The Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, author of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and multiple winner of the Lincoln Prize, talks about why Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. Critics then, and now, faulted Lincoln for not acting more boldly; after all, the Proclamation only applied to territory under Confederate control and left slaves in loyal border states in bondage.

Professor Guelzo will explain Lincoln’s decisions, how he came to write and defend the Proclamation, and what his actions meant for what has become one of the nation’s transformative documents.

Dr. Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era, Director of Civil War Era Studies, and Associate Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania.

This program is supported in part by the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Recorded Saturday, December 12, 2009 at The Newberry Library.