With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition January 21, 2011

With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition, an exhibition created by the Library of Congress, will open at The Durham Museum on January 15, 2011. The exhibition offers the public the opportunity to view rarely seen treasures from the Library of Congress' collections.
With Malice Toward None charts Lincoln's growth from prairie lawyer to preeminent statesman and addresses the monumental issues he faced, including slavery and race, the dissolution of the Union, and the Civil War. The exhibit reveals Lincoln the man, whose thoughts, words, and actions were deeply affected by personal experiences and pivotal historic events. By placing Lincoln's words in a historical context, the exhibition gives visitors a deeper understanding of how remarkable Lincoln's decisions were for their time and why his words continue to resonate today.

The exhibit marks the greatest assemblage of objects from the Library of Congress' Lincoln collections in history. It includes letters, photographs, political cartoons, period engravings, speeches, and artifacts. The actual grammar book studied by Lincoln in his effort to master English, the notes he prepared in advance of his debates with Senator Stephen Douglas, and the personal scrapbook he assembled of newspaper clippings of the debates bring this iconic figure to life. Other items will include campaign and election ephemera and such treasures as a facsimile of an autobiography that Lincoln supplied to admiring biographers, his penciled "Farewell Address" as he boarded the train from Springfield, Ill., his first Inaugural Address, the Bible upon which he took the oath of office on March 4, 1861 (the same one used by President Obama in 2009), a facsimile of his unforgettable Gettysburg Address and a rare lithograph of a final draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Military enthusiasts will have the opportunity to see the highly critical letter Lincoln wrote but never sent to Gen. George Meade following the Battle of Gettysburg and the letter of thanks to Gen. William T. Sherman for the capture of Savannah, Ga.

The exhibition will include the Lincoln family Bible, a caned chair from the Lincoln and Herndon Law Office on loan from the Union Pacific Railroad Museum, and the contents of Lincoln's pockets on the night he was assassinated. This stunning exhibition will complete a five-city tour at The Durham Museum.