Emancipating Lincoln : the Proclamation in text, context, and memory

Resource Information

The work Emancipating Lincoln : the Proclamation in text, context, and memory represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Waubonsee Community College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Emancipating Lincoln : the Proclamation in text, context, and memory

Title remainder

the Proclamation in text, context, and memory

Statement of responsibility

Harold Holzer

Creator

• Holzer, Harold

Contributor

• Frank and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana (Mississippi State University. Libraries)

Subject

• Slavery
• Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Views on slavery
• Slaves -- Emancipation -- United States
• United States, President (1861-1865 : Lincoln).
• Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865
• United States -- Politics and government -- 1861-1865
• Politics and government
• Slaveri -- historia
• Lincoln, Abraham
• Förenta staterna
• Emancipation Proclamation (United States. President (1861-1865 : Lincoln))
• 1800-talet
• 1861-1865
• United States
• Slaves -- Emancipation
• Slavar -- historia
• Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

Language

eng

Summary

Emancipating Lincoln seeks a new approach to the Emancipation Proclamation, a foundational text of American liberty that in recent years has been subject to woeful misinterpretation. These seventeen hundred words are Lincoln's most important piece of writing, responsible both for his being hailed as the Great Emancipator and for his being pilloried by those who consider his once-radical effort at emancipation insufficient and half-hearted. Harold Holzer, an award-winning Lincoln scholar, invites us to examine the impact of Lincoln's momentous announcement at the moment of its creation, and then as its meaning has changed over time. Using neglected original sources, Holzer uncovers Lincoln's very modern manipulation of the media-from his promulgation of disinformation to the ways he variously withheld, leaked, and promoted the Proclamation- in order to make his society-altering announcement palatable to America. Examining his agonizing revisions, we learn why a peerless prose writer executed what he regarded as his 'greatest act' in leaden language. Turning from word to image, we see the complex responses in American sculpture, painting, and illustration across the past century and a half, as artists sought to criticize, lionize, and profit from Lincoln's endeavor. Holzer shows the faults in applying our own standards to Lincoln's efforts, but also demonstrates how Lincoln's obfuscations made it nearly impossible to discern his true motives. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Proclamation, this concise volume is a vivid depiction of the painfully slow march of all Americans-white and black, leaders and constituents-toward freedom. -- Publisher description

Member of

• Nathan I. Huggins lectures

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

973.7/14

Illustrations

• illustrations
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

E453

LC item number

.H644 2012

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

The Nathan I. Huggins lectures