Lincoln Foreword and Painting

The just-released issue of the Marquette Law Review includes nine articles and essays growing out of (and comprising the written version of) last fall’s “Legacies of Lincoln Conference.” It was a great privilege for Professor Daniel D. Blinka and me to work with Marvin C. Bynum III, the editor-in-chief of Volume 93 of the journal, and his (our) colleagues to present this symposium. Some time ago we posted one of the papers from the symposium, the remarkable Klement Lecture delivered by Gettysburg College’s Allen C. Guelzo, which led off the conference. The Foreword of the symposium describes briefly each of the contributions and contains as well an observation on the substantive link that the Lincoln Conference provided from Sensenbrenner Hall, our historic home where the bulk of the conference occurred, to Eckstein Hall and its Aitken Reading Room, whose impressive commissioned painting, Laying the Foundation by Don Pollack, the conference helped to inspire; it also includes a reflection of sorts on broader matters. A link to the Foreword, which includes an image of Pollack’s painting, can be found here. Posts in the near future will describe and contain links to the individual articles and essays.

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Why Did Lincoln Try to Buy a Slave? (One of Lincoln’s More Troublesome Legacies)

The Legacies of Lincoln Conference held on October 1 and 2, 2009 was, as Dean Joseph Kearney reported earlier, a terrifically successful program by any measure – attendance, audience response, and, most certainly, engaging presentations.  Jointly sponsored by the Law School and the History Department, the Conference featured lectures and comments by influential historians and lawyers which will appear later next year in the Marquette Law Review, yet another measure of the Conference’s success.  This is the first in a series of blog posts by Dean Kearney and me that will highlight each of these submissions, together with links to the audio of the Conference itself.

We begin most appropriately with the draft article of the Klement Lecture delivered by the distinguished historian Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College, entitled “Colonel Utley’s Emancipation; or, How Abraham Lincoln Offered to Pay For a Slave.”  The provocative title reveals the subtlety of Guelzo’s analysis and historical judgment. 

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Legacies of Lincoln

legacies-of-lincolnThe Legacies of Lincoln Conference, a joint undertaking of the Law School and the Department of History, was an impressive event last week. It began on Thursday evening, with Allen Guelzo, Gettysburg College’s renowned Lincoln historian, delivering the History Department’s annual Klement Lecture. There then followed on Friday three panels, variously addressing “Lincoln and Politics,” “Lincoln and the Constitution,” and “Lincoln as Lawyer,” and respectively led by Heather Cox Richardson of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Michael Les Benedict of The Ohio State University, and Mark E. Steiner of the South Texas College of Law. The other panelists were James Marten and Alison Clark Efford of Marquette’s History Department (politics panel), Stephen Kantrowitz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Kate Masur of Northwestern University (Constitution panel), and two of our part-time faculty (for the Lincoln-as-lawyer panel): Joseph S. Ranney, III, of Dewitt Ross & Stevens and Thomas L. Shriner, Jr., or Foley & Lardner. Audio of the three panels is available on the Law School’s webcast page.  A number of the participants will permit the Law School to publish papers reflecting their remarks, and I expect that, as the different papers are ready over the course of the time to come, Dan Blinka or I will use this blog to share them with interested readers. A special thanks to Jim Marten and to Dan Blinka for their roles in putting this conference together.

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