Former Club presidents grill Abraham Lincoln at press conference

President Lincoln never held a press conference in life, but on Dec. 3 Old Abe — in the form of Lincoln impersonator George Buss -- sat down with two former National Press Club presidents for a grilling as though it were April 11, 1865.

It was all part of a program that the Club co-sponsored with the Abraham Lincoln Association, the Illinois State Society of Washington, D.C., the Lincoln Academy of Illinois, the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia and the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.

Past Club presidents Gil Klein, chairman of the Club’s History and Heritage Committee, and Larry Lipman asked Lincoln pointed questions about his plans for the South now that Lee had surrendered. Buss, who has spent more than two decades studying and impersonating Lincoln, was able to give detailed answers as though he had just returned from Richmond and was about to give his last speech to an enthusiastic crowd from the upstairs window of the White House.