The Unhappy Fate of Fitz John Porter

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The 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 […]

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Lincoln & the League

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Lincoln & 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 […]

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Redeeming The Great Emancipator: The Harvard University Lecture, An Interview with Allen Guelzo

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Redeeming 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 […]

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Lincoln and Democracy

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Lincoln 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 […]

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An Interview with Allen Guelzo 

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Sara 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 […]

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The Intellectual Milieu of Abraham Lincoln

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The 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 […]

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God and Mr. Lincoln

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On 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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