Lincoln scholars shed light on president’s view of nature

October 21, 2009
By Sean Olsta
Staff Reporter

Most people know that Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin.  He grew up in the “country” surrounded by nature. A packed house at the Brookens Auditorium came to find out Lincoln's view on the Illinois environment from two Lincoln scholars.

UIS and the Center for State Policy and Leadership presented their latest installment of the Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series on Oct. 15.  The topic was Lincoln and the Environment.  The crowd was given a lecture describing how Lincoln’s connection with the environment and how it shaped his personal policies.

Preeminent Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame hosted the event with guest lecturer Mark Fiege.

Burlingame holds the Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at UIS.  Burlingame has written three books on our sixteenth president and is an inductee of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois.

Fiege is an Associate Professor at the Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado.  He teaches American environmental history and western American history.  Feige has done extensive research into the connection between Lincoln and role of nature in his life.

Burlingame made opening remarks trying to give the crowd a better understanding of “Honest Abe."   He told the crowd that the way to understand Lincoln is to look at his writings, his personal experiences, and his policy decisions.  Burlingame quoted Lincoln and cited some of his books while worming up the crowd for the main event.

Fiege’s lecture centered on Lincoln’s connection to nature during his early life.  Lincoln was known as “The Rail Splitter” because of his work doing physical labor as a young man. Fiege said, “The activity that most shaped him, that most preoccupied him, and which he most strongly identified himself with involved neither the plow or the tiller but the ax.”

He went on to discuss how his work in physical labor molded his views on slavery.  Fiege claimed that having done the work typical of a seventeenth century slave, Lincoln felt there was no justification to force someone to work without compensation. 

Fiege also talked about some of Lincoln’s innovations. Lincoln had several patents during his life. One that he was never able to see come to life was his idea to harness the wind as an energy source.

“Of all the forces available to man the wind still defied his ingenuity, the wind Lincoln said remained an untamed and unharnessed force”, Fiege said. 

To find out information on future Lincoln Legacy lectures you can go to  Center for State Policy and Leadership website at www.cspl.edu