THC Events

Lincoln Symposium

"The Last Best Hope of Earth"

A Symposium on the Bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's Birth

October 22-24, 2009
Hosted by the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University

"The Last Best Hope of Earth" will explore the political and philosophical thought of our sixteenth president and his belief that America offered the promise of freedom not only to citizens of the United States, but also to the world. lincoln believed the Union was worth saving - even at extraordinary cost - because America was a nation that had been founded on the proposition that "all men are created equal." Indeed, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, on February 22, 1861 lincoln affirmed that "all the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn" from the Declaration of Independence and that the Declaration's principles "gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time." One year later, in Washington, D.C., in his annual message to Congress, in tightly distilled words lincoln characterized the alternatives the Civil War presented to the nation: "we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." This symposium will examine lincoln's views of liberty, equality, nationhood, and government by consent, revisiting the importance of America's founding principles to America's greatest statesman.

More Information: Schedule of Events Symposium Speakers