Abraham Lincoln on C-SPAN

African American students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., visit the Lincoln Memorial in 1958. (AP Photo/William J. Smith, file)

by Frank James

For those of us in the Tribune's Washington Bureau, there are constant reminders of President Abraham Lincoln very close at hand.

Our offices are only a few dozen feet from Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot and the Petersen House where he passed from man to martyr.

Less somber is the Madame Tussaud's wax museum in a storefront at the corner of our office building. It displays in its window a likeness of the 16th president, accurate down to the gray eyes noted by his contemporaries.

So it's relatively easy for we Lincolnphiles, even we here, who work in the nation's capital and travel the same streets he once did, to get our Lincoln fix.

But as his 200th birthday approaches on Feb. 12, Lincoln will be remembered and celebrated by Lincoln appreciators across the nation and, indeed, the world. And C-SPAN, the cable public affairs network, is making it easy for them to luxuriate in Lincolniana with TV and website programming focusing on the man many believe was the greatest American president. C-SPAN says its site offers "posted video, an exclusive slide show of Lincoln photographs narrated by Lincoln Historian Harold Holzer and an unprecedented posting of Lincoln images in a photo gallery."

It's part of two-years of C-SPAN programming devoted to everything Lincoln. This year, the first Saturday of each month at 8 pm brings another Lincoln program.

As Lincoln lovers will tell you, probably including the current commander in chief, two years is not nearly enough to sate our appetites. But then we can never get enough of Lincoln anymore than we can get enough of the American ideal.