Nation readies for Lincoln birthday

Chicago —- Two centuries after Abraham Lincoln’s birth, everybody suddenly wants a piece of him.

Leading up to Thursday’s big 2-0-0, he’s the subject of an avalanche of new books. New Lincoln pennies are being minted. The U.S. Postal Service released four new Lincoln stamps. And it seems like every state is staking a claim —- no matter how tenuous —- on his legacy. Delaware, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Idaho and Hawaii are just a few of the states planning bicentennial celebrations —- whether they were states at the time of Lincoln’s presidency or not.

“More than any other state, Idaho is related to Abraham Lincoln,” reads the first line of the state’s bicentennial Web site, which explains that not only did Lincoln establish the Idaho Territory, he helped select the name “Idaho.”

Further, it turns out Lincoln had “Idaho on his mind the day he was assassinated” —- he had invited the territory’s delegate to Congress to join him for a night at Ford’s Theater.

That deep connection may surprise people in Kentucky, who will remind you that Lincoln was born there. They note that he had written a speech —- never given —- that included the words, “I, too, am a Kentuckian.”

“It would have helped us out a lot,” said Laura Coleman, marketing specialist with the Kentucky Historical Society. “It’s a great quote and it would have been even better had he actually said it.”

Kentucky will have its share of activities, starting with the presentation by the U.S. Mint of the redesigned penny —- one of four —- that reflects Lincoln’s birth and early childhood in Kentucky.

And Hawaii? The state is putting on display a letter Lincoln wrote to King Kamehameha expressing condolences for the death of the Hawaiian monarch’s brother.

But nowhere is Lincoln bigger than in the “Land of Lincoln” —- Illinois.

From a host of events at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield to a reading of the Gettysburg Address by school children across the state, Illinois is determined not to be out-Lincolned.

The state’s celebration got a big boost when President Barack Obama announced he would travel to Springfield on Thursday for a dinner honoring Lincoln. Sen. Dick Durbin, who hails from Springfield, invited Obama back to the city where the president launched his campaign.

In Washington, perhaps the two biggest events are the reopening of Ford’s Theatre after an 18-month renovation and a display at the East Rotunda Gallery of the National Archives of the original Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln.

And perhaps the busiest man for the next several weeks will be Michael Krebs, aka Abraham Lincoln.

“We do not have a day off until March 7, and then we are down to four to five days a week,” said Krebs, a Chicago-based actor who travels all over the United States to portray Lincoln along with Debra Ann Miller’s Mary Todd Lincoln.