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Allen C. Guelzo Quotes
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Allen Carl Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as Director of the Civil War Era Studies Program.

Rachel A. Shelden says that for two decades Guelzo,

"has been at the forefront of Civil War–era scholarship. In particular, he has focused his analytical efforts on the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln, publishing books covering the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the origins of the Emancipation Proclamation, and Lincoln's presidential leadership, among others."

✵ 1953
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Allen C. Guelzo: 82   quotes 0   likes

Allen C. Guelzo Quotes

“The attempt by eleven southern—and slaveholding—states to secede from the Union in the winter and spring of 1860-61 presented the United States with the greatest internal political challenge it had ever faced. Because the Constitution had created a federal Union, secession (which broke the ties of Union) was a dagger at the heart of the American polity. The fact that this secession was motivated by Southerners' determination to protect their investment in human slavery added a cruel twist of the blade. Not only did secession fracture the Union, it did so on behalf of a practice which obliterated the fundamental natural right to liberty, which the federal Constitution was supposed to protect.”

Allen C. Guelzo

2000s, States' Rights and Wrongs (2008)

Spring , Motivation , Nature , Winter

“[O]n the whole, given that the environment of the U. S. in the middle of the 19th century is so white supremacist in its assumptions, Lincoln is actually quite remarkable for standing apart from that.”

Allen C. Guelzo

2010s, Interview with Tom Mackaman (2013)

“[T]he very people who write so disparagingly about it either do not understand it, or I suspect even more, understand it all too well and do not like the implications of it.”

Allen C. Guelzo

"Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation" https://www.c-span.org/video/?186036-1/lincolns-emancipation-proclamation (23 March 2005), C-SPAN
2000s

People , Understanding

“Culture made the use of the F-bomb on television unthinkable in 1965; 40 years later, HBO would be lost without it.”

Allen C. Guelzo

2010s, Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)

“Abraham Lincoln was a repo man.”

Allen C. Guelzo

2010s, Lecture (2017)

“[N]o democracy worth its name could continue to drag the burden of slavery around after it.”

Allen C. Guelzo

p. xviii https://books.google.com/books?id=i5u1P0Fq4GYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=0307594084&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj17N6CovLcAhUPUt8KHTa1CrgQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
2010s, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013)

Democracy

“But secession struck to an even deeper level, to the very roots of popular government. The seceding states made their bolt for the door not in response to invasion or military occupation or internal taxation, but because their favored candidates did not win a presidential election. The genius of popular government was wound around the twin propositions that majorities have the privilege of winning, and that minorities have the obligation to be cooperative losers. Secession was a declaration of non-cooperation with a national vote, and since the United States in 1860 was virtually the only large-scale example of a successful popular democracy, the threat that the American republic would fracture over a lost election seemed to call into question the entire workability of popular government.”

Allen C. Guelzo

2000s, States' Rights and Wrongs (2008)

Democracy , Question , Success

“I remember a rusher; not on a sports team. A rusher who carried an American flag, the regimental flag of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers. It is an attack on the Confederate fort known as Battery Wagner outside of Charleston, south Carolina, in July of 1863. 54th Massachusetts was an all black regiment, one of the first to be recruited after the Emancipation Proclamation. The attack was almost a suicide mission. the regiment swept up to the walls of the fort. penetrated briefly, only to be driven out with heavy losses. the rusher I am thinking of was the color sergeant of the regiment. his name was William H. Carney. He had been born a slave. He was now a free man and a soldier. He brought the stars and stripes off the ramparts of Fort Wagner, despite being wounded in the chest and leg, staggering back under fire to a field hospital, and there, just before he collapsed, he surrendered the flag into the hands of several others there saying, "The old flag never touched the ground, boys!" Before the first of January 1863 when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law, he didn't have a flag, he doesn't have a country. He was a slave; he was an unperson. But in July of 1863, he was a free man. As a free man, there was no symbol to him of greater value than that flag. So you understand that it is difficult for me to understand why people would insult it.”

Allen C. Guelzo

"Free Speech and the First Amendment" https://www.c-span.org/video/?437511-1/free-speech-amendment&start=150 (20 November 2017), C-SPAN
2010s

People , Law , Color , Star

“[B]y what inattention these scurrilously racist Republicans installed the first African-American secretary of state and national security advisor, appointed a black Supreme Court justice, elected the first black U. S. senator since Reconstruction, and sent the troops into Little Rock.”

Allen C. Guelzo

2010s, Letter (2010)

Justice

“[T]he genuinely oppressed—as opposed to the hustlers of faux outrage—have always known freedom of speech to be their best friend.”

Allen C. Guelzo

2010s, Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)

Freedom

“We live in a cynical age.”

Allen C. Guelzo

"The Reputation of Abraham Lincoln" https://www.c-span.org/video/?298113-1/reputation-abraham-lincoln (12 February 2011), C-SPAN
2010s

Age