28 items
"Those who knew Mr. Lincoln best," wrote Illinois Congressman Isaac Arnold, "knew that he looked, confidently, to the ultimate extinction of slavery" and used "every means which his prudent and scrupulous mind recognized as right and...
Lincoln
No one seemed less well-cast for the role of reformer, in an age of reform, than Abraham Lincoln. To begin with, he was a stranger, emotionally and intellectually, to evangelical Christianity, the great engine of reform in the...
Jon Meacham - "And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle"
Jon Meacham is a historian and Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. Order And There Was Light at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting...
Harold Holzer - "Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration"
Harold Holzer is a scholar of Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the American Civil War era. He serves as Jonathan F. Fanton Director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. Order Brought Forth on...
James Oakes - "The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution"
Order The Crooked Path to Abolition at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
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Lincoln and Emancipation: Black Enfranchisement in 1863 Louisiana
As the president of a fractured nation, Abraham Lincoln faced no issue more perplexing than that of restoring the rebel states to the Union. Reconstruction during wartime was, he judged, "the greatest question ever presented to...
"Half slave, half free": Lincoln and the "House Divided"
The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all proclaim, "a house divided against itself can not stand." [1] Living in a Bible-reading country, most nineteenth-century Americans knew that metaphor by heart—words that also made good common...
"That glorious consummation": Lincoln on the Abolition of Slavery
"That man who thinks Lincoln calmly sat down and gathered his robes about him, waiting for the people to call him, has a very erroneous knowledge of Lincoln," wrote Abraham Lincoln’s long-time law partner, William Henry Herndon. "He...
John Avlon - "Lincoln and the Fight for Peace"
John Avlon is a senior political analyst and anchor at CNN. Order Lincoln and the Fight for Peace at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for...
Lucas Morel - "Lincoln and the American Founding"
Lucas E. Morel is the John K. Boardman, Jr. Professor of Politics and head of the Politics Department at Washington and Lee University. Order Lincoln and the American Founding at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate...
Paul Escott - "Black Suffrage: Lincoln's Last Goal"
Paul D. Escott is Reynolds Professor (Emeritus) of History at Wake Forest University. Order Black Suffrage at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you...
Ted Widmer - "Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington"
Ted Widmer is a professor of history at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. Order Lincoln on the Verge at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for...
Allen C. Guelzo - "Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment"
Allen C. Guelzo serves as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Order Our Ancient Faith at the Gilder...
Walter Stahr - "Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival"
Walter Stahr is a New York Times bestselling author. Order Salmon P. Chase at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs!
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Noah Feldman - "The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America"
Noah Feldman is Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Chairman of the Society of Fellows, and founding director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard University. Order The Broken Constitution at the...
Jonathan W. White - "A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House"
Jonathan W. White is professor of American studies at Christopher Newport University. Order A House Built By Slaves at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided....
The Road to War
‘A house divided against itself can not stand’ I believe this government can not endure permanently, half slave, and half free . . . I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it...
The Failure of Compromise
In the spring of 1861, the United States of America split into two hostile countries—the United States and the new Confederate States of America. The two opposing heads of state agreed about what was causing the rupture—the long...
African Americans and Emancipation
Historians increasingly understand emancipation was not a singular event that simply involved the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. Instead, emancipation is better understood as...
National Expansion and Reform, 1815–1860
A good way to understand the men and women who created America’s reform tradition and carried it across the Mississippi in the years before the Civil War is to look at the political heritage their parents and grandparents left to them...
David Blight - "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom"
Order Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom at the Gilder Lehrman Book Shop We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs! Classroom-Ready Resources Video...
The Declaration of Independence and the Long Struggle for Equality in America: An Introduction
Whatever else the Declaration of Independence encompassed—a proclamation of political sovereignty, an indictment against the King of England, an appeal for allies—its assertion that “all men are created equal” shines as the polestar...
Admiration and Ambivalence: Frederick Douglass and John Brown
John Brown did not make it easy for people to love him—until he died on the gallows. Frederick Douglass, from his first meeting with Brown in 1847, through a testy but important relationship in the late 1850s, had long viewed the...
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