Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 101, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1904 — CELEBRATING AN ANNIVERSARY [ARTICLE]

CELEBRATING AN ANNIVERSARY

Democratic State Platform Objects to Honoring Mother of Lincoln. In the Democratic state platform the governor is arraigned for “taking the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home Band to Jeffersonville on one of his Jaunts and trying to saddle the expense of entertaining it on the State Reformatory.” It requires a knowledge of the circumstances to understand the motive for this particular “plank.” The “jaunt” in question was a pilgrimage by Governor Durbin and other state officials to the grave of the mother of Abraham Lincoln, upon the occasion of the dedication of a monument to her memory in the little cemetery near the Indiana cabin in which the great emancipator spent his boyhood. A philanthropic citizen of Illinois had erected a shaft at the grave of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and no public provision having been made for recognizing its dedication, Governor Durbin and other state officials journeyed to Gentryville at private expense. The governor deemed it appropriate that a band composed of the sons of Indiana soldiers who helped to uphold the hands of Abraham Lincoln should accompany the party, and he contributed out of his own pocket one hundred dollars to meet the expense of their trip. At Jeffersonville there was a wait between trains, and at the governor’s direction these wards of the state were given a meal or two at the state Institution located at that place, the state being saved at the same time a meal or two they would otherwise have eaten at Knightstown. The then superintendent of the Indiana Reformatory later rendered to the governor personally a bill for the entertainment of this hand, which the governor personally paid. And this incident becomes a Democratic state issue In a platform celebrating the fortieth anniversary of another Democratic state platform wherein the son of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in the midst of a struggle for the preservation of the Union, was denounced for the adoption of measures essential to the maintenance of the national authority.