He serves as the he did his graduate work at the university of pennsylvania where he focused on the history of religion. He also holds a master of divinity agreed. His roster of publications is so long that i am not going to even try to read them all to you. Lzo. Com go to allengue and get a full accounting of not only his publications, but other salient elements of his biography. What i am going to do here is mentioned five books. I think there especially pertinent. I will read them in order. First is called Abraham Lincoln, redeemer president. Lincolns emancipation byclamation published simon schuster. It brought him his second again price. Lincoln and douglas. Published in 2008. It did not when the lincoln prize. [laughter] the next came out from Oxford University press in 2012. In the fifth title is invasion. , the last it brought a third wink and prize to alan. Is currently working on a biography of robert e lee. T will be published b he and i will talk about his work today and about the field of civil war eras teddies more broadly. A questionegin with relating to the opportunities for people in our field to reach a broader audience. Allen writes for National Newspapers and other publications. You have reached a broader audience and i would like your thoughts whether this is something we should strive to why you do it, how effective you think it is, and what it yields for our field in terms of disseminating really good scholarship to a broader audience. Allen first of all, thank you for the opportunity to be her. Toecially to the center and everyone here who has stephanie, to everyone who has made my visit here over the last several days such an exceedingly pleasant one. And you have sneaked in some research as well. Allen i have been within the reach of many manuscripts. Some diaries and whatnot. Looking at what people are i amng and saying arid particularly glad to be here on this airy significant and significant day. One of the greatest days in American History. I am noticing that people are starting to look at each other like is this the fourth of july . It is september 22. Gary we did this on purpose. Allen it is the 155th anniversary of the preliminary emancipation preparation. Writing about that back in 2012, in the wall street journal got me some unusual responses. I got a death threat. Often happen to people writing on the wall street journal. They get other kinds of threats i suppose, i imagine i succeeded in injurings someones sensibilities. In a way, it testifies to the fact that did you say it is thought it was a good thing . I did. That upset someone. What it speaks to is the fact that there is a large audience among americans for trying to understand our history. How do we identify as americans . We do not identify as or shouldnt on the basis of a language, and ethnicity, and established religion, of race or any of those things. What identifies us as americans . Fundamentally, lincoln now that in the gettysburg address. What identifies us as americans is a proposition. That all men are created equal. The history of how we have unfolded and lived with that proposition is really the most important aspect of our identity. When we write about our history, we are not just doing into query and is him. Antiquerianism. I regard what i have done in the popular press as being two sides of one coin. To do we explain ourselves ourselves as americans . That should draw in more than an academic audience. That should draw in all of us. That is what touches all of us and that is what identifies all of us. For the journal of the early republic, or for civil war history, or if im writing for the wall street post,l or the washington i regard those as being part of an overall endeavor. It is our constant reminder of and what of who we are we are dedicated to. That is something that involves more than academics and college students. It is something which embraces all of us. I think it is important especially for historians like ourselves to be able to speak to everybody. We are speaking to our identity as americans. We are speaking as citizens. There is one and only one identifier of an american. That is that you are a citizen. To be a citizen and the American Republic is, in my book, about the brightest privilege. Gary we are especially well positioned to reach a broader audience because we can see our daytoday life. Including responses from some , talking about secession. Texasbama was in office, secession. You dont have to look far in american policy to find echoes of the civil war era. Allen there was an oped in the yesterday ine said the lead of the oped that california is a you First Century state which is mired in a 19th century country. Therefore, it should separate itself. That is a way of saying california is an entirely different culture from the rest of the United States. I thought, that is exactly what they were saying in South Carolina in december of 1863. Gary i want to ask people if they were trying to strive to emulate South Carolina in 1863. Allen long term it not turn out so well for them. But it does come back to the fact that so often, questions that we think are uniquely current and modern really have long roots. Sometimes they are replicating the rhetoric. Gary there is almost nothing new. It seems new if you dont know anything. Allen this is because the fundamental questions posed by the american experiment really do not change either. We really are all about the business of debating that fundamental proposition. In a sense, it is not a total surprise that the kind of rhetoric and assumptions, stances that you hear people strike today will find uncanny and unnerving echoes of those 150155 years ago. For the historian, we have to signal this is what the relationships are. Be careful what you wish for. Whether it is the sacramento bee, or the charleston mercury. Gary when you write, do you write specifically with more than one audience in mind . Obviously your books are reviewed in deep mainline scholarly journals. You have one or the other of the audiences in mind . Allen i cant say that i think about it. Whatimes i have asked, kind of schooling did you have in writing. How do you go about the writing . To that i can only shrug my shoulders. I never had a writing class. I never had someone instruct me. This is a you write this. This is how you write that. I have no better explanation simply to say i want to explain something to people. I want to communicate. I look for ways to do that. I dont have a better explanation. Gary you probably read a lot of good writing. Allen i think i did. I am probably good at imitating. More nothing in my mind complicated than that. I cannot make it more complicated. Gary i wont try to make you more complicated. I do question i want to get to. Did you wake up one morning and think, poor Abraham Lincoln, he just has not gotten enough attention from writers. I think i had better write a book about lincoln. What brought you you are trained as a historian of religion you wrote about Jonathan Edwards. How do you get from Jonathan Edwards and religion to Abraham Lincoln . Allen well, it is a little unusual. But not more unusual than a chess game. Vesre are a few strange mo that have to be made. I wrote my dissertation on Jonathan Edwards and free will and 18thcentury moral philosophy. Gary that they titled made for wide, public consumption. [laughter] is that in the 19th printing now . [laughter] they actually did do a second edition. [laughter] gary the one with Matthew Mcconaughey . [laughter] allen and the one with nick nolte as george whitfield. But, i had written the dissertation which was then published by wesleyan university. The problem with free will and determinism seem to be a perennial philosophical problem. Maybe not the same thing you step night reading about. But, perennial. I planned to write a followup volume. A Jonathan Edwards 2. 0. To bring the discussion of the problem into modern philosophy. Working on this project, this was in the mid90s. I knew that Abraham Lakin had some things to say on the subject of free will and they listened. I had some familiarity with the lincoln. I thought it would just the book up. Here is a book on philosophy, determinism, and other sleepy subjects. To be able to interject Abraham Lincoln would put some things in it. With that the clever of it . I ended up writing a paper on lincoln and determinism. What he called his doctrine of necessity. He told people he was a fatalist. Springfieldaper and illinois. To my surprise, it was well received. The book publisher got in touch with me. Would i be interested in writing a religious biography of Abraham Lincoln . I said no. I had seen a number of writers get swallowed up in a swamp on that subject. I did not want to do that. The publisher got back in touch something later. What i do this biography of lincoln . I said no. Finally a friend of the publisher called me up and said if you dont do this book, theyre going to give it to another professor. Gary someone you knew . Allen yes. The hand hit the forehead. I got back in touch with the editor in chief of this publisher and said to him i will make a deal with you. Intellectualas an biography, not just about religion but all of the other intellectual influences on lincoln. To treat him as not just a political f figure. Having gotten my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, i could not get it out. One lincoln book became another, became another and so on. No, i never have actually gotten back to writing that free will to. 0. I can infer from the way you are talking you think there are more elements to lincoln that deserve further study. You havent been exhausted . Allen i think so. Lincoln is an extremely complicated and complex and eventual. People underestimate lincoln because they think that he is just the 16th resident. He was just the civil war president he was just a lawyer. That misses. T mouth man. A shot anyone who took a lincoln for a simpleminded man would wake up with his back in a ditch. I think that maybe one of the truest things ever said about him. Educationan of maker of meager education. Curiosity. Ordinarily in his secretarys diary in in3, an incident recorded which the tycoon and i had a forssion about phylology, interestinga has a curiosity. It is the study of religious. Lincoln had intellectual curiosities in so many different directions. He was not a philosopher. He was not what we would call an intellectual. He had curiosities that way. He liked to pursue them. Interviewid in an with noah brooks, what were the most influential books in your life . Lincolns reply was junior. He said, butlers analogy religiona singularly important text. Mill, onstuart liberty. Today it still functions as a major text for people thinking libertarianch, political philosophy, and then he added and i always wanted to get at president edwards on the will. Yes, go. Ught but the thing is what this suggests is here is a man who does not simply say i read the newspapers or, i read the funnies and do the crossword puzzle. A man who has ambitions to penetrate some serious intellectual questions. It is part of lincoln that weakness because we are so impressed by the folksy, that isor, shrewd the link and we are most familiar with. We dont often see the lincoln that his closest friends had a peek into. How do you explain lincolns facility with language . You can talk about his other attributes. You have talked about others of them. His ability to deal with complicated issues and render them in very brief text inline or make a can soar point with an effectiveness that almost no one else has been able to match. How do you get from the second inaugural with someone with lincolns background in education . Allen gary john stuart mill, i dont think no. That shaped him as a communicator was having to be a trial lawyer. He spends virtually all of his professional life as a lawyer trying courses in county courthouses all across the state of illinois. Being in the courtroom. He enjoys being in front of a jury. But he also knows that these are he has to persuade. This is an age when juries were significant for two things that we dont often get today. In these county courthouses, a jury would often be summoned from bystanders at the back of the room. You could have almost anyone sitting in the jury box. You had to be able to communicate with them. You had to be able to do it fast. If you could not make yourself clear, you are not going to be a functioning, profitable lawyer for long. He had to learn how to communicate directly with people. His partner of many years, William Herndon said that was his real passion. How to make something Crystal Clear to people. He said lincoln would tie himself up in knots and the office and would sit there concentrating. ,ow to get an idea into a small easily understood word. He was so effective added that there is a story of him saying the judge interrupted him and said all right, lincoln. Thank you. So clearly the case that he was not even finishing his Opening Statement before he won the case. Capacity toonderful open an idea and put it in these wonderfully clear terms. A lot of that comes out of his experience as a trial lawyer. Another comes out of the mans logical bent. He put himself to the discipline of logical expression. It was once said by someone in their autobiography, who had listened to the lincolndouglas debates. If you listened to lincoln and douglas for five minutes, you would always take the side of douglas. Douglas was always about passion. He was about shaking that huge mane of hair. But if you listened to them for half an hour, you would be taken by lincoln. Lincoln, even though he spoken this high, reidy, nasally tone , he always set things out like bait on a hook. Logically speaking, once he got that hook in your mouth, all he needed to do afterwards was real the thing in. Then, you were his. He would state the case in such a way that it was absolutely logically irresistible. Logic. That bent for for lining things up. He was not a man of passion. Headon once said that his ruled his heart to radically. He was not a man of emotional appeal. He could be eloquent, but eloquent and an extremely reasonable way. When you look at the second inaugural, it is eloquent, but it is eloquent in very logical ways. Understande if we if we is like this see this war as the payment, the drawing of blood through the sword to pay for the bond mens unrequited labor. For every drop of blood drawn by the lash. That is eloquence. It is also logic. When you listen to it, you cannot resist at the end. He has got you. Gary it is logic, but it is is a daring it move on his part. That is not what most of the people and that audience wanted to hear. That they were as culpable as the rebels . Allen and he knew that. Gary how may people would be willing to do that. That is a remarkable speech on many levels. Telling people exactly what they dont want to hear. They want to hear there will be retribution. God was on our side. God willt ties chastise the rebels. He did not say that at all. Megan was complement it. Lincoln thanked him for the complement but he wrote back and said i dont think that people heard what ihave had to say. No one likes to be told that god has a controversy with them. But, it was something that i thought needed to be said. I was the one who had to say it. Gary thats ace thats remarkable speech on many levels. If you put it alongside the emancipation proclamation come you could not have a stronger contrast between this language and what some people compared to the bill of lading. Allen but they are two different documents are gary but i have heard that. What i want you to do is you have written a book about the proclamation. It has been interpreted many different ways by scholars as meaningless, not doing what it should do, not having that great of an impact. Other saying it is everything. Ont is your shorthand take the importance of place in the much harder space . Allen it was the single most profoundly effective president ial document ever written. I think it is largely because so you think it is important. Allen at least moderately. [laughter] the language of the in as a patient proclamation of the immense patient proclamation disappoints people. It has all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading. Right off the bat, that made my antennae quiver. A bill of lading is not an unimportant document if you are in commerce. What is the emancipation proclamation . Is it a rhetorical Statement Like the gettysburg address . No. The gettysburg address is a marvelous, beautiful prose. But you cannot take it into a court of law and do anything with it. Pulls you overr on the interstate, you cannot try to recite the gettysburg address. The trooper is only interested in the statute. The emancipation proclamation is about the statute. To be carefully honed and crafted so that it survives challenge in the courts. Lincoln knew this. President s. Re only keenly aware of the fact that as president of the United States, he did not have the authority to emancipate anybody. Normal circumstances. The war changed the circumstances. As commanderinchief, he may have powers that, in times of peace he would not have. In time of war, there are work powers. His emancipation one of those war powers . We dont know. Lets find out. Who will be the arbiter . The federal courts. If lincoln, so to speak, pops off and simply throws open a window in the executive mansion. Nd yells free the first thing that will happen is that slave owners are going to flock to county courthouses and ask for injunctions. What is more, they will get them. Then there will be appeals and they will go through the courts. They will wind up with the United StatesSupreme Court and by the way, who is the chief justice in 1862 . Roger b tawny. He has really shown himself to be a friend of emancipation. Inlincoln makes one slipup crafting and emancipation proclamation, that would be raw meat to roger b tawny when it ends up on his desk. Proclamation on his war powers which treads very carefully about who is free and who is not here it this is why there are these exceptions. Where the emancipation proclamation does not apply to , delaware,entucky maryland, missouri, why . They were not at war with the United States. Gary places where the government was in con