Editor’s note

It was Election Day, Nov. 6, but there was no last-minute trip to Des Moines or pick-up basketball game in Chicago for Springfi eld’s presidential candidate. Abraham Lincoln’s Election Day, 1860, was exciting nevertheless, as Tara McClellan McAndrew relates in her history column on page 15. Politicos had a good idea back then – candidates stayed home and left the campaigning to their political parties and surrogates – so Lincoln hadn’t said much publicly in six months. Late that evening, after getting favorable results at the telegraph offi ce on the north side of the square, the Lincolns celebrated at an ice cream store on the south side of the square before heading home to Eighth Street after midnight. Lincoln won 17 states and a clear majority in the Electoral College, and won the popular vote with more than 1.8 million votes (compared to Barack Obama’s 58 million-plus). What seemed to make him happiest, however, was winning Springfi eld by 69 votes, even though he lost Sangamon County by 42.

–Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher

Cover photo courtesy Department of Natural Resources