The Unhappy Fate of Fitz John Porter
by Allen C. GuelzoThe Unhappy Fate of Fitz John Porter By Allen Guelzo The American Civil War was a political war. That should not matter hugely to those of us who study the art of command in the war, since it is one of the basic tenets of the American system of governance that the military remains in […]
Read More
Lincoln & the League
by Allen C. GuelzoLincoln & the League By Allen Guelzo The Union League of Philadelphia has occupied the grand corner of Broad and Sansom Streets in Philadelphia since 1865, and, though it remains today one of the most vibrant social and professional organizations in the city, it takes great pride in putting its Civil War-era origins on display […]
Read More
Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, An Interview with Allen Guelzo
by Allen C. Guelzo, Sara GabbardAbraham Lincoln: Redeemer President An Interview with Allen Guelzo by Sara Gabbard Sara Gabbard: Please explain the circumstances of this new edition of your book. Allen Guelzo: I have to answer this a little shamefacedly. I did it with a question. Four years ago, I was delivering a lecture on Lincoln in Grand Rapids, Michigan, […]
Read More
Redeeming The Great Emancipator: The Harvard University Lecture, An Interview with Allen Guelzo
by Allen C. Guelzo, Sara GabbardRedeeming The Great Emancipator the Harvard University Lecture An Interview with Allen Guelzo by Sara Gabbard Sara Gabbard: What were the circumstances surrounding your Lecture titled Redeeming the Great Emancipator. Allen Guelzo: That requires a long answer. Redeeming the Great Emancipator really began in 2004, when I published Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery […]
Read More
Lincoln and Democracy
by Allen C. GuelzoLincoln and Democracy By Allen C. Guelzo The word democracy occurs only 137 times in the collected writings of Abraham Lincoln. But no other word described what he saw as the most natural, the most just, and the most progressive form of human government in existence. Nothing, he said, could be “as clearly true as […]
Read More
An Interview with Allen Guelzo
by Allen C. Guelzo, Sara GabbardSara Gabbard: When you are “on the road” lecturing about Lincoln and the Civil War, what questions do members of the audience ask most frequently? Do responses from your students reflect the same interests? Allen Guelzo: Far and away, the most-frequently-asked question I encounter from audiences is, “Would things have been different if Lincoln had […]
Read More
The Intellectual Milieu of Abraham Lincoln
by Allen C. GuelzoThe Intellectual Milieu of Abraham Lincoln By Allen C. Guelzo Abraham Lincoln was not a philosopher, or even what we might today call an intellectual. “Politics were Lincoln’s life,” William Henry Herndon told Jesse Weik in 1887, “and newspapers were his food.” Yet, in almost the same breath, Herndon acknowledged that “we used to discuss […]
Read More
“Just the Wood out of which Washington Presidents are Carved”: Electing Lincoln in 1860 by Alan Guelzo
by Allen C. GuelzoThe day after Abraham Lincoln came from behind a well-populated field of potential candidates to win the Republican party’s nomination for president of the United States, an “annoyed and dejected” Thurlow Weed packed his bags and prepared “to shake the dust of the city” of Chicago “from my feet.” Weed was the long-time editor of […]
Read More
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 […]
Read More
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.
Read More
Allen C. Guelzo on Reconstruction
by Allen C. GuelzoAs a nation, do we tend to ignore the history of Reconstruction?
Read More