The Treasures Gallery presented by The Louise and Barry Taper Family Foundation

As you leave Journey Two, you will encounter The Treasures Gallery. Here you can view dozens of actual items that were a part of the Lincolns' lives. Family photos, china and crystal from the White House, and other artifacts from the collection form part of this in-depth display that helps to put you in touch with the personal lives of the Lincolns.

In the center of this gallery stands a large cylindrical wall – in effect an upturned stovepipe that rises about 15 feet, a hushed vault with a high ceiling. It houses a gallery inside the gallery, the inner sanctum for some of the greatest Lincoln artifacts. Within, you find items recently donated by or purchased from the Louise and Barry Taper Family Foundation that bring the 16th president most vividly to life. The first page of his boyhood sum book, dated 1826, where he scratched in a rhyme and taught himself math, the clock from his law office, his stovepipe hat — these treasures stand tall in all viewers' memories.

Because you have just finished walking through Lincoln's life in "The Journey," a close-up view of these historic items stirs the heart and mind. Pause as you exit to gaze upon a monumental plaster head of Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum, who later designed Mount Rushmore. This face, and the other treasures, should leave you with a deeper appreciation and understanding of Lincoln's amazing and moving ideas, plus a feeling of personal connection to the history.

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THE EFFIGY DOLL. This doll may have come from the 1864 campaign, but every year of his candidacy and administration saw gales of hatred unleashed against the Lincoln person and the Republican platform. The effigy's paper face now includes a beard, based on an 1864 photograph. The paper hands are now gone. Otherwise it is made of buttons, real hair, and sturdy, simple cloth — the work of a woman or man who was handy with scissors and thread. The cloth face underneath the paper face is black – because the Republican party, in its anti-slavery stance, was routinely referred to as the Black Republicans from about 1855. Dolls of this sort or larger were thrown into bonfires at pro-slavery or Democratic rallies – burning Lincoln in effigy — in Edgefield, SC (Nov. 10, 1860); Atlanta, GA (August 1864); and rural northeastern Oregon (Nov. 1864), for example. Near Cincinnati anti-slavery people burned Lincoln in effigy because he was too slow to emancipate slaves (late 1861).

Lincoln won just 39.6% of the popular vote in 1860, and 55% in 1864 when only the Union states were voting. Had all 36 states voted that year, his total would likely have been less than 39%. He remains by far the least electorally successful winner in American history. This doll provides evidence of how Democrats used the race card in the 1864 election in a way that carried on through the remainder of the 19th Century.