Dr. Eric Foner, one of the country’s most prominent historians and 2011 winner of the Lincoln Prize and Pulitzer Prize, will present a lecture on President Abraham Lincoln and slavery April 12 at Gettysburg College.

The 7:00 p.m. lecture, “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” will take place in Masters Hall’s Mara Auditorium, located near the campus fountain. The talk is the 2012 Lincoln Lyceum lecture, and is free and open to the public.

View the livestream on April 12 at 7 p.m.
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The talk will focus on Foner’s book, “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery,” which won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for History, as well as the 2011 Lincoln Prize, awarded by Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. In the book, Foner depicts the sweep of Lincoln’s career as a fascinating collision of moral judgments, political expediency and military necessity. He traces the way Lincoln grew and developed and was ultimately able to accept a biracial democracy when many other Americans did not. Foner also deals with Lincoln’s own views on race.

Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. One of this country's most prominent historians, he received his doctoral degree at Columbia. He is only the second person to serve as president of the three major professional organizations in his field: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians.

Foner's publications have concentrated on the intersections of intellectual, political and social history, and the history of American race relations. He has taught at Cambridge University as Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Oxford University as Harmsworth Professor of American History, Moscow State University as Fulbright Professor, and at Queen Mary, University of London as Leverhulme Visiting Scholar.

He serves on the editorial boards of Past and Present and The Nation, and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, London Review of Books, and many other publications. Additionally, Foner has been the recipient of scholarship and teaching awards.

The lecture is sponsored by the Gettysburg College Civil War Institute in partnership with the Sesquicentennial Planning Committee.

This event is part of Gettysburg College’s American Civil War Sesquicentennial commemoration. The College will sponsor events and programs throughout the anniversary. 2013 will mark the 150th anniversary of the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Battle of Gettysburg, and President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. For more information, visit www.gettysburg.edu/civilwar2013 and www.gettysburgcivilwar150.com.

Pennsylvania College (now Gettysburg College) played a vital role in the Civil War, with over 200 alumni serving the Union or Confederacy, and the College’s Pennsylvania Hall functioning as an observation post and hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg. On November 19, 1863, College students and faculty processed to hear Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address at the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Earlier in the year, an 1851 graduate of the College, David Wills, had invited Lincoln to deliver "a few appropriate remarks” at the cemetery’s dedication.

Founded in 1832, Gettysburg College is a highly selective four-year residential college of liberal arts and sciences with a strong academic tradition. Alumni include Rhodes Scholars, a Nobel laureate, and other distinguished scholars. The college enrolls 2,600 undergraduate students and is located on a 200-acre campus adjacent to the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania.

Contact: Nikki Rhoads, assistant director of communications, 717.337.6803