The small town of Springfield, Illinois is gearing up for a global event. April 15 marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, and local community leaders are busy preparing to reenact the historic procession in his adopted home state of Illinois. It was in the Illinois state capital, after a 1,654-mile journey, that America's 16th president was ultimately laid to rest.
"Abraham Lincoln is not a Springfield figure, not an Illinois figure, not even a national figure," says historian Ian Hunt, of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. "He is one of those rare individuals who is truly a world figure."
In 1865, Springfield raised $20,000 for Lincoln's funeral expenses; the upcoming memorial reenactment is a similar grassroots effort. The oldest flag-making company in America has recreated the 36-star flag that draped Lincoln's coffin, while a group of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have built a hearse exactly like the one that carried Lincoln's remains in 1865.
