Michael Burlingame is Featured Speaker at Abraham Lincoln Birthday Banquet on February 15

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Published on December 27 2024 9:39 am
Last Updated on December 27 2024 9:42 am

Prominent Abraham Lincoln scholar, author, and professor Michael Burlingame will be the featured speaker at the Abraham Lincoln Association (ALA) Birthday Banquet on Saturday, February 15 at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel in Springfield. Four renowned Lincoln authors and historians will highlight the free Benjamin P. Thomas Symposium earlier in the day, which will feature discussions on Abraham Lincoln and lynching, Stephen Douglas’s greatest speech, new Lincoln and Civil War information sources, and America’s first civil rights movement.

The annual Lincoln Birthday Symposium and Banquet, usually held on February 12 on Lincoln’s actual birthday, is being celebrated on February 15 to take advantage of the three-day Presidents’ Day weekend.

Burlingame is the former ALA president and the foremost living scholar of Lincoln, and his banquet speech will be “Adventures and Misadventures of a Lincoln Scholar.” James M. McPherson, redoubtable historian of the Civil War, has said that Dr. Burlingame “knows more about Lincoln than any other living person.” Burlingame, holder of the Chancellor Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield, is the author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life; The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln; An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd; The Black Man’s President: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Equality; and Lincoln and the Civil War. He is also the editor of many collections of Lincoln primary source materials. In 2008 The Atlantic rated the 2-volume Abraham Lincoln: A Life one of the five best books of the year. A graduate of Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University, Burlingame taught at Connecticut College in New London for many years before joining the UI Springfield faculty in 2009.

The February 15 Banquet, held this year to observe the 216th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, will take place at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel in downtown Springfield. A reception starts at 6 p.m. followed by dinner at 7 p.m. Tickets are $100 each and can be obtained online at www.abrahamlincolnassociation.orgby calling (217) 546-2656 (217-LINCOLN), or by email to KaySmith.ala@gmail.com.

A new feature of the evening this year is a Silent Auction of a few select items donated to the ALA in order to be sold for the benefit of its educational programs. Books, artworks, photographs, and other collectibles will be displayed for written bids, and cash or checks can be accepted in payment. Delivery can be arranged for successful bidders.

The banquet is one of many activities scheduled each year to commemorate Lincoln's birthday. The Abraham Lincoln Association's annual Benjamin P. Thomas Symposium will also be held on Saturday, February 15, beginning at 10 a.m. at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel in downtown Springfield. The free presentations begin with Timothy S. Good, who will discuss “Lincoln and Lynching.” Good is the author of six books including We Saw Lincoln Shot: One Hundred Eyewitness Accounts (1995); The Lincoln-Douglas Debates and the Making of a President (2007); and The Allied Air Campaign against Hitler’s U-Boats (2022).

The next session, which begins at 10:45 a.m., will feature “‘Protect the Flag’: Stephen A. Douglas’s Greatest Speech” presented by Edward Robert McClelland, the author of Chorus of the Union: How Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas Set Aside Their Rivalry to Save the Nation. McClelland’s work has also been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Time magazine. McClelland is a longtime Illinois resident and works as an editor at Chicago magazine.

The Thomas F. Schwartz Symposium Luncheon begins at 11:30 a.m. at the President Abraham Lincoln Hotel, when the featured speaker will be Jonathan W. White, professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University and a director of the ALA. White is the author or editor of 19 books including A House Built By Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House (2022), co-winner of the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. White’s luncheon talk, to be shared with his co-author William J. Griffing of Batavia, Illinois, is titled “Rediscovering the Great and Good Man: Unearthing New Sources about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.”

The final program, to follow the luncheon, will be presented at 1:15 p.m. by Kate Masur, a professor at Northwestern University who specializes in the history of race, politics, and law in the U.S. She is the author, among other books, of Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History (2021); and Freedom was in Sight! A Graphic History of Reconstruction in the Washington, DC Region (with Liz Clarke). Masur’s symposium presentation is “America’s First Civil Rights Movement: Fighting the Midwestern Black Laws of Lincoln’s Era.”

A roundtable discussion led by banquet speaker Michael Burlingame will follow at 2:15 p.m. All five symposium speakers and Burlingame will sign their books from 3 to 4 p.m. Books will be available on site.

The Symposium talks and roundtable discussion are free and open to the public. Lunch will be offered, and lunch reservations are required. The luncheon is $45 per person and reservations can be made at www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org or by calling (217) 546-2656 (217-LINCOLN). The reservation deadline for the banquet or symposium lunch is February 5.

The Symposium is named for Benjamin P. Thomas (1902-1956), the renowned Lincoln biographer and one-time Executive Secretary of The Abraham Lincoln Association. The symposium is supported by a generous gift of Thomas's daughter, Sarah Thomas, and her family to The Abraham Lincoln Association Endowment Fund. For more information about the Abraham Lincoln Association, please visit www.abrahamlincolnassociation.org.