Wednesday is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. The 16th President was visiting Indianapolis on this day in 1861.
Lincoln’s stop in Indy on his way to Washington D.C. was notable for a number of reasons. The most important of those was a speech he gave to a reported 20,000 people telling the crowd “it is your business to rise up and preserve the Union.”
Author of “There I Grew Up: Remembering Abraham Lincoln’s Indiana Youth,” William Bartelt says the speech from the balcony of the Bates House came at a crucial time.
"The country was literally falling apart," explains Bartelt, "people really didn't know what Lincoln thought about that and what his policies were going to be."
Bartelt says while in Indy the president elect’s son Robert misplaced his inaugural speech which an angry Lincoln later found among the other luggage. There were security concerns at the train station, a waiter reportedly spilled food on Lincoln and newspapers made no note of it being his 52nd birthday.
Lincoln would not be in Indianapolis again until his funeral train brought him here in 1865.
