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Abraham Lincoln made his second visit to Lowell on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009, when the Lincoln-Douglas debates were recreated in a performance of the play “The Rivalry” at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center.
Lincoln’s first visit, noted UMass Lowell Chancellor Marty Meehan, by way of introduction before the performance, was in September 1848, when he made a stump speech for presidential candidate Zachary Taylor at Lowell’s Old City Hall.
“We are proud of our Lincoln connection,” Meehan told the crowd of about 450 campus and community members who enjoyed the evening performance of “The Rivalry,” written by Norman Corwin and presented by the Vincent Dowling Theatre Co. Earlier in the day, hundreds of students from Lowell High School, Middlesex Community College and other area schools were also treated to a performance.
Based on the watershed debates of 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, “The Rivalry” has been touring to critical acclaim, giving dramatic life to a highly charged time in our nation’s history, on the eve of the Civil War.
Presented at no cost to attendees by the UMass Lowell Center for Arts & Ideas and the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center, the event was meant to celebrate not only the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, but also the debut of the new Inn & Conference Center downtown as a University facility that intends to bring significant value to the community.
Some 400 upperclassmen of UMass Lowell are housed in the facility, formerly the Doubletree Hotel, but the building’s conference and meeting spaces on the lower floors can be used by campus and community groups.