Historian and author Douglas Wilson presents a lecture Thursday in the second event in the Lincoln Lecture Series, sponsored by GVSU's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and the Gerald R. Ford Foundation. The topic of the lecture will be The Younger Years: Lincoln's Pre-Presidential Life.
Wilson is the author of the groundbreaking Honor's Voice, about Lincoln's pre-presidential life, and several other books on Lincoln. Wilson is director of the Lincoln Center at Knox College in Illinois.
The Lincoln Lectures are at 8 p.m. on Thursdays through November 15 and are held the Gerald R. Ford Museum, 303 Pearl NW in downtown Grand Rapids. Admission is free. Call the GVSU Hauenstein Center at (616) 895-2770 for reservations.
The series focuses on Lincoln's personal and public life as well as his leadership of a nation in crisis -- a timely topic for Americans again facing war a century and a half later. Presidents who have led our nation in times of war have become subjects of renewed interest, say presidential historians, who are being called upon to help Americans put recent events into context. In Lincoln's case, the Civil War began in 1861 only a month after his inauguration and marked his entire time in office. Parallels to President Bush's leadership will be one of the subjects explored in the series of lectures.
Upcoming events in the series include:
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November 1 -- The Spiritual Side of Lincoln
Allen Guelzo, winner of the 2000 Lincoln Prize and author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President as well as books on the Civil War and American religious history. -
November 8 -- Lincoln from Life
Harold Holzer, author or editor of 18 books including The Lincoln Image and Lincoln on Democracy. The director of public affairs at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Holzer's presentation includes an audio-visual history of Lincoln. -
November 15 -- The Fiery Trial of Abraham Lincoln
Richard Norton Smith, nationally known biographer and frequent guest on C-SPAN and The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Smith, distinguished professor of U.S. presidential history at GVSU, is largely responsible for the museum's Lincoln exhibit.
The Lincoln Lecture Series is held in conjunction with Lincoln: A Personal Journey at the Gerald R. Ford Museum, described as one of the most comprehensive and historically significant exhibitions of its kind.
Funded through grants from the Steelcase Foundation and the Gerald R. Ford Foundation, the exhibit brings together hundreds of objects loaned by the Illinois State Historic Library, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Archives and other major repositories and collections. Included in the collection are one of the five surviving copies of the Gettysburg Address, handwritten by Lincoln himself, and the carriage that took the President to Ford's Theater, where he was assassinated in 1865.
