The Michigan historical marker in commemorating Abraham Lincoln's visit to Kalamazoo's Bronson Park in 1856
Note: With the release of the movie "Lincoln" this weekend, MLive and the Kalamazoo Gazette over the next few days will look at Lincoln's visit to Kalamazoo.
KALAMAZOO, MI — When Abraham Lincoln came to Kalamazoo 156 years ago, he was a somewhat obscure, beardless lawyer, campaigning for the first Republican presidential candidate.
Speaking in Bronson Park, the future president was a side act to some of the bigger names of the day: including the governor of Michigan and a U.S. senate candidate.
This weekend, one of the most anticipated films about Lincoln will open in theaters across the country. While the film, directed by Steven Spielberg, focuses on the final months of Lincoln's life and the height of the Civil War and passing the 13th Amendment, Kalamazoo can claim to have hosted the president's only public appearance in Michigan.
"Lincoln was sort of in training all of his life for that horrible crisis of the Civil War and we were one of those places where he honed his skills, where he practiced the kind of arguments he would use eventually as president," said Joel Orosz, a Kalamazoo man who in 1978 as a student at Kalamazoo College wrote an article on Lincoln's visit for the Historical Society of Michigan.
"We were the place that helped him prepare for that hour, that trial that ultimately saved the union."
Lincoln spoke in Kalamazoo's Bronson Park on Aug. 27, 1856 as part of a larger political rally. Lincoln was invited to the rally by Hezekiah Griffith Wells, one of Kalamazoo's most prominent citizens. One of the reasons Lincoln may have been invited was because he had been runner up to be the party's vice presidential pick earlier that year.
The event was a large Republican rally for presidential candidate John C. Frémont. The rally came during the beginning of the Republican Party, which was founded two years earlier in 1854 in Jackson. They keynote speaker of the rally was Zachariah Chandler of Detroit, who was campaigning to be Senator.
At the time, Kalamazoo was a village of about 10,000 people. It was known as being progressive and a hub of activity, situated halfway between Chicago and Detroit on the Michigan Central Railroad. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people attended the Kalamazoo rally, coming from Detroit, Battle Creek, Jackson, Niles and Grand Rapids.
Lincoln came into Kalamazoo on the train from Chicago. The train arrived late and he rushed down Rose Street to Bronson Park. There were four stages set up in the park and Lincoln spoke at 2 p.m. His speech touched on one of the halmark issues of the Republican party at the time: restricting the expansion of slavery to new territories and states, including Kansas and Nebraska.
"We are a great empire. We are eighty years old," Lincoln told the Kalamazoo audience, according to an account on the Kalamazoo Public Library website. "We stand at once the wonder and admiration of the whole world, and we must enquire what it is that has given us so much prosperity, and we shall understand that to give up that one thing, would be to give up all future prosperity.
"Turning to the South, we see a people who, while they boast of being free, keep their fellow beings in bondage...Shall we say, "Let it be"? No – we have an interest in the maintenance of the principles of the Government, and without this interest, it is worth nothing."
After the speech, the crowd erupted in applause.
Chris Praedel, a Kalamazoo native and director of communications at the Kalamazoo Regional Chamber of Commerce, has studied Lincoln most of his life.
"It was clear, even then, that this (slavery) was an issue he cared very strongly about," Pradedel said of Lincoln's Kalamazoo speech.
While scholars are fortunate to have a transcript of Lincoln's Kalamazoo address, there are still some unknowns about his visit. The first is where Lincoln stood in Bronson Park to deliver the speech. The historical marker has Lincoln standing at the burial ground at the south-west corner of the park, while another monument at the south-east corner said he spoke there.
Also, scholars don't know where Lincoln stayed the night of his visit, whether at the old Burdick Hotel, at the Octagon House on South Westnedge, or across the street from Bronson Park at Wells' house, located on Park Street.
After Lincoln was assassinated, many people "conveniently" began to remember the future president's visit, said Orosz. One woman was quoted in the Kalamazoo Gazette 50 years after his visit as saying she remembered giving a young Lincoln a bouquet of celery. Although Kalamazoo was the "celery city," it hadn't begun growing the vegetable at the time of his visit, Orosz said.
Throughout the years, numerous events have been held at Bronson Park to commemorate the visit. In 1956 on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s speech, one of Lincoln’s descendants, read the speech in Bronson Park. In 2006, a Lincoln reenactor came to Bronson Park and recited the Kalamazoo speech for the 150th Anniversary of Lincoln's visit.
Former state Sen. Tom George produced a 40-minute documentary in 1999 about the visit. George said Lincoln gave a lot of campaign speeches in support for Frémont, but the Kalamazoo is the only one that has survived.
"The speech helps shows the evolution of his thinking," George said.
For people in Kalamazoo, that's something to be proud of, George said. "It shows how our community connects to this larger stream if events. All politics and all events are local."
Fritz Klug is a politics and energy reporter for MLive and the Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact him at fklug@mlive.com or 269-370-0584. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or App.net.