Director of the civil war era studies program. He did his graduate work in history at the university of pennsylvania, where he focused on the history of religion. He also has holds a master of divinity degree. His roster of publications is so long that im not going to even try to read them all to you. You can go to allen guelzo. Com and get a full accounting of not only his publications, but other salient elements of his biography and doings. What im going to do here is mention five books that i think are especially pertinent to what well be doing this afternoon, and ill just read it. Abraham lincoln redeemer president , 1998 and won the first of allens lincoln prizes. Lincolns emancipation proclamation, end of slavery in america, published by simon and schuster in 2004 brought him his second lincoln prize. Lincoln and douglas that defined america, simon and schuster 2008 for some reason didnt win the lincoln prize. Fateful lightning, new history of the civil war and reconstruction came out from Oxford University press in 2012 and the fifth title ill mention is gettysburg the last invasion, published in 2013, which brought a third lincoln prize to allen, as the only person who has won three. Others have won two. Hes currently working on a biography of robert e. Lee which will be published by knaugh. Well get to that today. He and i are going to talk about his work today and about the field of civil war era studies more broadly. And 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 National Newspapers and other publications. He has done courses for the teaching company, the great courses company. You have reached a broader audience. And i would like your thoughts about whether this is something we really should strive to do, why you do it, how effective you think it is and what it yields for our field in terms of did he say disseminating to a broader audience. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. And especially to the now center, to will kurtz, to everyone here who has to liz veren, stephanie, to everyone who has just made my visit here over the last several days such an exceedingly pleasant one. And youve sneaked in some research. Oh, indeed. Indeed. I have been within the reach of many manuscripts, diaries, things like that, looking at what people are writing, thinking, and saying in those Tumultuous Times 150 years ago. Im particularly glad to be here on this very, very significant and special day, one of the greatest days in American History. And im noticing that people are starting to look at each other like oh, is this the fourth of july . No, no. Its september 22nd. And we did this on purpose. Its the 155th anniversary of the preliminary emancipation proclamation. Writing about that back in 2012 in the wall street journal got me some unusual responses. I got a death threat. Doesnt often happen to people writing in the wall street journal. You get other kinds of threats, i suppose. But i imagine i did that i succeeded at injuring someones sensibilities in writing about the emancipation proclamation, but in a way it testifies to the fact that if you say you thought it was a good thing . Yes, i did. That upset someone . That upset someone, yes. I think what it does speak to is the fact that there is a large audience among americans for trying to understand our history. Because what, after all how do we identify as americans . We dont identify ourselves, or shouldnt, on the basis of a language, of an ethnicity, of an established religion, of race, any of those things. What identifies us as americans . Fundamentally, lincoln nailed that in the gettysburg address. What identifies us as americans is a proposition that all men are created equal, and the history of how we have unfolded and lived with that proposition is really the most important aspect of our identity. So when we write about our histo history, were not just doing antequerism. Were doing a year by year, decade by decade referendum on that proposition. I regard what i have done in the popular press fully as much as the Academic Press as being two sides of one coin. That is how do we explain ourselves to ourselves as americans . And that should draw in more than just an academic audience. That should draw in all of us, because thats what touches all of us, and thats what identifies all of us. So, if im writing, for instance, for the journal of the early republic or for the civil war history, or if im writing for the wall street journal, or if im writing for the washington post, i really regard those as being part of an overall endeavor. Its our constant reminder of ourselves of who we are and what we are dedicated to. Thats something that involves more than academics. It involves more than just college students. It really is something that embraces all of us. So, i think its important, especially, especially for historians like ourselves to be able to speak to everybody, because were really speaking to our identity as americans. Were not just speaking professionally. Were speaking as citizens. There is one and only one identifier of an american, and that is that you are a citizen. To be a citizen of the American Republic is, in my book, just about the greatest privilege on earth. Were especially well positioned to reach a broader audience because so many issues of the civil war continue to resonate. We can see echoes of them in we can see echoes of them in our daytoday life, including responses from some states to our current president , our preceding president , talking about secession. Texas, when president obama was in office. California with President Trump in office now. You dont have to look very far in current american politics and society to find echoes of the civil war era. Sometimes its even more than echoes. There was an oped in the Sacramento Bee. I think im seating this correctly. There was an oped in the Sacramento Bee yesterday, i think, in which the lead of the oped said that california is a 21st century state, which is mired in a 19th century country and, therefore, it should separate itself, which is a way of saying california is an entirely different culture from the rest of the United States. And i thought, yeah, that is exactly what they were saying in South Carolina in december of 1860. Im trying to ask people if theyre really trying striving to emulate short term, it didnt turn out so well for South Carolina. But it does come back to the fact that so often questions that we think are uniquely current and uniquely modern really have these long roots and sometimes are replicating even the rhetoric of 150 years ago and longer. Yes. There is almost nothing new, i think. It does seem to be that way. It seems new if you dont know anything. This is because the fundamental questions that are 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, its not a total surprise that the kind of rhetoric and assumptions and stance thats you hear people strike today will find uncanny and sometimes unserving echos of those 150, 155 years ago. For the historian, what we have to do is to signal. This is what the relationships are. Be careful what you wish for. Whether its the Sacramento Bee or the charleston mercury. When you write, do you write specifically with more than one audience in mind . I mean, obviously your books are reviewed in the mainline scholarly journals. But do you have one or the other of the audiences more in mind or do you not even think about that . I cant say that i really think about it. Sometimes im asked, well, you know, what kind of schooling did you have in writing . How do you go about the writing . And to that i can only shrug my shoulders. I never had a writing class. I never had someone instruct me. I have no better explanation other than to simply say i want to explain something to people. I want to communicate with people. And i look for ways to do that. And i dont really have a better explanation. You certainly read a lot gf writin of good writing. I think i did. Im probably good at imitating. But its nothing in my mind at least its nothing more complicated than that. I cant make it more complicated. All right. I wont try to make you more complicated than that. I have a question i really want to get to and that is did you wake up one morning and think poor Abraham Lincoln, he just hasnt gotten enough attention from writers . I think i better write a book about lincoln. What brought you youre trained as a historian. You are wrote about Jonathan Edwards in your dissertation and in your early work. How do you get from Jonathan Edwards and religion to Abraham Lincoln . Well, its a little unusual. But not more unusual than, well, lets say a chess game. Theres a few strange movers that have to get made and processed. But not too many. I wrote my dissertation on Jonathan Edwards and the problem of determinism and free will in philosophy. Thats a title made for wide public consumption. Yeah. Is that in the 19th printing now . Actually, they did do second edition. It was the one with Matthew Mcconaughey and Jonathan Edwards that really resonates. Yeah. And the one with nick nolte as george whitfield, right. I wrote the dissertation which was then published. The problem with free will and determinism seemed like a real philosophical problem. A perennial. And i planned to write a follow up volume, kind of a Jonathan Edwards 2. 0 or free will 2. 0. And bring things the discussion of the problem of modern philosophy and as i was working on this project, this was in the mid 90s, i knew that Abraham Lincoln had something to say on the subject of free will and fatalism. He had some familiar ti. I thought it would jazz the book up. Heres a book on philosophy and determinism and other sleepy subjects to be able to interject Abraham Lincoln into that discussion would put fizz in it. I thought wouldnt that be clever of me . So i ended up writing a paper on lincoln and determinism, what he called the doctrine of necessity. Because he told people, frankly, he was fatalist. And i read that paper in springfield, illinois, at a meeting of the Abraham Lincoln association. And to my surprise it was well received. A book publisher got in touch with me. Would i be interested in writing a religious biography of Abraham Lincoln . I said, no. Because id seen a number of writers get swallowed up in the swamp on that subject. I thought i really dont want to do that. Publisher got back in touch some time later. Would i do this biography, this religious biography of lincoln . I said no. Finally, a friend of the publisher called me and said, look, if you dont do this book, theyre going to give it to professor so and so. Someone you knew . Yeah. The hand hit the forehead. And so i got back in touch with the editor in chief of this publisher and said to him, look, ill make a deal. Ill write the book you want. Let me do it as an intellectual biography of lincoln, not just about religious but all the other influences to treat him as a political figure and in the context of the ideas of the 19th century. And having got my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak, i just really couldnt get it out. And one lincoln book became another lincoln book became another lincoln book and so on and so forth and youve already gone down the list. And, no, i never have actually gotten back to writing that free will 2. 0. But there i can iner if that you thi infer that are more elements to lincoln . I think thats entirely true. Lincoln is an extremely complicated and complex individual. And people underestimate lincoln because they think that he is just 16th president. Hes just the civil war president. Hes just a politician. Hes just a lawyer. And that misses what people in lincolns own time said about him. He was a very shut mouthed man as one of his Legal Associates said of him. Another who practiced law with him for many years said that anyone who took abe lincoln for a simple minded man would wake up with his back in a ditch. And i think that may be one of the truest things ever said about lincoln. He was a man of very meager education but extraordinary intellectual curiosity. He would delve into anything. John hay, his secretary, in his diary in 1863 recorded an incident in which hay said, the t, shorthanded for tycoon, the t and i had a discussion about philosophy for which the t has an unsuspected interest. And you think philology. Okay, lets look that up really quick before anybody notices. It is the study of languages. Lincoln had intcuriosities in s many different directions. He was not a philosopher. He was not what we call an intellectual. The but he had curiosity thats w curiosities that way. He liked to pursue them. He said with a journalist, brooks asked him, what were the most influential books in your life . And lincolns reply was peculiar. He said, butlers analogy, meaning, Bishop Joseph butlers analogy of religion, singularly important text for natural religion in the 18th century and john steward 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 president edwards on the will. And i thought, yes, go so that spoke to you, the third one . It did. What this suggests is heres a man who does not simply say i read the newspapers or i read the funnies and do the cross word puzzle. Hes a man that has ambitions to penetrate serious questions. And its part of lincoln we miss because were so impressed with the folksy, political backslapper, shrewed political wire puller. We dont see the lincoln that his closest friends sometimes had a peek into. And that was in some ways a very different lincoln. How do you explain lincolns facility with language . You can talk about his other attributes. You talked about several of them. But his ability to deal with complicated issues and render them in very brief text in language that can soar or make a point with an effectiveness that almost no ones ever been in the white house, anyway, has been able to match. How do you get to the second inaugural from someone with lincolns background and education . One thing that certainly shaped lincoln as a communicator was having to be a lawyer and in this case 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 income frobeing in fr jury. These are juries he has to persuade. This is an age when juries were significant for two things that we dont often pick up to day. One is that in these Little County courthouses, a jury would often be summoned from bystanders at the back of the room. So you could have almost anyone sitting in the jury box. If you werent able to make yourself clear, then you were not going to be a functioning profitable lawyer for very long. So he has to learn thou communicate directly with people. And his partner of many years once said that was lincolns real passion. How to make something Crystal Clear to people. He said that lincoln would tie himself up in knots in the office. He would just sit there concentrating, concentrating, how to get an idea into a small compass of easily understood words. He was so effective at it that certainly one occasion there is a story about lincoln even in just his Opening Statement in a case, the judge interrupting him and saying, all right brother lincoln, thank you. Now well hear from the other side. He made the case so clearly that he wasnt even finished his Opening Statement before it seemed like he won it. He had that wonderful capacity to open up an idea and put it in these wonderfully clear terms. I think a lot of that comes out of his experience as a trial lawyer. But another comes out of the mans logical bend. He put himself to the discipline of logical expression. And it was once said by someone in their autobiography who listened to the lincolndouglas debate thats if you listened to lincoln and douglas for five minutes, you would always take the side of stephen a. Douglas. Douglas was always about passion. He was about shaking that huge ma mane of hair, about stomping his feet. But if you listen to them for a half hour, you would be taken by lincoln. Because lincoln, even though he spoke in this high, ready, somewhat nasal tone of voice, he always set things out like bait on a hook. And logically speaking, once he got that hook in your mouth, all he needed to do afterwards is reel the thing in and you were his. He would state the case in such a way that it was absolutely logically irresistible. He had had that bent for logic, for lining things up. He was not a man of passion. Not a man of motion. Herndon once said that his head ruled his heart t. He could be eloquent. But eloquent in an extremely reasonable way. When you look at the second inaugural, yes, it is eloquent. But its eloquent in very logical ways. If we assume, if we understand, if god is like this, if we see this war as the payment, the drawing of blood through the sword to pay for the bondmans unrequitted 250 years of labor for every drop of blood drawn by the lash, all right, thats eloquence. But its also logic. The kind of thing when you listen it to, you really cant resist at the end because hes got you. Its logic but its also a great i mean its a daring move on his part. That is not what most of the people in that audience wanted to hear that day that they were as culpable as the rebels . He knew that too. How many people would be willing to do that . I mean, thats that is a remarkable speech on many levels. Thats one of the levels to me is telling people exactly what they dont want to hear. They want to hear there is retribution. God was on our side and chastise the rebels. They were wrong. We were right. Theyre responsible for everything. He didnt say that at all . The great new york political operator wrote to lincoln afterwards to compliment