Lake Forest IL. Noted American historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson will deliver a presentation titled “Lincoln and The West,” organized in conjunction with the year-long national commemoration of the Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln. The presentation is sponsored by the Oppenheimer Family Foundation and Lake Forest College and will be held on Thursday, October 8 at 8 p.m. in the First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest.
www.nps.gov
Tickets are required but there is no admission charge. Call 847-735-5085 for tickets. The best times to call are Tuesday through Thursday from 9:00 AM – 2:30 PM. Alumni, students, parents, and faculty/staff, from the College can visit http://alumni.lakeforest.edu/mcpherson to reserve their tickets.
Professor McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1988 one-volume history of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom. Click here for a preview of Battle Cry of Freedom.
Michael H. Ebner, the James D. Vail III Professor of American History Emeritus at Lake Forest College, has organized the lecture by Professor McPherson of Princeton University.
Ageless asked Professor Ebner (an Ageless subscriber) for his perspective on the event.
“Lake Forest College, measured over many decades, has presented visiting lecturers of national and international acclaim.
“Among them: Ralph Ellison, Robert Frost, Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Friedman, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Barack Obama, Arnold Toynee, Ben Bradlee, Anita Hill, Milton Friedman, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Rumsfeld, Ted Turner, and Jane Goodall. (Editor’s note: that’s quite a roster!)
“We pride ourselves, as an institution, in welcoming distinguished speakers who represent a wide variety of perspectives on culture, politics, and social issues. The college provides the podium and the speaker articulates a point of view. We depend upon the audience — both town and gown — to draw its own conclusions as to what has been said on any given occasion.
“All of these programs open the doors of the college — free of any admission charge — to our neighbors as an affirmation of community outreach.
James McPherson
“It is in this spirit that Professor James McPherson — arguably the most distinguished scholar of the American Civil War of our time — will be with us under the auspices of the Oppenheimer Family Foundation to discuss ‘Lincoln and the West.’
“This visit by James McPherson is all the more appropriate because the American people — and for that matter people around the world — are commemorating the bicentennial of his birth throughout 2009.
Earlier this year, McPherson gave a similar speech at Stanford University. Among his comments:
“The most important issue [relating to the West] was the controversy over the expansion of slavery into the territories and the newest part of the West. The social order that took root [in the territories] would determine the future of the states.”
Lincoln was a big supporter of the Transcontinental Railroad: “Lincoln disliked the farm work his father required of him and fled from it as soon as he could. It was natural for Lincoln to support ideas of a railroad from the old Northwest to California to develop vast resources for the benefit of the American union.”
“Lincoln certainly had a dominant role in Union victory, and without that victory would [the railroad] have been built when and where it was? Not likely.”
Don (Ageless North Shore editor) has read about and studied the Lincoln and the Civil War for many years.
Please join us for this exciting event on Thursday night!
