'Lincoln and Newark' to Retrace Historic Trip

, professor of history at Rutgers University - Newark and author of , will join Lincoln scholar and Chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation Harold Holzer Wednesday night to discuss The program is sponsored by the Newark History Society, and will be held June 1 at 6 p.m. at the Newark Public Library. It is free and open to the public.

This year is both the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s historic visit to Newark, which took place just before his first inauguration, and the 100th anniversary of the dedication of Gutzon Borglum’s “Seated Lincoln” statue in Newark. Borglum crafted the Presidential portraits on Mount Rushmore. When the statue was unveiled in 2011, President Theodore Roosevelt was among the crowd of some 100,000.

When Lincoln arrived in Newark in Feb. 21, 1861, the President-elect came into the Morris and Essex Station on North Broad Street at 9:30 in the morning, according to OldNewark.com. Lincoln had left Jersey City earlier that morning en route to his March 4 inaugural in Washington.

Mayor Bigelow and a committee of Newark citizens met Lincoln at the station, and escorted him in a barouche drawn by four gray horses. The group traveled moved north along Broad Street to the Chestnut Street Station.

McCabe, a South Orange resident, and Holzer will consider Lincoln’s significance to Newark citizens; according to records of the time, more than one-third of Newark citizenry turned out to watch the President-elect’s procession – despite a brutal snowstorm.

For more information, NewarkHistorySociety@verizon.net or call 973 376-8273.