Hosted in partnership with the World Affairs Council of Connecticut and Global Santa Fe, the World Affairs Council of Austin invites you to this ONLINE event on Lincoln’s birthday with award-winning historian and author Allen Guelzo. Mr. Guelzo will join a conversation with Jim Falk on the American President whose firm and powerful beliefs in democracy guided him through one of the most tumultuous periods in American history – and how his beliefs continue to shape our country.
About the Book
Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment
An intimate study of Abraham Lincoln’s powerful vision of democracy, which guided him through the Civil War and is still relevant today—by a best-selling historian and three-time winner of the Lincoln Prize.
Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln’s penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him through the crisis.
Allen C. Guelzo, one of America’s foremost experts on Lincoln, captures the president’s firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln’s deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recrimination in the aftermath of war. In bringing his subject to life as a rigorous and visionary thinker, Guelzo assesses Lincoln’s actions on civil liberties and his views on race, and explains why his vision for the role of government would have made him a pivotal president even if there had been no Civil War. Our Ancient Faith gives us a deeper understanding of this endlessly fascinating man and shows how his ideas are still sharp and relevant more than 150 years later.
Purchase Our Ancient Faith here.
About the Author
Allen C. Guelzo is Senior Research Scholar at the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of several books about the Civil War and early-nineteenth-century American history. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize for Military History and has been awarded the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize three times. He lives in Pennsylvania.
About the Moderator
Jim Falk is President Emeritus of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth. Now residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico he is member of the Board of Global Santa Fe where he chairs the program committee. Jim co-hosts Perspectives Matter, a McCuistion Program, that airs weekly on KERA-Dallas (PBS). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
