NIU-produced Lincoln documentary,
local history Web site debut April 28

by Tom Parisi

History buffs will be treated to a double feature Thursday, April 28, with the premiere of a NIU-produced documentary on Abraham Lincoln’s involvement in the Black Hawk War and the debut of a newly enhanced Web site focusing on local history.

The event begins at 7 p.m. in the Visual Arts Building auditorium (Room 100) and is free and open to the public.

The first hour of the program will feature Drew VandeCreek, director of University Libraries’ Digitization Unit, and Phyllis Kelley, director of the Joiner History Room at the Sycamore Public Library, who will introduce “Taming of the Wild Prairie,” a Web site on DeKalb County history.

Funded through a grant from the Illinois State Library, the site (http://dig.lib.niu.edu/dekalb/) provides online access to much of the Sycamore library’s extensive photo archive. It includes Civil War photographs and diaries, as well as hundreds of historic photographs and pictures from across the county.

The documentary, “Lincoln and the Black Hawk War,” will screen at 8 p.m. Produced by VandeCreek in collaboration with Communication Professors Jeff Chown and Laura Vazquez, both award-winning documentary makers, the 50-minute documentary focuses on Lincoln’s service in the Illinois Militia during the Black Hawk War of 1832.

During the spring of that year, Sac and Fox Indians under the leadership of Black Hawk left the Iowa territory and returned to their homes in northern Illinois. The Native Americans had lost their Illinois lands in a disputed 1804 treaty. Their return sparked widespread panic among white settlers, and Illinois Gov. John Reynolds quickly called up the militia, which included a young Lincoln.

The militia pursued Black Hawk’s band into southwestern Wisconsin, where the Indians were massacred Aug. 2 at a site near the mouth of the Bad Axe River.

“The issue of wartime service by presidential candidates is always a salient one in American society,” said Chown, the documentary’s director. “We traced Lincoln’s participation as a 23-year-old militia recruit in 1832. This was his only military experience prior to leading us through the Civil War.”

Lincoln once joked that he fought only mosquitoes during the Black Hawk War. Yet, while he did not see combat action, his experiences made a lasting impression.

“He participated in a battlefield-cleanup detail and saw scalped bodies and the result of atrocities,” Chown said. “We end the film with a story in his campaign biography that narrates how as a young captain he intervened to prevent the lynching of an Indian scout who had wandered into the militia’s camp. However, as president, he would later preside over the largest mass execution of Indians in U.S. history at Mankato, Minnesota. Although Lincoln pardoned 268 Indians, another 38 were hanged. Native Americans didn’t fare very well during Lincoln’s administration.”

The documentary features interviews with top Lincoln experts and 19th century historians, including Richard Slotkin of Wesleyan University, John Mack Faragher of Yale University, Cecil Eby of the University of Michigan and Douglas Wilson and Rodney Davis of the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College. The project took three years to produce and presented unique challenges to the filmmakers.

“There are multiple issues that arise when making a documentary about such a complex and important figure as Abraham Lincoln and those experiences which contributed to his understanding of a multi-racial America,” said Vazquez, who served as editor on the documentary. “Bringing these issues to a contemporary American audience by working with still images also is a rather daunting task.”

Documentary screenings in Dallas and Springfield have received enthusiastic responses. “Immersing ourselves in Lincoln history, we realized you never get bored with this fellow,” Chown said. “He’s complicated and reflective in a way that is unusual for famous leaders.”

Clips from “Lincoln and the Black Hawk War” ultimately will appear on the Lincoln/Net Web site (http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/) created by VandeCreek. That site focuses on Lincoln’s life before his presidency.

The documentary was funded by two Illinois Humanities Council grants to Chown and VandeCreek totaling about $20,000.

4-25-05