Professors reevaluate President Lincoln’s legacy and reputation

Guelzo spoke first, discussing 20th-century disenchantment with Lincoln in both progressives and conservatives and attempting to redeem the former president’s reputation.

“I don’t want to discount the nature of the questions ... which have been lodged about Lincoln’s ... reputation, but at the same time I don’t think they should be overshadowing the accomplishments of the man,” he said.

Guelzo credited Lincoln with saving the Union, emancipating the slaves and fundamentally altering the state of American politics.

“His administration really is a sea-change in American politics,” Guelzo explained. “It’s a hinge presence ... It introduces a whole new set of questions and problems that dominate the next political generation, I think really up until FDR.”

McPherson discussed Lincoln’s domestic achievements outside of the Civil War as well as his political acumen, but stressed that his reputation is largely dependent on his performance as commander-in-chief.

“If there had been no war, we would not be speaking about him here this afternoon,” McPherson said. “He would have been one of those semi-obscure 19th-century presidents, maybe another Rutherford B. Hayes.”

He also agreed with Guelzo about Lincoln’s role in preserving the Union. “Without Abraham Lincoln in that equation, there probably would not be a United States,” he said. “There would be two or more disunited republics in North America.”

Despite the extensive scholarship on Lincoln today, Guelzo stressed that Lincoln remains a difficult historical figure and evades easy categorization. “If anyone tells you they know Lincoln, it’s a sure sign that they don’t,” Guelzo said.

He concluded by offering his own judgment of Lincoln’s legacy.

“All questions aside, I really think that at the end of the day ... yes, he does belong to the ages, including our own,” Guelzo said.

Guelzo is the James Madison Program Garwood Visiting Professor of Politics for the 2010-11 academic year and is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College. He won the Lincoln Prize in 2000 and again in 2005, and later that year was named by President Bush to the National Council on the Humanities.

McPherson is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History Emeritus at Princeton, where he taught from 1962 until his retirement in 2004. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for his book “Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era,” and also won the Lincoln Prize twice, in 1998 and in 2009.