Twenty-Seventh Annual Lincoln Forum To Focus On “Lincoln In The White House”

Originally published August 2022 · p. 46

To Focus On “Lincoln In The White House” Historian-Cable News Stars Jon Meacham and John Avlon Will Featured

Jon Meacham Two presidential historians familiar to millions as both best-selling authors and cable news commentators, Jon Meacham and John Avlon, will be among the major speakers at the 27th annual Lincoln Forum symposium, “Lincoln in the Civil War White House: The Politics and Personalities of a Union Divided,” November 16-18 in Gettysburg, Penn. The symposium will feature analysis, discussion, music, and art meant to reimagine and reinterpret the crises that beset the wartime U. S. capital and its most famous resident, Abraham Lincoln.

After its successful in-person 25th-anniversary symposium in 2021, the Forum will reconvene at the Wyndham Hotel Gettysburg and feature another roster of leading lecturers and panelists. This year’s keynoter is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Jon Meacham, who will discuss his forthcoming biography, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. The book tells Lincoln’s story through the lens of his evolving moral and religious sensibilities. Meacham’s talk, “Lincoln and the Arc of a Moral Universe: The Conscience of a President,” will focus on Lincoln’s leadership in times of turmoil. CNN senior political analyst, and “Reality Check” commentator, John Avlon will discuss his new book, Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, which Jon Meacham called “an important and absorbing contribution to the literature of the American Presidency.” He will speak to the Forum on: “How Lincoln Helped Win the Peace After World War II.” Avlon has written previously on George Washington and is the only descendant-in-law of an American president ever to speak at the Forum. “It is with great pride that we bring another superb faculty to Gettysburg for Forum XXVII,” Chairman Harold Holzer said. “We very much look forward to engaging our audience ‘family’ with another three-day symposium guaranteed to reunite good friends and provide upto-date scholarship and spirited discussion. After our one-year all-zoom session two years ago, it is good to be back in the routine of in-person meetings to mark our 27th anniversary.” Further information and registration forms can be found on the Forum’s newly redesigned website (www.thelincolnforum. org) or from Forum Administrator Diane Brennan (admin@ thelincolnforum.org). Among other first-time speakers will be longtime curator and historian John Rhodehamel, author of America’s Original Sin: White Supremacy, John Wilkes Booth, and the Lincoln Assassination (2021). Rhodehamel will discuss “White Supremacy and the Lincoln Assassination.” Veteran Lincoln Forum member Christopher Oakley will show how art and technology helped him pinpoint the precise location of the speaker’s platform from which Lincoln delivered his immortal Gettysburg Address 159 years ago this November. Oakley, a professor of new media at UNC-Asheville, previously worked as an animator for both Disney and DreamWorks. His mystery-solving discovery, to be announced for the first time at the Forum, will likely make major news in the historical community. The 2022 symposium will also feature a host of returning Forum favorites. New York Times bestselling biographer Walter Stahr will discuss his important new biography, Chase: Lincoln’s Vital Rival (2022). Lincoln Prize winner Elizabeth D. Leonard will offer a fresh re-assessment of the Union general some called the “Beast,” based on her brand-new biography, Benjamin Franklin Butler: A Noisy, Fearless Life (2022). Lincoln Forum Vice Chairman Jonathan W. White will discuss African American encounters with Abraham Lincoln, based on his two most recent groundbreaking books: To Address You as My Friend: African Americans’ Letters to Abraham Lincoln (2021) and A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022). The Forum will also feature conversations and panel discussions. Chairman Emeritus Frank J. Williams will engage veteran Wall Street Journal columnist Roger Lowenstein to explore Lowenstein’s highly praised new book, Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War. Lincoln Forum Executive Committee member Edna Greene Medford will chair a panel on “Lincoln, Race, and Citizenship.” It will feature Michael Green, author of Lincoln and Native Americans (2021); last year’s Lincoln Forum Book Prizewinner Professor James Oakes; and Christy Coleman, the CEO of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, who served as onair commentator for recent CNN and History Channel Lincoln documentaries. Forum Vice Chairman White will lead a panel on “Lincoln and the Democrats,” featuring J. Matthew Gallman, author of the new book, The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War; Reg Ankrom, a Stephen Douglas biographer and longtime resident of the Lincoln-Douglas debate town of Quincy, Illinois; Lincoln Forum Chairman Harold Holzer, who has written often on the Democratic press of the Lincoln era; and Elizabeth Leonard, biographer of prominent War Democrats Ben Butler and Joseph Holt. As a special added attraction, the U.S. Army Chorus will return to the Forum by popular demand for an after-dinner concert of Lincoln-era music. As always, attendees will also enjoy the Forum’s all-author book signing and an array of displays featuring both artists and Lincolniana specialists. For the first time in three years, the Forum will resume its FirstTimers’ Battlefield Tour, this year featuring legendary guide and historian Carol Reardon of Gettysburg College. Other attendees will select from a list of compelling breakout sessions, including: the ever-popular duo of Professors John F. Marszalek and Craig L. Symonds on the memoirs of Grant and Sherman; Michael Green and Andrew F. Lang on “Lincoln and the Union;” David Kent, author of the forthcoming Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, in conversation with iconic historian Edward Steers Jr., on Lincoln, science, and technology; and the traditional and delicious crowd-pleaser, “Cooking with the Chief and the Chef” featuring Chief Justice Frank Williams in the kitchen with the resident Wyndham Hotel head of cuisine. Publisher Ross Heller will host a breakout session, featuring artist and Forum Advisor Wendy Allen and Huntington Library curator Olga Tsapina, on preserving and interpreting original Lincoln manuscripts. Dr. Tsapina recently guided Heller in producing a forthcoming booklength version of a manuscript in the future president’s hand: By Abraham Lincoln: His 1858 Time Capsule, for which Allen provided the cover art. The Heller volume will be released and sold for the first time during the 2022 Lincoln Forum. By tradition, the Forum will also welcome student and teacher scholarship winners, present its Richard N. Current Award for Lifetime Achievement; the Wendy Allen Award for Lincoln and Civil War organizational excellence; the Platt Family student essay prize; and the newly renamed Harold Holzer Book Prize.