Abraham Lincoln Before and During the Civil War

Harold Holzer will present an overview of Abraham Lincoln’s pre-presidential life and career through the lens of 19th century partisan journalism, a world Lincoln inhabited with gusto and extraordinary results. “Public sentiment is everything,” he said a few years before he won the White House. “He who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes and pronounces decisions.” Lincoln really believed in this idea. From the outset, he tethered his ambitions to rise from obscurity to power, to the idea of mastering the press. We will explore Lincoln’s political and oratorical development, but through the filter of journalism. Hence we will see Lincoln as a young “op-ed columnist” on temperance; later as the anonymous author of angry anti-Democratic Party editorials, and also as a local agent for the pro-Whig press; as a freshman Congressman yearning for press coverage.

NYU Global Center for Academic Life
238 Thompson Street
Grand Hall – Fifth Floor
New York, NY 10012

Tickets $149.