By David J. Kent
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, December 20, 2023
Put January 16, 2024 on your calendar for the Lincoln Group's first Zoom event of the new year. That night will feature Andrew F. Lang discussing "When Americans Could Not Escape History: Abraham Lincoln and the Origins of the New Birth of Freedom."
Lang received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of North Texas before earning a second M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Rice University in Houston, Texas. He is now a professor of history at Mississippi State University (which began as a land grant university).
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), was 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.
His presentation on January 16th 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.
The event is Zoom-Only on January 16, 2024 beginning at 6:00 pm ET. Please RSVP here so we have an attendance count.
Photo of Andrew F. Lang from his Mississippi State University website.
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