A special evening to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln
07 July 2009 at 5:00 pm
ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE MISSION OF AMERICA
To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the Unitied States of America, Westminster Abbey hosted a special evening of events on Tuesday 7 July. The evening begun at 5pm with Evensong in the Abbey followed by a lecture at 6.30 pm in St Margaret's Church by Professor Richard Carwardine, University of Oxford: Abraham Lincoln and the Mission of America.
Professor Carwardine is the author of award winning Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power. The lecture was followed by a panel discussion and debate, chaired by Lord Hurd of Westwell, former Northern Ireland Secretary, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary.
Richard Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. He is a leading authority on the history of the United States in the era of the early republic and Civil War. He has a particular interest in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and in the place of evangelical Protestantism in the nation's construction during the nineteenth century. His publications include Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1795-1865 (1978); Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (1993); and Lincoln (2003), which was awarded the 2004 Lincoln Prize for the best book on the Civil War Era. Carwardine was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2006.
Panellists included Lord Bingham, former Lord Chief Justice and Senior Law Lord, Professor Philip Bobbitt, Professor of Jurisprudence at the Columbia Law School and Lord David Owen, former Foreign Secretary.
See also:
Lecture transcript (PDF, 50KB)
Picture credit: Alexander Gardner/U.S. Library of Congress