack Obama is about to assume the presidency and, like Lincoln, will appoint a cabinet that includes former rivals.

“It is a remarkable coincidence that in the 200th birthday year of Abraham Lincoln a black person from the state of Illinois assumes the presidency,” agreed Howard Coffin, a historian who joined other members of the Lincoln bicentennial committee in the Statehouse’s Cedar Creek Room on December 11.

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