Political Theory Institute Lecture: "Did Lincoln Kill the Consitution?" with Professor Allen Guelzo

Abraham Lincoln has been tagged by pundits and historians at points all along the spectrum of constitutional interpretation. For some, he is the first originalist; for others, he was a destructive figure who set a precedent for dismissals of the Constitution. Lincoln can be made to satisfy something at every point on the spectrum, particularly because he was dealing with a situation — a continental civil war — for which the Constitution made no provision. Yet, he managed that crisis without disturbing or dismissing the Constitution, and as such, he offers an extraordinary degree of insight into what constitutional statesmanship can look like.

Featured Speaker:

Allen C. Guelzo is perhaps the most distinguished living historian of the Civil War. He has had prestigious positions at Princeton University and Gettysburg College and is currently Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center.

Among his many award-winning publications, he is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (1999), which won both the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize in 2000; Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004) which also won the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Prize, for 2005; Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (2008); a volume of essays, Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas (2009) which won a Certificate of Merit from the Illinois State Historical Association in 2010; and Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction (in the Oxford University Press ‘Very Short Introductions’ series. In 2012, he published Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction and in 2013 Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, which spent eight weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Gettysburg: The Last Invasion won the Lincoln Prize for 2014, the inaugural Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Fletcher Pratt Award of the New York City Round Table, and the Richard Harwell Award of the Atlanta Civil War Round Table. He is also author of Redeeming the Great Emancipator (2016) and Reconstruction: A Concise History (2018). He is a New York Times best-selling author, has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, National Affairs, First Things, U.S. News & World Report, The Weekly Standard, Washington Monthly, National Review, the Daily Beast, and the Claremont Review of Books, and has been featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday” and “On Point,” The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Meet the Press: Press Pass with David Gregory, The Civil War: The Untold Story, Race to the White House: Lincoln vs. Douglas (CNN, 2016), Legends and Lies: The Civil War (Fox, 2018), Reconstruction (PBS, 2019) and Brian Lamb’s “Booknotes.”

In 2010, he was nominated for a Grammy Award along with David Straithern and Richard Dreyfuss for their production of the entirety of The Lincoln-Douglas Debates (BBC Audio). He is the recipient of many awards, including the Bradley Prize (2018). From 2006 to 2013, he served as a member of the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

He holds the MA and PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania.