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Formation | 1908 (as the Lincoln Centennial Association) |
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Type | nonprofit, member-supported |
Headquarters | Springfield, Illinois, USA |
President | Michael Burlingame |
Main organ | Board of Directors |
Website | abrahamlincolnassociation |
The Abraham Lincoln Association(ALA) is an American association advancing studies on Abraham Lincoln and disseminating scholarship about Lincoln. [1] The ALA was founded in 1908 to lead a national celebration of Lincoln's 100th birthday and continues to mark his birthday with an annual banquet and symposium. The ALA holds no archive of materials and instead functions primarily as a scholarly forum. It remains "the nation's oldest and largest Lincoln organization." [2]
The ALA was formed in 1908 as the Lincoln Centennial Association to help lead the national celebrations of Lincoln's one hundredth birthday. [1] The ALA's founders included United States Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Weston Fuller, financier John Whitfield Bunn, United States Federal Judge J. Otis Humphrey, Speaker of the House Joseph G. Cannon, Illinois Governor Charles S. Deneen, Vice President Adlai E. Stevenson, and Illinois Senator Shelby Cullom.
In 1925, under the leadership of ALA President Logan Hay, Paul M. Angle became the ALA's first executive secretary. Angle led an effort in 1929 to change the organization's name to the Abraham Lincoln Association and, together with Benjamin Thomas and Harry Pratt, established the association's research and publication programs. [3]
Under the leadership of president George W. Bunn, the ALA launched the Abraham Lincoln Quarterly, a scholarly publication that would replace prior ALA publications, and a massive project to collect and transcribe all of Abraham Lincoln's known writings which eventually culminated in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap. It was published in 8 volumes (plus an index) between 1953 and 1955, with two supplemental volumes published in 1974 and 1990. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln found critical success but strained the ALA financially. [4] Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s the ALA continued undertaking various commemoration projects and engaging in scholarship.
In early 1995, several acclaimed historians—including Harold Holzer and then-ALA president Frank J. Williams—left the ALA board of directors and formed their own scholarly group, the Lincoln Forum, following "policy disagreements, alleged conflicts of interest, strong personalities and claims from out-of-town historians that they had been refused access to Lincoln materials." [5] In 2005, with the opening of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, scholars of both organizations came together to "mend damaged fences from what's been called a 'civil war' within the Lincoln academic community." [5]
The ALA is governed by a board of directors made up of nationally renowned Lincoln scholars and philanthropists dedicated to the ALA's cause. The ALA's board of directors include:
The ALA's semi-annual Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association is the only journal devoted exclusively to the history and legacies of Abraham Lincoln. Historian David Herbert Donald said "The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association is the most important periodical in the field of Lincoln studies. As a Lincoln biographer, I rely on it heavily for both ideas and information." [6] The ALA also publishes a quarterly newsletter, For the People. Most of the ALA's publications are available to the public on its website.
The ALA's crowning publication is The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, Marion Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap. It was published in 8 volumes (plus an index) between 1953 and 1955, with two supplemental volumes published in 1974 and 1990 and is now available online to the public at the association's website. [7] Basler's Collected Works has become a standard resource for Lincoln and Civil War scholarship, but it suffers from limitations and omissions. Collected Works did not include incoming correspondence to Lincoln, which denies the reader important context. New technology and the development of documentary editing as a discipline allows for more faithful renditions of the texts. And in the nearly 60 years since the publication of Collected Works, many new Lincoln documents have been discovered, providing new opportunities for historical scholarship. [8]
The ALA hosts an annual banquet and symposium each year on Lincoln's birthday (February 12). Past speakers include Michael Beschloss (2008), Jon Meacham (2007 and 2022), and Doris Kearns Goodwin (2006). On February 12, 2009, President Barack Obama attended the ALA celebration as the guest of honor, giving a speech titled "What the People Need Done". [9]
The ALA sponsors several awards, including the Spirit of Abraham Lincoln Award, the Logan Hay Medal, Lincoln the Lawyer Award, Hay-Nicolas Dissertation Prize Winner, and a Student Award.
The Hay-Nicolas Dissertation Prize recognizes and encourages young scholars who conduct research on Abraham Lincoln and his times. It is awarded each year by the ALA and Abraham Lincoln Institute to recognize the best dissertation dealing with Lincoln and his legacy. The ALA and Abraham Lincoln Institute select the recipients.
In academia, a Festschrift is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the honoree's colleagues, former pupils, and friends. Festschriften are often titled something like Essays in Honour of... or Essays Presented to....
John George Nicolay was a German-born American author and diplomat who served as private secretary to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and later, with John Hay, co-authored Abraham Lincoln: A History, a ten-volume biography of the 16th president. He was a member of the German branch of the Nicolay family.
The American Political Science Association (APSA) is a professional association of political scientists in the United States. Founded in 1903 in the Tilton Memorial Library of Tulane University in New Orleans, it publishes four academic journals: American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Political Science Education, and PS – Political Science & Politics. APSA Organized Sections publish or are associated with 15 additional journals.
Roy Prentice Basler was an American historian who rose to prominence in the middle of the 20th century. Basler was most famous for editing the collected works of Abraham Lincoln. He also wrote the introduction to Sam Watkins' "Co Aytch".
The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It publishes a wide range of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. The press is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus.
The Bixby letter is a brief, consoling message sent by President Abraham Lincoln in November 1864 to Lydia Parker Bixby, a widow living in Boston, Massachusetts, who was thought to have lost five sons in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Along with the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address, the letter has been praised as one of Lincoln's finest written works and is often reproduced in memorials, media, and print.
The American Musicological Society (AMS) is a musicological organization which researches, promotes and produces publications on music. Founded in 1934, the AMS was begun by leading American musicologists of the time, and was crucial in legitimizing musicology as a scholarly discipline.
The Journal of African American History, formerly The Journal of Negro History (1916–2001), is a quarterly academic journal covering African-American life and history. It was founded in 1916 by Carter G. Woodson. The journal is owned and overseen by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) and was established in 1916 by Woodson and Jesse E. Moorland. The journal publishes original scholarly articles on all aspects of the African-American experience. The journal annually publishes more than sixty reviews of recently published books in the fields of African and African-American life and history. As of 2018, the Journal is published by the University of Chicago Press on behalf of the ASALH.
Allen Carl Guelzo is an American historian who serves as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University. He formerly was a professor of History at Gettysburg College.
Louis Harry Feldman was an American classicist. He was the Abraham Wouk Family Professor of Classics and Literature at Yeshiva University, the institution at which he taught since 1955.
Archibald Williams was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Kansas. Williams was a friend and political ally of President Abraham Lincoln.
This bibliography of Abraham Lincoln is a comprehensive list of written and published works about or by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. In terms of primary sources containing Lincoln's letters and writings, scholars rely on The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, and others. It only includes writings by Lincoln, and omits incoming correspondence. In the six decades since Basler completed his work, some new documents written by Lincoln have been discovered. Previously, a project was underway at the Papers of Abraham Lincoln to provide "a freely accessible comprehensive electronic edition of documents written by and to Abraham Lincoln". The Papers of Abraham Lincoln completed Series I of their project The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln in 2000. They electronically launched The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln, Second Edition in 2009, and published a selective print edition of this series. Attempts are still being made to transcribe documents for Series II and Series III.
The Abraham Lincoln Institute (ALI), founded in 1997, is an American non-profit organization promoting scholarly research on the subject of Abraham Lincoln. The institute uses dissertation prizes, book awards, and an annual Lincoln symposium to encourage and present scholarship on the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. These annual symposia, presented at the National Archives in College Park, MD and more recently at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, are a venue for both emerging and highly renowned Lincoln scholars to present the findings of their current research. They are attended by the general public and have been frequently filmed by organizations such as the National Archives and C-SPAN.
Michael A. Burlingame is an American historian noted for his works on Abraham Lincoln. He is the Naomi B. Lynn Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies at the University of Illinois Springfield. Burlingame has written or edited twenty books about Lincoln.
Oliver Rogers Barrett was an American lawyer, author, and prolific collector of Abraham Lincoln artifacts.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a documentary editing project dedicated to identifying, imaging, transcribing, annotating, and publishing online all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime (1809–1865).
Logan Hay was an American lawyer, historian, and politician.
The American Studies Association (ASA) is a scholarly organization devoted to the interdisciplinary study of U.S. culture and history. It was founded in 1951 and claims to be the oldest scholarly organization devoted to these topics. The ASA works to promote meaningful dialogue about the United States of America, throughout the U.S. and across the globe. Its purpose is to support scholars and scholarship committed to original research, innovative and effective teaching, critical thinking, and public discussion and debate.
Abraham Lincoln: The War Years encompasses volumes three through six of Carl Sandburg's six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln; these volumes focus particularly on the American Civil War period. The first two volumes, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, were published in 1926 and cover the period from Lincoln's birth through his inauguration as president. The final four volumes were published together in 1939, and won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Anson G. Henry was a physician and politician, who is best known for his friendship with Abraham Lincoln. Henry received patronage appointments to Oregon Territory through Lincoln from 1852 onwards, first as an Indian agent and then as Surveyor General of Washington Territory. He died when the steamer Brother Jonathan ran aground near Crescent City, California and sank.