Lincoln and the Origins of the New Birth of Freedom

Join us for the first Lincoln Group of DC meeting of the new year on January 16. 

Andrew F. Lang, associate professor of history at Mississippi State University will present "When Americans Could Not Escape History: Abraham Lincoln and the Origins of the New Birth of Freedom." This talk will explore Lincoln's philosophy of history and Americans' duty to accord to the demands of history rather than living only in the relativistic present. Professor Lang argues that long even before his presidency—and thus certainly long before the Gettysburg Address—Lincoln had already formulated his concept of a "new birth of freedom." This program is not to be missed.

Professor Lang is the author of In the Wake of War: Military Occupation, Emancipation, and Civil War America (LSU Press, 2017), which received the Tom Watson Brown Book Award from the Society of Civil War Historians. His recent book, A Contest of Civilizations: Exposing the Crisis of American Exceptionalism in the Civil War Era (UNC Press, 2021), listed as a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Lang is a member of the Executive Council of the Society of Civil War Historians. He also serves on advisory boards for the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History (University of Virginia); the American Civil War Museum (Richmond, Virginia); and the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library. He is at present working on two book-length projects. The first is an intellectual biography of Abraham Lincoln’s concept of Union and philosophy of history. The project explores how Lincoln crafted a narrative of American nationalism amid a contentious contemporary dialogue on the nature of national life. The second project explores the relationship between Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.  

The Lincoln Group of DC returns to a Zoom-Only presentation for this meeting on January 16.  Please RSVP for our attendance count.