All of America is the Land of Lincoln

On Monday, Mankato educator Bryce Stenzel will slip into the black trench coat his sister made from an old Minnesota Orchestra tuxedo, don a stovepipe hat, comb the beard he has sported for 20 years and hit the Twin Cities as the nation's hottest ex-president.

Stenzel will probably perform the impersonation four score and seven times this month as the nation celebrates today's 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln with the kind of fervor usually reserved for rock stars and royalty.

From Ford's Theatre to Fort Snelling, events across the country will honor the 16th commander in chief. Four new Lincoln stamps were issued this week. Steven Spielberg is planning a Lincoln biopic with Liam Neeson in the title role and a script by Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner. Dozens of documentaries and nearly 100 books this year will focus on a man who historians say is the most popular figure in American literature.

"It's a testimony to the American dream that people are still fascinated with him," said Stenzel, who will recite the Gettysburg Address to the Legislature on Presidents' Day, between meet-and-greets in the Capitol rotunda. "There's a spirit about him that people admire, this man who started off with so little and overcame such adversity."

Stenzel isn't the only one swept up in Abe-o-mania.

Minneapolis native Ronald White, author of the critically acclaimed tome "A. Lincoln: A Biography," said he is granting a half-dozen interviews a day and lecturing every night on a road trip that includes stops at Hope Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis on Sunday and the Bookcase bookstore in Wayzata on Monday. The tour will take him to Germany, Italy and, most surprising, the Deep South, an area that had never previously extended an invitation to the longtime Lincoln expert.

"It hasn't happened to Lincoln authors before," White said. "Perhaps it's a generational change. There are people there now looking at Lincoln with new eyes."

Joe Martin, 25, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, says the qualities Lincoln stood for resonate deeply with those of his generation.

"He's become a container which people have put all their expectations into," said Martin, who is studying the history of science. "He's the measuring stick."

A booster from Land of Lincoln

It certainly helps that the ex-president's publicity department is more or less being run by the new occupant of the White House.

President Obama, who honed his political chops in Lincoln's home state, mentioned the Great Emancipator's name three times during his victory speech and took the oath of office on the Lincoln Bible.

"It's clear that Obama has read Lincoln carefully," said David Blight, a Yale University professor who specializes in Civil War history. "You can see it in his first biography, you can hear it in his speeches, you can hear it in his cadences."

Not that loving Lincoln was ever out of style. His assassination on Good Friday 1865 assured his place as one of America's tragic figures. In New York City alone, more than 1,000 events marked his 100th birthday a century ago -- while in Minneapolis, the Tribune ran a story noting that Daniel Fish, a city judge, owned the largest collection of Lincoln literature in the world. (The works were later sold to Indiana's Lincoln National Life Foundation, but Fish retains the title of Father of Lincolniana.)

Lincoln's modern-day popularity speaks to the fact that his words still sound contemporary and his humble attitude feels refreshing, White said.

"I think we're hungry for integrity and authenticity," he said. "We get disappointed in many of our past heroes, but Lincoln's basic integrity is a pretty strong model," he said. "That's why he's one of those figures both Democrats and Republicans want to claim."

What would ol' Abe honestly think of all the attention?

"I think he'd be very proud on one level, but he would convert the praise into humor," Blight said. "He'd crack some kind of joke in a Kentucky accent that would make everyone laugh."

njustin@startribune.com • 612-673-7431