The Debate Over the Debates: How Lincoln and Douglas Wages a Campaign For History
by Harold HolzerBy Harold Holzer As most readers of 19th-century history know, the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates sparked an explosion of public interest in Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, and the sport of political debating itself. The encounters not only riveted the tens of thousands of eyewitnesses who packed Illinois town squares and fairgrounds to hear them, but […]
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An Interview with Hon. Frank J. Williams on the Concept of Just War
by Frank J. WilliamsUnidentified Indiana Soldiers, LN-2353 Sara Gabbard: How far back in history can you trace the concept of Just War? Frank Williams: In the first millennium, Christians in the Roman Empire, who originally rejected any form of warfare in accordance with their beliefs, ultimately adopted a “Just War” rationale to the use of force against nations […]
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Lincoln’s Strangest Document: The “Blind Memorandum” of August 23, 1864
by Allen C. GuelzoLincoln and his cabinet, LN-2651 Abraham Lincoln’s mature style as a writer and speaker was always terse, with little wastage of words. He loathed blow-hards, and remarked to a legal protégé in Illinois that one Chicago merchant who had turned politician “can compress the most words in the fewest ideas of any man I ever […]
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The Long Twisting Road: Abraham Lincoln’s Evolving World with the Foreign Born
by Jason H. SilvermanLN-0235 Immigration? Abraham Lincoln? Absolutely. Lincoln lived in an era when immigration was as much a controversial matter as it is today. Between 1840 and 1860 four and a half million newcomers arrived, most of them from Ireland, the German states, and Scandinavian countries. Many more crossed back and forth across the border with Mexico, […]
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An interview with Ronald C. White, Author of American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant
by Ronald C. WhiteU.S. Grant, OC-1406 Sara Gabbard: Did you find your extensive background in the study of Abraham Lincoln a help in your research on Grant, or was it a distraction? Ron White: At one level, writing three books on Lincoln helped. I came to believe Lincoln and Grant formed a mutual admiration society. At another level, […]
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Interview with Harold Holzer on the 160th Anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates
by Harold HolzerSara Gabbard: In 1858, was there already a precedent for debates between competing candidates for political office? Harold Holzer: Not much of one, really. Certainly the 1830 Webster-Hayne debates over the tariff had long been famous nationwide, but these took place on the floor of the U. S. Senate in Washington, between two public officials, […]
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Thomas Lincoln Reconsidered
by Richard E. HartThomas Lincoln has been the subject of description and judgment since at least 1860 when a political biography of his son Abraham was written. Since then, thousands of books have been written about Abraham with most having brief descriptions of Thomas. Most published critical judgments of Thomas conclude that he was a miserable failure both as a man and as a father. It is time to take a fresh look at Thomas and reconsider those judgments and that wisdom.
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Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Standing Lincoln: A Biographical Monument to Abraham Lincoln and its Legacy
by Savannah RoseIn a one-hundred-year-old barn in Cornish, New Hampshire, Augustus Saint-Gaudens reshaped the memory of Abraham Lincoln in sculpture as he spent months turning blocks of clay into the 16th President of the United States. With his 1887 sculpture, Abraham Lincoln: The Man, commonly known simply as Standing Lincoln, Saint-Gaudens redirected the legacy of Abraham Lincoln in sculpture away from a romanticized Lincoln to a simplistic and naturalistic statesman, preparing to speak before an audience as he so often did.
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God and Mr. Lincoln
by Allen C. GuelzoOn the day in April 1837 that Abraham Lincoln rode into Springfield, Illinois, to set himself up professionally as a lawyer, the American republic was awash in religion. Lincoln, however, was neither swimming nor even bobbing in its current.
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An Interview with Lincoln Artist, Wendy Allen
by Sara GabbardThe first question people always ask me is, “Why do you paint Lincoln?” It’s never easy to explain a passion. Simply put, I am painting the exact location of America’s soul.
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Lincoln Memorial University
by Charles HubbardLincoln Memorial University enrolled its first students in 1898. The University is located deep in the Cumberland Mountains at the approach to the historic Cumberland Gap.
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A Seldom Seen “Emancipator”
by Harold HolzerFew artists did more to cement the reigning nineteenth-century image of Abraham Lincoln as “Great Emancipator” than Francis B. Carpenter, whose monumental canvas, The First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation Before the Cabinet, won critical acclaim on national tour beginning in 1864 and inspired an 1866 engraving that remained a best seller for decades.
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Douglas L. Wilson Discusses Herndon on Lincoln: Letters
by Douglas L. WilsonAs Lincoln’s law partner, William H. Herndon worked more closely with Lincoln than any other person except his wife. Ostensibly, this afforded Herndon an almost unique intimacy with Lincoln, whom his friends knew to be markedly secretive and unconfiding.
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Allen C. Guelzo on Reconstruction
by Allen C. GuelzoAs a nation, do we tend to ignore the history of Reconstruction?
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Young Lincoln and the Ohio
by William E. Bartelt“You may think it was a very little thing, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely believe that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day. The world seemed wider and fairer before me.”
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