The Lincoln Inaugural Bible, Chapter and Verse
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
The Library of Congress often provides Bibles from its vast collections for the use of Members of Congress during their swearing-in ceremonies. But it is not every day that a president-elect makes the same request for his inauguration. It is rarer still when that Bible is the same one upon which Abraham Lincoln first took the oath of office in 1861. (In fact, as far as we can tell, that Bible has not been used by a president since Honest Abe himself.)
But that’s exactly what Barack Obama is doing, in keeping with the very Lincolnesque theme of his inauguration.
The historic meeting between past and present, symbolized by a single book, has caught the public’s attention. (A quick search in Google News reveals at least 600 articles.)
Because there are few high-resolution images of the Lincoln Inaugural Bible available on our Web site, I wanted to provide several of them here.
The Lincoln Bible, by the way, will be among the items on display in “With Malice Toward None,” our exhibit opening Feb. 12 that honors the 200th birthday of our 16th president.
The images follow the jump. (Warning: The images that are linked to by the thumbnails are pretty large, each in the 5 to 6MB region.)
(All photos credit “Michaela McNichol”)
The balance of the images follow the jump …