PRESS
RELEASE
INDEX:
This Year
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000

UIS Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series continues with “Lincoln’s Whigs”

October 18, 2005

SPRINGFIELD – Michael F. Holt, prominent author and scholar of 19th century political history, will deliver the second lecture in the Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series on Thursday, October 20, at the University of Illinois at Springfield.  The theme of this year’s series is “Lincoln and Economic Opportunity.”

Dr. Michael F. Holt

Holt’s discussion of “Lincoln’s Whigs: Expanding Economic Opportunities” will begin at 7:30 p.m. in Brookens Auditorium. The presentation is free and open to the public; reservations are not required.

Currently Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia, Holt has written six books, including The Political Crisis of the 1850s (Norton, 1983) and, with David Herbert Donald and Jean H. Baker, The Civil War and Reconstruction (Norton, 2001).  His Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (Oxford, 1999) won second prize in the Lincoln Prize competition that year.  Holt received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. 

The series will conclude on October 26 with “Lincoln and the Right to Rise” presented by Gabor S. Boritt, Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and founder and director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. His talk will also be at 7:30 p.m. in Brookens Auditorium.  Boritt is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Lincoln Prize, the $50,000 annual award for the finest work on the Civil War era. He is the author of numerous books on Lincoln and the Civil War – many of which have been Book of the Month Club and History Book Club selections – and received a Congressional appointment to serve on the Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. 

Each year, UIS’ Lincoln Legacy Lecture Series brings nationally renowned scholars to Springfield to present lectures on public policy issues that are of contemporary interest and that also engaged Abraham Lincoln and the citizens of his era.  Speakers focus on the topic’s modern form as well as how Lincoln addressed it.  Sponsors are the UIS Center for State Policy and Leadership and Phillip Shaw Paludan, Professor of History and Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair of Lincoln Studies at UIS.  This year’s series is supported by the Carrol C. Hall Lecture Fund at UIS.

Paludan will serve as moderator and provide a brief commentary following each lecture. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and Harvard Law School. He is the winner of the Barondess Lincoln award and the Lincoln Prize and is the author of four books dealing with Constitutional history and 19th century U.S. social, intellectual, and political history.

For more information, contact the Center at 217/206-6576.