Reg Ankrom
Quincy  217-779-2595
“Quincy’s Stephen A. Douglas” 
His debate with Lincoln in Quincy on October 13, 1858, was for Douglas a return to the city in which he had lived for six years. In 1841 he arrived in Adams County as the state’s newest – and at 27 years old the youngest – Supreme Court Judge.  Within two years, Quincy-area citizens elected him their representative in Congress to launch his national political career. This is the story of Quincy’s Douglas.

“The Evolution of Lincoln’s Theology”
Theologian Rheinhold Niebuhr believed Abraham Lincoln was America’s greatest theologian. Born a Calvinist Baptist, Lincoln’s understanding of man’s relationship with God underwent a transformation summarized in one of history’s most eloquent addresses, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.

Gary DeClue
John Wood Community College  
217-224-6500
“Stephen A. Douglas: Voice of The Democracy”
DeClue stepped into the role of Stephen A. Douglas in 1994 for C-SPAN’s recreation of the Lincoln-Douglas debate in Quincy. DeClue’s study and characterization of the Little Giant bring to life one of the nation’s greatest historical figures: Quincy Congressman, Illinois Senator and three-time candidate for the U.S. Presidency, all before his death at the age of 48.

Dave Dulaney
Quincy  217-222-7243
“Steamboats at Quincy on the Mississippi”
Dulaney has accumulated one of the finest collections of steamboat pictures around to provide a fascinating look at river commerce in Quincy, Illinois, during the mid-nineteenth century. This presentation reviews Quincy’s important role as a shipping port on the Mississippi at the time of Lincoln and Douglas.

Dr. Tim Jacobs
Quincy  217-223-3087
“Quincy’s Abraham Jonas: Lincoln’s ‘Valued Friend’”
From the time they met in 1838 as young Illinois legislators, Abraham Lincoln and Quincy’s Abraham Jonas remained personal and political friends. This is the fascinating story of the role Quincy’s first Jewish attorney played in the career of the nation’s sixteenth president.

Dr. Tim Jacobs and Dan Reed
Quincy  217-223-3087
“Medicine in the Civil War”
The nation’s War of Rebellion killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of soldiers, testing the skills and endurance of those who administered medical treatment. Jacobs and Reed examine the ways medicine responded and was shaped by the challenges and agonies from the battlefield.

Dr. Joe Messina
Quincy University  217-222-8020
“The Book that Started a Civil War”
The Compromise of 1850 included a Fugitive Slave Law that required the return of runaway slaves to their owners. The measure stimulated Harriet Beecher Stowe’s provocative book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When he met Stowe in 1862, Lincoln reportedly said, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great Civil War.” Messina looks at how this single work of fiction shaped a nation’s thinking about slavery.

Ruth Ann Snowden
Quincy  217-228-6000
“The Artist of Quincy’s Great Sculpture”
In 1936 the City of Quincy dedicated the bas-relief sculpture by famed Illinois artist Lorado Taft in Washington Park to commemorate the Lincoln-Douglas Quincy Debate. This was one of several works by Taft, who sought to beautify cities with sculpture. Snowden’s extensive research and video look at the wide array of Taft’s remarkable talent.

Dr. Justin Coffey
Quincy University   217-222-2080
“Abolitionists in Illinois”
By the mid-1830s abolitionists, most of them from New England, began pouring into Illinois. They brought with them what in Illinois were considered radical views.  But their commitment to the cause of immediately freeing the slaves created change in Illinois just before the onset of Civil War. Coffey looks at abolitionism in Illinois. 

Dr. David Costigan
Quincy University  217-222-2711
“Accommodations Before Civil War”
The issue of slavery imperiled the U.S. Constitution. The founding fathers left to future generations the search for a solution. What followed was a series of accommodations in compromises and laws that sought to bind but simply put off a solution. This presentation looks at the efforts that ultimately failed, ending in Civil War.

Terrell Dempsey
Quincy  217-222-2432
“Three for Freedom: Abolitionists from Quincy”
In 1841 a vibrant community of abolitionists was growing in Adams County. Slaves who made it across the Mississippi could find friends among the often-hostile Illinois residents as men and women of the Mission Institute patrolled the riverbank looking for runaways to aid. In July 1841 three enthusiastic young men – James E. Burr, George Thompson and Alanson Work, tired of waiting for slaves to come to them, headed into Missouri with little more than their idealism. Dempsey details the mission – and what awaited them.

Phil Germann
Quincy  217-222-0172
“Quincy on Debate Day”
Quincy was bustling with commerce on October 13, 1858. Lincoln and Douglas, in town that day for their sixth debate in their campaign for the U.S. Senate, would see more than 12,000 people packed into Quincy’s Washington Square surrounded by buildings filled with a variety of business enterprises. Germann provides a lively look at Quincy and Quincyans on debate day.

Rob Mellon
Quincy High School  217-221-9125 or 217-430-9987
“From Obscurity to Honor: Lincoln’s Rise”
Abraham Lincoln’s ambition, morality and purpose take him from the Illinois frontier to a revival of the principles of the founding fathers to make a difference on the world stage. Mellon discusses Lincoln’s political acumen, rigorous preparation and sense of morality, which enabled the prairie politician to rise from obscurity to veneration for changing the nature of democracy in America.

Iris Nelson
Quincy  217-224-8368
“Burnout: The Private Lincoln and the Pressure of Hardball Politics”
What do we know about how Lincoln handled the “hell for leather” politics of 1858? What happened to Lincoln in Quincy on October 13 that year? Was it burnout or something else? Nelson describes the condition that Lincoln and his Quincy friends tried to keep quiet.

“Lincoln’s Loyal Confidante: Quincy Resident Eliza Browning”
Close friends for nearly thirty years, Eliza Caldwell Browning hosted Abraham Lincoln on the night of the October 13th Lincoln-Douglas debate. Learn how she supported Lincoln whenever she could and how it was that she spent a week at the White House when Lincoln’s son Willie died.

Warren Speckhart
Quincy  217-228-2654
“The Civil War in Southwestern Illinois”
Illinois was a microcosm of the clashes between principles of the North and South that ultimately were settled in Civil War. Speckhart provides a perspective in an oratorical journey to Illinois’ three capitols – Kaskaskia, Vandalia and Springfield – and some of the personages were were to be found there.

Home

Our Mission

Events

News, Resources

Links

Visit Quincy