Lincoln's Gift from Homer New York

<p> Although Illinois enjoys the indisputable title of The Land of Lincoln one small town in New York State played a significant role in the sixteenth president's history. Three native sons of Homer--a detective a journalist and a painter--helped inscribe Abraham Lincoln's place in the nation's iconic imagery. Private investigator Eli DeVoe foiled an assassination plot against Lincoln before his first inauguration; journalist William Osborn Stoddard an early Lincoln supporter became an influential secretary of the president; and artist Francis Bicknell Carpenter painted <I>The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation before the Cabinet</I> which still hangs in the U.S. Capitol. This exploration of these men and the town that produced them offers insight into the complexities of presidential image-making and reveals why a small New York town has become a choice destination for Lincoln historians.</p>