Abraham Lincoln 215th Birthday Event: Symposium & Banquet

February 17, 2024

The Abraham Lincoln Association invites you to help us mark the 215th birthday.

The 215th birthday celebration begins with registration and social hour at 6:00 p.m. followed by the banquet at 7:00 p.m.

The Benjamin P. Thomas Memorial Symposium and the Thomas F. Schwartz Luncheon have an all-new line-up of 4 speakers for 2024.

As before, all events will be held at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel, at 7th and Adams in downtown Springfield.

2024 Banquet Keynote Speaker

Nigel Hamilton

ALA members and their friends can look forward to hearing a world-renowned writer on “Lincoln and Roosevelt: Two Wartime Commanders in Chief” when we meet in Springfield, Illinois, on Saturday, February 17, 2024 to mark Lincoln’s 215th birthday.

Nigel Hamilton, whose credentials are unsurpassed as an analyst of political helmsmen and their military leaders, will be drawing in part on research for a dual biography of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis (Nov. 2024).

Professor Hamilton, now teaching at the McCormack Graduate School at U. Massachusetts – Boston, was born in England and is now a U.S. citizen. His prize-winning trilogy (2014-2019) about Franklin D. Roosevelt as a wartime president was preceded by a trilogy on Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the basis for a documentary film. Those were preceded by two volumes on Bill Clinton; a news-making portrait of John F. Kennedy, Reckless Youth (which ended the Kennedy family’s cooperation with him and thus cut short the trilogy); and a book inspired by Roman history, updated as 12 chapters about American Caesars: Lives of the Presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush.

Symposium Schedule

Coffee & Registration begins at 9:30 a.m.

The cost of the luncheon is $45
James H. Read — 10:00 a.m.
Gordon Leidner — 10:45 a.m.

Luncheon — 11:30 a.m.

Elizabeth Leonard — 12:00 p.m.
George C. Rable — 1:15 p.m.

Roundtable, with Professor Michael Burlingame moderating — 2:15 – 3:00 p.m.

Book-Signing — 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

2024 Lincoln Symposium Speakers

James H. Read

James H. Read is Professor of Political Science at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University of Minnesota. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1988. His new book, his 4th, is Sovereign of a Free People: Abraham Lincoln, Majority Rule, and Slavery (2023). He lives in Avon, Minnesota, where he is also chair of the city’s Planning Commission.

Gordon Leidner

Gordon Leidner’s graduate studies centered in Leadership Theory at the University of Maryland, and he has written on Lincoln’s effectiveness as a transformational leader. In the new Abraham Lincoln and the Bible he continues to examine that leadership, focusing on how he was changed by the Bible and used scripture to in-spire the northern people to sacrifice to eliminate slavery.

Elizabeth Leonard

The Luncheon speaker, Elizabeth Leonard, taught at Colby College for 3 decades and previously published on Joseph Holt as Lincoln’s Judge Advocate General (Lincoln Prize co-winner, 2012). Her new book is a much-discussed revision of, and addition to, our knowledge about Gen. Benjamin Butler.

George C. Rable

George C. Rable is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama. His seven books on the Civil War era include Fredericksburg! Fredericksburg! (Lincoln Prize, 2003). Among his many honors, he served as president of the Society of Civil War Historians in 2004-2008. He will address us on his 2023 book (LSU Press), Conflict of Command: George McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and the Politics of War.