Location: The Heritage Foundation's Lehrman Auditorium
Prudence to the ancients was a virtue, to the faculties of the
American Colleges of the 19th Century it was part of the curriculum
in moral philosophy, but to Americans today, the word prudence
seems to be part of a joke. This serves as a warning for the
difficulty we may have in understanding 19th Century American
thought, where virtue was discussed seriously and where prudence
was considered a desirable trait in public leaders. The
intellectual distance we feel from the way the 19th Century used
the word, and the way we disparage it today explains a major
difficulty we have in understanding the individual who is a
template for what Russell Kirk once called "the politics of
prudence," Abraham Lincoln.
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 was born in Yokohama, Japan, in 1953, and grew up
in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Author of numerous books on American
intellectual history and on Abraham Lincoln, he holds a Master's of
Arts and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.
His most famous work, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President
(Wm. Eerdmans, 1999), won both the Lincoln Prize and the Abraham
Lincoln Institute Prize in 2000.
More About the Speakers
Dr. Allen C. Guelzo
Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era, and
Director of Civil War Era Studies,
Gettysburg College
Hosted By
Matthew Spalding, Ph.D.
Vice President, American Studies and Director, B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics
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