Lincoln at the Library, Walnut Creek, December 14 Open House

Nov. 29, 2012 - PRLog -- “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War,” a national traveling exhibition that focuses on President Abraham Lincoln’s struggle to meet the constitutional challenges of the Civil War, opens at the Walnut Creek Library on December 14, 2012, and runs through February 8, 2013.

Hosted locally by the Walnut Creek Library Foundation, the exhibition is traveling to select cities and venues around the country through 2015. Walnut Creek is one of those select cities and the first in the San Francisco Bay Area to host this extraordinary exhibit.

Using the Constitution as the cohesive thread, “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War,” offers a fresh and innovative perspective on Lincoln that focuses on his struggle to meet the political and constitutional challenges of the Civil War. Organized thematically, this compelling exhibition explores how Lincoln used the Constitution to confront three intertwined crises of the war—the secession of Southern states, slavery, and wartime civil liberties. [Hi-res exhibit images accompany this announcement, with proper credit and attribution.]

Free and open to all visitors during library hours, “Lincoln: The Constitution and the Civil War” will be exhibited in the Walnut Creek Library’s Teen Center on the second floor, 1644 N. Broadway, Walnut Creek, CA. The Library Foundation has also designed six special events to enhance the exhibit experience and to advance education outside the classroom.

Kicking off the exhibit is the December 14 Open House, Lincoln at the Library, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., when the Walnut Creek Library becomes a living history showplace for all things Civil War.

Staged throughout the second floor, volunteers from the National Civil War Association and the Walnut Creek Historical Society will present Civil War civilian life, cavalry, artillery, and medical artifacts, memorabilia, and displays. In the Fireside Room, the Walnut Creek Historical Society will present performances of an original playlet, “Aftermath,” about two brothers, one Union and one Confederate, who meet at the end of the war.
A presidential “Abraham Lincoln” will stroll the exhibit and displays, meeting and greeting visitors and sharing words of Lincolnesque wisdom. Providing the perfect musical backdrop to the evening will be a wandering banjo player, strumming the popular songs and anthems of the Civil War played as they were 150 years ago.
The innovative “The Civil War In Four Minutes,” which will run continuously in the Teen Center, presents the ever-changing battle lines during the “War Between the States” as a nation tears itself apart. In the lower right corner, a casualty counter tracks the mounting numbers lost to disease, capture, disfigurement, and death. The entire four-year war is presented in roughly four minutes.
And no American Civil War commemoration is complete without the reading of the Gettysburg Address, which will be presented mid-evening by a special guest.