Statewide tour commemorating 160th anniversary of Gettysburg Address to go through Richmond
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RICHMOND, Ind. — Four score and eighty years ago, Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, gave the Gettysburg Address to over 15,000 people, including one Richmond teenage girl, months after the bloodiest battle in the Civil War.
With the 160th anniversary of the address approaching on Nov. 19, this Saturday, Nov. 4 at 11 a.m., Westfield-based The Lincoln Special will be starting a statewide roadshow tour of Indiana, tracing Lincoln's 1865 route of his funeral train that started in Richmond.
“It’s imperative to remind people in Lincoln’s home state that his story didn’t just end at Ford’s Theater,” Chris Allen, The Lincoln Special executive director, said in a press release. “Even in death, Lincoln’s story continued on, only with us as authors. Every city and town in Indiana that Lincoln’s funeral train stopped at shares an indelible connection to our nation’s story.”
Saturday night, April 29, 1865, Lincoln's train arrived in Richmond around 11:30 p.m. where it was greeted by a committee of citizens. Bells were rung at 2 a.m. the next morning when it reached the state line, greeted by no fewer than 10,000 mourners who withstood the cold weather to pay their final farewells. It then moved on to Centreville where 2,000 mourners met it at 3:24 a.m. before advancing to Cambridge City and Dublin.
The tour will start at Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, before stopping at the Morrison-Reeves Library in Richmond Saturday at 2:30 p.m. The tour will continue on to Greenfield, Indianapolis and Zionsville next Saturday, Nov. 18, before continuing on to the western and northwestern part of the state later this year and early 2024.
In each city, Allen will be staging an hour-long forum that highlights Lincoln’s life and legacy after his assassination at Ford’s Theater. Each roadshow is free and open to the public.
“Lincoln’s Funeral Train acted as a zipper that brought hundreds of thousands of people together at this nation’s most fractured point,” Allen said in the release. “His funeral train proved that even in death, this man (Lincoln) could unite people like nothing before or since.”
After his assassination Lincoln’s remains arrived to Indiana, his boyhood home state on April 29, 1865, just 21 days later.
“It wasn’t just Lincoln’s remains that came through here,” Allen said. “It was everything Lincoln stood for, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, and the Gettysburg Address that came through here.”
For more information, visit tearsandiron.com or call (317) 967-6190.
Evan Weaver is a news and sports reporter at The Palladium-Item. Contact him on X (@evan_weaver7) or email at eweaver@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Richmond Palladium-Item: Tour commemorating 160th Anniversary of Gettysburg Address to go through Richmond
