After Springfield and New Salem, Jacksonville arguably is the third city in Illinois with the greatest number of personal connections to Abraham Lincoln. The local Looking for Lincoln Committee recently has installed nine wayside exhibits, indicating historical sites of Lincoln’s close Jacksonville friends and associates. Many of these individuals are also directly linked to Illinois College – whether as trustees, administration, faculty or members of the student body.

On Friday, October 16, the City of Jacksonville and Illinois College unveiled and dedicated a sculpture of a young college-age Lincoln on the Illinois College Walkway. The statue, entitled “Abraham Lincoln: Preparing for Greatness, Circa 1835,” portrays Lincoln in his mid-’20s at the age when two Illinois College students brought their English grammar and rhetoric texts to him in New Salem. The brothers William and Lynn Green, Class of 1837, tutored Lincoln from their classes with Professor Jonathan Baldwin Turner, a man Lincoln would later credit with giving him his “only instruction in the English language, and that through the Greene boys.”

Sculpted by Steven Maxon and Doris Park of Iowa, and commissioned by Paul and Almut Spalding and Illinois College President Axel D. and Loreli Steuer, Lincoln sits on a wall reading one of the texts used in Turner’s classes, opened to a section on the art of public speaking. His right hand rests on two more popular English grammar books of the day. A dog sits by Lincoln’s side, representing one of Lincoln’s many canine companions through his lifetime, as well as to show his love for animals, along with his love of learning. The statue is unique among the familiar Lincoln statues in the State of Illinois because of Lincoln’s youth, the English rhetoric and grammar texts, and the dog sitting faithfully at his side.

During the statue dedication Lincoln received a posthumous honorary bachelor’s degree voted by the Illinois College faculty and Board of Trustees, recognizing the Bicentennial Year of Lincoln’s birth, his strong connections with many people at Illinois College, as well as to honor Lincoln’s myriad achievements as our nation’s 16th President. The celebration featured a musical prelude with the Illinois College Concert Wind Ensemble and Concert Choir performing medleys of familiar music from the mid-19th century era. Steuer and Andy Ezard, Jacksonville mayor, officially accepted the gifts of the statue and accompanying plaques. The sculptors also described the year-long process that brought the early design conceptions to reality.