Events mark 150th anniversary of debates

Galesburg will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates October 2-5, 2008. Mayor Gary Smith proclaimed the weekend Lincoln-Douglas Debate Weekend in celebration of the Debate anniversary.

Several events will mark the celebration, including a traveling exhibit from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, tours of Knox College's Old Main, and a performance of Lincoln and Douglas re-enactors at Knox College.

All the events are free and open to the public. Additional events in Galesburg are

The Lincoln-Douglas "Reunion Tour '08" will present Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas -- as played by professional actors -- discussing their experience and arguments from the 1858 campaign. The Reunion Tour will perform at 2 p.m., Saturday, October 4, on the east side of Knox College's Old Main ? the only original building that remains from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.

The performance presents the controversial issues from the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, updated for a 21st-century audience. The actors -- in period costume -- will react to each other and respond to questions from the audience as if they were holding a modern news conference or town meeting.

Actors are George Buss, who has portrayed Lincoln for more than two decades; Tim Connors, an actor and theatre teacher in Freeport, Illinois. In addition, Ed Finch, a retired teacher and president of the Lincoln-Douglas Society of Freeport, will portray Silas Terry, a Union naval officer who occasionally escorted Lincoln, and act as a moderator for the presentation. The Reunion Tour is performing in each of the seven original debate sites.

Knox's Old Main and the Underground Railroad Freedom Station at Knox College also will be open for tours from 1-4 on Saturday and Knox?s history students will adopt the personas of individuals who actually attended the debates. As part of a history class during the winter term of 2008, the students studied first person accounts of real people who attended the debates.

At the same time, The "Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made in America" Bicentennial Tour, a mobile museum exhibit developed by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, will stop at Sandburg Mall in Galesburg on October 2-5, 2008. The exhibit will be open free to the public Thursday through Saturday 10 a.m.-7 p.m., and Sunday 12-5 p.m.

Housed in a 53-foot long trailer, the exhibit uses interactive graphics, facsimile documents and artifacts to commemorate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth.

The mobile exhibit, "brings the legacy of Lincoln to the people," said Rick Beard, executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. "It offers visitors a taste of the experience they will have when they visit the Springfield museum."

The Galesburg visit of "Self-Made in America" is sponsored by the Educational Technology Consortium and its three partners, Knox College, Carl Sandburg College, and District 205. It was developed by Lincoln museum curators and historians working in concert with Mobility Resource Associates, a Michigan-based leader in creating custom mobile exhibition tours and funded in part by a grant from the Illinois Bureau of Tourism.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 48 states and 42 nations.