The nation lost a leader, while in Springfield, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Catholic Diocese of Springfield said in his opening-ceremony invocation, residents grieved for "not only an esteemed and respected statesman, but their beloved friend and neighbor."
The period pageantry was juxtaposed with bottled-water sales, onlookers sipping gourmet coffee, and a sea of camera phones stretched above heads to catch glimpses of the action.
Before presenting to Rauner a ceremonial coin his country minted for the occasion, Paolo Rondelli, ambassador from San Marino to the U.S., even turned his camera phone on the throng for an image to send home to the southern European country.
The Great Emancipator's hometown has a checkered history on race. A 1908 race riot spawned the birth of the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil-rights organization and, 99 years later, on this same capitol square, another politician who had been a little-known state legislator, Barack Obama, announced his intention to become the nation's first black president.
Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame noted in his keynote address that on April 11, 1865, two days after the Confederate surrender, John Wilkes Booth made up his mind to kill Lincoln after he heard the president say blacks should have at least limited voting rights.
As much as Martin Luther King and others who were slain during the 1960s push for equality, Burlingame said, "It is appropriate for us in the 21st Century to regard Abraham Lincoln as a martyr to black civil rights."
(With inputs from agencies)
