ABSTRACT
NE W S A L E M H I S T O R I C S I T E is a reconstructed village and outdoormuseum in Illinois where Abraham Lincoln lived in the 1830s (Thomas 1934). Most Americans know that Abraham Lincoln was U.S. president during the Civil War, that he freed the slaves, and that he was assassinated in 1865. Arguably the greatest American folk hero, Lincoln’s life is an embodiment of the American success ideology. Abraham Lincoln came to New Salem at the age of 22, and he lived there between 1831 and 1837. In his own words, Lincoln arrived as ‘a piece of floating driftwood’, ‘a friendless, uneducated penniless boy’, and by hard work and strength of character this humble backwoodsman left New Salem to become a lawyer and politician in the state capital. An Illinois Historic Preservation Agency handout distributed at the park, entitled ‘Lincoln’s New Salem’ (n.d.), says, ‘The six years Lincoln spent in New Salem formed a turning point in his career. From the gangling youngster who came to the village in 1831 with no definite objectives, he became a man of purpose as he embarked on a career of law and statesmanship.’ The same theme appears in Sandburg’s (1954: 743) famous biography, where he calls New Salem ‘Lincoln’s Alma Mater’ and refers to the site as Lincoln’s ‘nourishing mother’ (Sandburg 1954: 55). Implicit in the story is the ‘frontier hypothesis’ of Frederick Jackson Turner, which suggests that, just as the United States was formed by overcoming the obstacles of the wilderness, so too Lincoln was formed by overcoming the hardships of frontier life. Also implicit is the notion that America is an open society, that the American dream of success can be achieved by anyone willing to work hard by day and study by night. New Salem, then, is a national shrine, a site of America’s civil religion, because it was the locality that gave birth to the adult Lincoln. New Salem was the site of transformation, and Lincoln’s story is the story of America, the rags-to-riches, log-cabin-to-White-House American myth.
