Lincoln festivities linked to traveling exhibit

Spokane’s Downtown Library is throwing a birthday party for Abraham Lincoln on Saturday and inviting area children to attend as part of a traveling exhibit on Lincoln’s emancipation of slaves.

The party will be at 11 a.m. in the first-floor meeting rooms of the library at Lincoln Street and Main Avenue.

Lincoln was born in Kentucky on Feb. 12, 1809, and moved to Indiana and then to Illinois.

The exhibit, titled “Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln’s Journey to Emancipation,” documents Lincoln’s views against slavery and his eventual decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War.

The exhibit is traveling the country in advance of a Lincoln bicentennial birthday commemoration in 2009.

The exhibit will continue through Feb. 23 and is highly regarded for its attention to detail and its documentation of Lincoln’s handling of slavery.

It draws upon original documents in the collections of the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City. The exhibit is contained on six large panels in the ground floor gallery space of the Downtown Library.

While Lincoln was devoted to principles of freedom and equality, he was also seen as a pragmatist. Before the Civil War, he believed an attack on slavery would split the Union, but after the war began taking its toll Lincoln became convinced that freeing slaves would help the Union militarily.

One stunning photograph shows slaves crossing a Southern river in carts and being met by Union soldiers.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute organized the exhibit with the cooperation of the American Library Association and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission, which was created by Congress to plan a national celebration leading up to and commemorating Lincoln’s 200th birthday on Feb. 12, 2009.

The Downtown Library also will host a showing of the movie “Glory” on Feb. 17 at 2 p.m. The movie, starring Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Matthew Broderick, is considered among the best Civil War movies ever made. It is rated R.