The same decades that bracket Victoria and Albert, Smith, and Palmerston were also the decades of a new American literature (from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Harriet Beecher Stowe), a new art (from the portraiture of the Peales to Frederic Edwin Church), and new music (Henry Bristow’s and William Henry Fry’s symphonies). “Abraham Lincoln,” announced one British Tory parliamentarian, was a “railsplitter, bargee, and attorney…a man brought up in a rough way, a clever woodcutter” and “an incapable pretender.” He was proof (according to the then-current Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston) that putting “Power in the Hands of the Masses throws the Scum of the Community to the Surface.”Ī great deal of this contempt, both for Lincoln and for 19 th-century American culture, was cruelly undeserved. This image was not improved in European minds when, on the cusp of a national civil war, Americans inaugurated as their president a common trial lawyer with no university degree, a heavy backwoods twang, and a reputation for vulgar story-telling. “The Americans are a brave, industrious and acute people,” conceded Sydney Smith, the British clergyman and critic, but “who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? Or looks at an American picture or statue?”

This event is co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, American University’s Lincoln Scholars Program, the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and the Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia.However much Americans boasted about the superiority of their republican political institutions in the Victorian Era, we never managed to escape the accusation that our politics had been bought at the price of cultural inferiority. Books and concessions will be available for sale in the Ford’s Theatre lobby. Guelzo will be available for book signing in the Ford’s Theatre lobby following the event. Guelzo for an exciting night of exploring the legacy of America’s most celebrated president!Īllen C. Guelzo’s book, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, which has been updated and revised with a new preface. Since its original publication in 1999, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President has garnered numerous accolades, not least the prestigious Lincoln Prize. The trio will discuss the newly released 2 nd edition of Dr. Guelzo in conversation with Lucas Morel of Washington and Lee University and Richard Brookhiser of National Review.

On February 9 th at 7pm at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C., Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and Ford's Theater will host renowned historian Allen C.

Abraham Lincoln by Allen C. Guelzo