We remember Lincoln here because he remembered us| Mike Strange

His face is on Mount Rushmore. His marble image looks out over the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

He gave us some of the most-oft quoted words in American history. He presided over our nation’s most divisive chapter.

I’ve been thinking about Abraham Lincoln lately. And the fact that he has a presence here in East Tennessee.

An hour’s drive north of Knoxville, spread out below Cumberland Gap, lies the campus of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee.

This might seem an unlikely setting for an institution named in honor of the 16th president. Tennessee, after all, joined the other southern states in the secession from the Union at the start of the Civil War in 1861.

As far as I know, Lincoln never set foot in Tennessee. He was born in Kentucky, moved to Indiana and came of age in Illinois.

Yet there sits Lincoln Memorial University, fronted by the Abraham Lincoln Library and Museum. LMU’s athletic teams are the Railsplitters, a reference to Lincoln’s rootsy image from his 1860 presidential campaign.

What’s the connection?

Start back at the Civil War. Lincoln deeply appreciated the loyalty to the Union that persisted in much of East Tennessee. Unlike most of the rest of the state, many East Tennesseans did not support the Confederacy. They paid dearly for it in the fight to control strategic Cumberland Gap, which changed hands four times.

The story goes that Lincoln shared his concerns with Union general Oliver Howard. As the war wound down, Lincoln told Howard that he wanted to do something for the people of East Tennessee.

Of course, Lincoln personally never got the chance. He was assassinated on April 14, 1865, only five days after the Confederate army surrendered at Appomattox, Virginia.

Fast forward to the 1890s.

Middlesboro, Kentucky, just across Cumberland Gap, had developed as a commercial city in the late 1880s and had some movers and shakers. Meanwhile, Lincoln’s confidant, Gen. Howard, was still around.

Howard led a full life. He lost an arm in a battle in 1862. He fought at Gettysburg, Chattanooga and marched through Georgia with Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. After the Civil War he fought Indians in the west and for a time was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

In 1896, Howard was agreeable to help local forces fulfill Lincoln’s wish by establishing a university in East Tennessee. Lincoln Memorial University, a living tribute to the president, was chartered on Feb. 12 — Lincoln’s birthday — in 1897.

Today, 125 years later, there is a scenic campus and roughly 2,000 undergraduates. They play some good basketball up there. LMU’s Duncan School of Law is located in downtown Knoxville.

On a spring afternoon I drove up Highway 33 and visited the museum. The library portion holds thousands of volumes about Lincoln and the Civil War.

The museum traces Lincoln from boyhood to assassination. There is a log from his birth cabin in Kentucky. There is the cane he carried to Ford’s Theater on the evening he was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

A plaque quotes him lamenting his concerns for Union loyalists: “… our friends in East Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair.’’

Another displays the Gettysburg Address, one of the most eloquent, succinct, powerful collection of words in our history.

And from his second inaugural address in 1865, just five weeks before his death, comes his operative mood to heal a torn nation.

“With malice toward none; with charity for all.’’

I wish we all, East Tennesseans and Americans everywhere, could abide by those words.

Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Why Lincoln Memorial University was founded in East Tennessee