Civil war era at gettysburg also serves ashe director for the civil war era studies program. He did his graduate work of history at the university of pennsylvania where he focused on the history of religion. He also holds a master of divinity degree. His roster of publications is so long that i am not going to even try to read them all to you. Nguelzo. Comto alle and get a full accounting of all his publications and his biography and doings. What im going to do is mention five books that i think are especially pertinent to what we will be doing this afternoon. I will read them in order. The first is called abraham. Ncoln, redeemer president lincolns emancipation proclamation the end of slavery in america. Published by Simon Schuster in 2004. Lincoln and douglas, the debates that defined america. Whitening gettysburg, the last invasion. Published in 2013 which brought a third lincoln prize to alan, he is the only person who is 13. Has won 3. He is currently working on a biography of robert e. Lee. He and i are going to talk about his work and about the field of civil war era studies more broadly. I want to begin with a question relating to the opportunities for people in our field to try to reach a broader audience. Allen writes for a National Newspaper and other publications. He has done courses for the teaching company. I would like your thoughts about 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. All, let me thank you, gary, for the opportunity to be here. Especially to the now center, to everyone here. To everyone who has made my visit here over the last several days such an exceedingly pleasant one. You have snuck in some research . Indeed. I have been within the reach of many manuscripts, some diaries, and whatnot, stuff like that, looking at what people are writing and thinking and saying in those Tumultuous Times 150 years ago. I am particularly glad to be here on this significant and special 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. We did this on purpose. 100 55ththe anniversary of the preliminary emancipation proclamation. Anniversary of the preliminary emancipation proclamation. Writing in the wall street journal got me some interesting responses, i got a death threat. That does not often happen to people writing in the wall street journal. I imagine i did succeed in injuring someones sensibilities in writing about the emancipation proclamation. In a way, it testifies to the fact did you say you thought it was a good thing . I did. I think what it does speak to is the fact that there is a large audience among americans who are trying to understand our history. Americans . Dentify as we dont identify ourselves, or shouldnt, on the basis of a language, an ethnicity, an established religion, a race, any of those things. What identifies us as americans . Lincoln nailed 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 the most important aspect of our identity. When we write about our history, we are not just doing antiquarian is him antiquarianism we are doing a reexplanation and referendum on that proposition. I regard what i have done in the and the Academic Press as being two sides of one coin. That is, how do we explain ourselves to ourselves as americans . That should draw in more than just 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. If i am writing for a journal of the early republic or for Civil War History or if im writing for the wall street journal, if im writing for the washington post, i really regard those as aning an overall being overall endeavor. It is a constant reminder of ourselves, who we are and what we are dedicated to. That involves more than academics and college students, it is something which embraces all of us. I think it is important, for historians like ourselves, to be able to speak to everybody. Speaking to our identity as not just, we are speaking professionally, 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 of the american the greatest privilege on earth. We are expressly wellpositioned to reach a broader audience. So many ideas from the civil war continue to resonate. In oursee echoes of them daytoday lives. Including responses from some states to our current president and our preceding president , talking about secession. When president obama was office, california with President Trump in office. You dont have to look very far in current American Politics Society to echoes of the civil war era. Sometimes it is more than echoes. There was an oped in the sacramento daily, i think i am citing this correctly. There was an article in the Sacramento Bee in which the lead of the off and said that california is a 21st century state which is mired in a 19th century country. Therefore, it should separate itself. Saying, a way of 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 1860. Groep shortterm, longterm it did not turn out well for South Carolina. It does come back to the fact that so often, questions that we think are uniquely current or uniquely modern really have these long replicating the rhetoric of 150 years ago. It is nothing new i think. It does seem to be that way. It seems new if you dont know anything. This because the fundamental this is because the fundamental questions expressed as americans have not changed. In a sense, it is not a total surprise. The current rhetoric, the kind of assumptions and stances you hear people strike today will find uncanny and unnerving ago. S of those 150 years for the historian, what we have to do is signal what the relationships are. Be careful what you wish for. Beeher it is the sacramento or the charleston mercury. You writeu write, do specifically with more than one audience in mind . Obviously your books are reviewed in the mainline scholarly journals, but do you have one or the other of his audiences more in mind or do you not even think about that . I cant say that i think about it. What kindi am asked, of schooling did you have in writing and how do you go about your writing . To that i can only shrugged my shoulders. I never had a writing class. I never had someone instruct me. No better explanation than to reduce say, i want to explain something to you, i want to communicate with people. I would look for ways to do that. I dont really have a better explanation. You certainly read a lot of good writing. I think i did. I am probably good at imitating. Mind, thereg, in my is nothing more complicated than that. We will try to make you more complicated. I have a question i want to get to. Did you wake up one morning and think, poor Abraham Lincoln, he just has not got enough attention from writers. I think id better write a book about lincoln. You are trained as a historian, you wrote about Jonathan Edwards into dissertation and in your early work, how do you get from Jonathan Edwards and religion to Abraham Lincoln . Well, it is a little unusual. Than a chessual game. There are a few strange moves that have to be made, but not too many. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Jonathan Edwards and the problem of determinism and free will in 18thcentury moral philosophy. That is a title made for why public consumption. [laughter] yeah. Is that in its 19th printing now . [applause] [laughter] they actually did do a second edition. The one with Matthew Mcconaughey is the one that really resonates . The one with nick nolte as george whitfield. I wrote the dissertation, which was then published by wesleyan university. The problem with free will and determinism seemed perennial. Not the sort of thing you stay reading about, but still a perennial. I had planned to write a followup volume, Jonathan Edwards 2. 0. Problem of modern philosophy. As i was working on this project, this was in the mid90s. I knew that Abraham Lincoln had some things to say on the subject of free will and fatalism. I thought it would really jazz the book up. Here is a book on philosophy and determinism and other sleepy subjects, to be able to interject Abraham Lincoln into the discussion would put some fizz in it. I thought wouldnt that be clever. I ended up writing a paper on lincoln and determinism, what he called his doctor of mississippi. He told people frankly that he was a fatalist. I read that paper in springfield, illinois at a meeting of Abraham Lincoln association. To my surprise it was wellreceived. A book publisher got in touch with me. What 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 the swamp on that subject and i thought i dont want to do that. The publisher got back in touch sometime later. Would i do this religious biography of lincoln . I said no. Finally, a friend of the blisher called me and said, look, if you dont do this book they will give it a professor so and so. Someone you knew . The hand hit the forehead. I got back in touch with the editor in chief of this publisher and said i will make a deal with you, i will write the book you want, but let me do it as an intellectual biography, not just as religion. To treat lincoln not just at the political figure, but lincoln in the context of the ideas of the 20th century. Having gotten my hand in the cookie jar so to speak, i really just couldnt get it out. One lincoln book became another lincoln book came another lincoln book, and so on and so forth. You have artie gone down the list. I never have actually gotten back to writing that free will to point out. Free will 2. 0. I can infer the way you are talking, you think there are more elements to lincoln that deserve further study. He has not been exhausted . I think that is entirely true. Lincoln is an extremely complicated and complex individual. Lincolnnderestimate because they think that he is just the 16th president , the civil war president , just a politician, just a lawyer. That misses what people in lincolns own time new and said about him. He was a very reticent shut mouthed man. Another who practiced law with him said that anyone who took a blink and for a simpleminded abe lincoln for a singleminded man simpleminded man would wake up with their back in a ditch. Eager man of very extraordinary intellectual curiosity. He would delve into anything. His secretary, in his diary in 1863, recorded an incident in t, theay said the tycoon which is what he called t and i had athe discussion on zoology for which the t had an unsuspected interest. It is the study of languages. Lincoln had intellectual interests in so many directions. He was not a philosopher, he was not what we would call an intellectual, but he had curiosities and he likes to pursue them. ,e once said in an interview brooks had asked him, what are the most influential books in your life . His reply was peculiar. Analogy. Butlers mini joseph butlers analogy of a singularly important test for natural religion in the 18th century. And John Stuart Mill on liberty. Which today still functions as a major text for people thinking about free speech, about libertarian political philosophy, and then he added and i always wanted to get at will. Nt edwards on so that spoke to you, that third one . Here is a man who does not simply say every the newspapers or i read the funnies, he is a man who has ambitions to penetrate some serious questions. It is part of lincoln that we miss because we are so impressed with the folksy, political politicalng, shrewd wire polar, that is the lincoln 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 have talked about his other attributes, but his ability to deal with complicated issues and render them in very brief texts in language that can soar or make a point with an effectiveness that almost no one else who has been in the white. Ouse has been able to match how do you get to the second inaugural from someone with lincolns background and education. John stuart mill and dont think one thing was certainly which certainly shaped lincoln as a communicator was having to be a lawyer, a trial lawyer. He spends virtually all of his professional life as a lawyer trying courses in county courthouses all across the middle of the state of illinois. He enjoys being in the courtroom , he enjoys being in front of a jury, but he also knows that these journeys yesterday for fate he has to persuade. In these Little County courthouses, a jury would often be summoned from bystanders at the back of the room. You could have almost anyone sitting in the jerry buss ox. Y b you had to the of communicate with everyone and do it fast, because if you did not make yourself clear you would not be a functioning profitable lawyer for long. He is the one how to communicate directly with people. His partner of many years, said lincoln was impassioned with how to make something Crystal Clear to people. He said lincoln would tie himself up in knots, sitting there concentrating, how to get an idea into an easily understood manner. , certainlyood at it on one occasion there was a story of lincoln in just his Opening Statement in a case, the judge interrupting him and saying all right brother lincoln, thank you, now we will hear the other side. He had made the case so clearly that he did not finish his Opening Statement before he had won. Capacity to open up an idea and put it in these clear lapidary terms. A lot of it goes to his experience as a trial lawyer. Some of it comes out of his logical bend. He put himself to the discipline of logical expression. It was once said by someone in their autobiography would listen the Lincoln Douglas debates that if you listen to Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas for five takees, you would always the side of Stephen Douglas because douglas was always about passion. He was about shaking that huge mane of hair, but if you listen to them for half an hour you would be taken by lincoln. Even though lincoln spoke in tone ofh, reedy voice, nasal nasal tone of voice he set things out with a hook. Once he got that hook in your mouth all he had to do was real that thing in reel that thing again. He would state the case in a way that was logically irresistible. Ent for logic and lining things up. He was not a man of passion. Once said thaton his head and rolled his heart tyrannically. In anld be eloquent extremely reasonable way. When you look at the second , butural, it is eloquent it is eloquent and very logical ways. If we assume, if we understand, if god is like this, if we see , thewar as the payment drawing of blood through the the unrequitedr 250 years of labor. For every drop of blood drawn by the lash, that his eloquence, but also logic. When you listen to it, you cant resist, because he has you. It is logic, but it is also it is a daring move on his part. Most people int the audience wanted to hear, that they were as culpable as the rebels. He do that. How many he knew that. How many people would be willing to admit that. He is telling people exactly what they dont want to hear. They want to hear that there will be retribution and that god is on their side. They were wrong, we were right. He did not say that at all. The great new york political operator wrote the lincoln afterwards to complement him. Lincoln thanked him for the compliment, but he wrote back and said i dont think that people are eager to have heard what i had to say. Nobody likes to be told that god y a controversi controversy, but i think it is something that needed to be said. Did is a remarkable speech on many levels. It is a remarkable speech on many levels. If you put it aside the emancipation proclamation, you could not have a stronger contrast between this incredibly powerful language in the second inaugural and what some people compare to the emancipation proclamation. They are different documents. Yes i have heard that. [laughter] book about written a the proclamation, the proclamation has been interpreted many different ways. Some say it is meaningless and does not do what it should do and in the end not having that great of an impact, others hang it is everything. What is your shorthand take on the importance and place of the emancipation proclamation in the much broader story of the process of emancipation . I think it is the single most profoundly effective president ial document ever written. I think it is largely because so you think it is important . I would say so, at least moderately. The language of the emancipation proclamation disappoints me, there is no question. That is why there was a famous quip about the emancipation proclamation having the moral grandeur right off the bat, that made my antennae quiver. Lading is not an unimportant document if you are involved in commerce. Whats go with the flow. What is the emancipation proclamation . Is it a rhetorical Statement Like the gettysburg address . No. The gettysburg address is marvelous, beautiful prose. You cant take it into a court of law and do anything with it. When that trooper pulls you over on the interstate, dont try reciting the gettysburg address. The trooper is only interested in the statute. The emancipation proclamation is about the statute. The emancipation proclamation is a legal document, it has to be carefully honed and crafted so that it survives challenge than courts. Lincoln knew this. President s are only president s. Is keenly aware of the fact that as president of the <