Honest Abe's and Petty People

The other day my husband and I went out to a new burger place that opened up about 10 minutes from our house.  In fact everything around here is within 10 minutes.  It's a geographical oddity...

https://youtu.be/YZ4z0QhD92Y

So, this new burger place is called Honest Abe's. Smacks of Abraham Lincoln, no?  Well you would be right if you thought that this burger place used Abraham Lincoln as their mascot.  Wendy's has a smarmy little red head, and Honest Abe's has the 16th president of the United States.  Who knew a lawyer turned politician would be repurposed into a burger brand? I guess it's no weirder than Colonel Sanders as a mascot...


The walls of Honest Abe's are plastered with pictures like this one.  I have never seen Abraham Lincoln look so cool.  Not just him, but of his wife, the American flag, and cows with butchering outlines on them -ya know for burgers.





Here is the link to the graphic designer who worked on the branding. It has all of the images that I couldn't find on the internet.
http://grounduprestaurants.com/wp-content/uploads/Images/IMG_6155.jpg

We ordered our burgers and sat down.  I was looking at the wall of Lincoln images while I was chewing on my tasty cheeseburger, then it dawned on me that I was looking at Lincoln in Lincoln!  Then I wondered if maybe this city was named after President Abraham Lincoln and the people here really liked him. A lot. Enough to dedicate a burger place to him, perhaps.  So I did a quick google search. 

Turns out Lincoln, Nebraska was named after Abe Lincoln, but not in commemoration. It got its name by from a petty senator who tried to sabotage moving the capital. *sigh* Politics. People never really change, do they? The capital of Nebraska used to be Omaha, but was moved as far west possible in case the part of the territory that held the capital broke off and merged with Kansas.  Why anyone would do that is beyond me.

So this senator renamed Lancaster to Lincoln assuming that there was enough confederate supporters who were still smarting after the loss of the civil war that just the name, Lincoln, would repel them from moving the capital away from Omaha. Obviously, it did not work, because Lincoln is still the capital today.

I was hoping they just loved him so gosh darn much that they named the city after him.  But, no.  It was just people being petty. But the Honest Abe burgers are great, regardless.