Allen C. Guelzo

Allen Carl Guelzo (born 1953) is an American historian who serves as Senior Research Scholar in the Council of the Humanities and Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program at Princeton University.[3] He formerly was a professor of History at Gettysburg College.

Allen Carl Guelzo
Guelzo in January 2013
Born (1953-02-02) February 2, 1953[1]
Yokohama, Japan[1]
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Pennsylvania,[2] Cairn University
OccupationSenior Research Scholar
EmployerPrinceton University
Children2 daughters, 1 son

Rachel A. Shelden wrote in 2013 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."[4]

Early life and education

Guelzo was born in Yokohama, Japan,[1] the son of a US Army soldier stationed in the occupation of Japan.[5][6] He grew up in Pennsylvania.[7] His earliest degrees were a BS in Biblical Studies from Cairn University and a M.Div. from Reformed Episcopal Seminary, where he later taught church history.[8] He earned an MA and Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.[2] He joined the History department of Eastern University (St. Davids, Pennsylvania) in 1991. He was the Grace F. Kea Professor of American History at Eastern, where he was also Moderator of the Faculty Senate (1996–98). From 1998 to 2004, he served as Dean of the Templeton Honors College at Eastern. He joined the History department at Gettysburg College in 2004.

Career

Academic focus

Guelzo's principal specialty is American intellectual history, from 1750 to 1865. His doctoral dissertation, "The Unanswered Question: Jonathan Edwards's 'Freedom of the Will' in Early American Religious Philosophy", was published in 1989 as Edwards On the Will: A Century of American Philosophical Debate, 1750–1850, by Wesleyan University Press, and won an American Library Association Choice Award. In 1995, he contributed a volume in the St. Martin's Press American History textbook series, The Crisis of the American Republic: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

One of Guelzo's early works, For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians, 1873–1930, won the Albert C. Outler Prize in Ecumenical Church History from the American Society of Church History in 1993.[9] He began work in 1996 on an 'intellectual biography' of Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (1999), which won the Lincoln Prize for 2000 and the 2000 Book Prize of the Abraham Lincoln Institute. He followed this with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004), which became the first two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize (for 2005) and the Book Prize of the Lincoln Institute.[2] Guelzo won his third Lincoln Prize for his book Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), making him the first three-time recipient of the prize.[10]

His interest in the American Civil War was partially motivated by his grandmother, who had attended lectures by the Grand Army of the Republic as a child.[5]

Guelzo differs notably from most contemporary scholars of the American Civil War in that he disagrees with the "Self-emancipation" thesis, which posits that the Confederates' slaves freed themselves during the war.[11][12] To that effect, he cites the ex-slaves who testified that Lincoln, specifically his Emancipation Proclamation, was responsible for freeing them.[11] In addition, Guelzo does not consider Lincoln to have been a competent military commander during his presidency and disagrees with several military decisions he made on the grounds that they were unsound.[11]

In addition to those books, he has produced editions of Manning Ferguson Force's From Fort Henry to Corinth (1989) and Josiah Gilbert Holland's Life of Abraham Lincoln (1998), as well as co-editing a volume of essays on Jonathan Edwards, Edwards In Our Time: Jonathan Edwards and the Shaping of American Religion (with Sang Hyun Lee, 1999) and an anthology of primary sources on the New England theology from 1750 to 1850,The New England Theology: From Jonathan Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park (with Douglas R. Sweeney, 2006). His books include Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (2008), which led to an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on February 27, 2008; Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas (2009), a collection of his previously published essays; and Lincoln (2009), a volume in Oxford University Press's "Very Short Introduction" series.

Guelzo contributed half the lectures in the 80 episodes of The Great Courses 2003 video series “U.S. History”.

Criticism and commentary

Matthew Pinsker notes that Guelzo, with his religious training, often emphasizes religious themes that other historians have neglected. Guelzo argues that Lincoln championed the cause of individual rights partly because of his profound fatalism and what Guelzo identifies as "a lifelong dalliance with Old School Calvinism."[13]

Guelzo created a controversy among younger historians of the Civil War when Earl J. Hess reported that Guelzo believed that scholarly blogging was "entirely negative. I consider blogging to be a pernicious waste of scholarly time."[14]

Rachel Shelden has noted that Guelzo's Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2012) is heavily focused on Lincoln. She asserts that little in the book is new, and much is based on old-fashioned historiography. She says he underplays the recent scholarship on the home front, environmental concerns, and medical issues and gives only cursory attention to the black experience or to the complexities of Reconstruction.[15]

Affiliations

Guelzo has been an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow (1991–1992), a Visiting Research Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (1992–1993), a Fellow of the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History at Harvard University (1994–1995), and a visiting fellow, Department of Politics, Princeton University (2002–2003 and 2010–2011).[16] He was appointed by President George W. Bush to the National Council on the Humanities in 2006.[2] He is a board member of the Abraham Lincoln Association. Guelzo is also a senior fellow of the conservative think-tank, the Claremont Institute.[17]

Awards and honors

Guelzo received the 2013 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History for Gettysburg: The Last Invasion at an awards ceremony in New York on March 17, 2014.[18][19]

Guelzo was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2009 as a Bicentennial Laureate.[20]

Guelzo was a recipient of the 2018 Bradley Prize for his "contributions [which] have shaped important debate, thought and research on one of the most critical periods of American history."[21]

Personal life

Guelzo has two daughters[7] and a son who is a career army officer.

In 1980, Guelzo was ordained as a presbyter in the Reformed Episcopal Church, about which he wrote a history early in his career.[22] In 1997, his orders were transferred by letters dimissory to the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.[23]

Publications
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (1989). Edwards on the Will: A Century of Theological Debate. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-8195-5193-1.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (1994). For the Union of Evangelical Christendom: The Irony of the Reformed Episcopalians. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-01002-1.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (1995). The Crisis of the American Republic: A History of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-09515-4.
  • Holland, J. (1998). Holland's Life of Abraham Lincoln. Introduction by Allen C. Guelzo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-7303-0.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. "Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863," Civil War History (2002) 48 #4 pp. 313–337
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2003). Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (Library of Religious Biography). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-08028-3872-8.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2004). Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-2182-5.
  • Guelzo, Allen C.; Sweeney, Douglas A. (2006). The New England Theology: From Jonathan Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic. ISBN 978-0-8010-2709-3.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2008). Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-7320-6.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2009). Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0-8093-2861-1.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2009). Lincoln: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions). Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-536780-5.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2012). Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-984328-2.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2013). Gettysburg: The Last Invasion. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-59408-2.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2016). Redeeming the Great Emancipator. Nathan I. Huggins Lectures. ISBN 978-0-674-286115.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2018). Reconstruction: A Concise History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1908-6569-6.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2020). Reconstruction: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190454791.
  • Guelzo, Allen C. (2021). Robert E. Lee: A Life. Knopf. ISBN 978-1101946220.

References
  1. "Allen C. Guelzo – W.E.B. Du Bois Institute". The President and Fellows of Harvard College. 2009-06-28. Archived from the original on 2010-04-26. Retrieved 2009-06-28.
  2. "New Members Join Humanities Endowment's National Council". National Endowment for the Humanities. 2006-11-15. Archived from the original on 2009-08-13. Retrieved 2009-06-29.
  3. "Allen C. Guelzo Joins Princeton University | James Madison Program". Archived from the original on 2020-05-17. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
  4. Rachel A. Shelden, review in Civil War History (June 2013) vol. 59, #2, p. 237.
  5. "Reconstruction, Race, and Andrew Johnson". C-SPAN.org.
  6. "Lincoln, Slavery, and the Dred Scott Case". C-SPAN.org. Army brat
  7. "The Reputation of Abraham Lincoln". C-SPAN.org.
  8. "Illinois Wesleyan: Lincoln Scholar to Speak at Founders' Day Convocation". Iwu.edu. 2013-02-14. Retrieved 2014-06-10.
  9. "Award winning titles from the Penn State University Press". Psupress.org. Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-10.
  10. "Previous Winners". Gettysburg College. 2014-08-10. Archived from the original on 2018-09-25. Retrieved 2018-10-23.
  11. Guelzo, Allen C. (March 3, 2010). "The Bicentennial Lincolns". Claremont Review of Books. California: The Claremont Institute. Archived from the original on February 6, 2018. Retrieved February 6, 2018.
  12. "On Abraham Lincoln," National Review, July 9, 2020.
  13. Matthew Pinsker review in Civil War History (2001) vol. 47, #2, pp. 173–175.
  14. Earl J. Hess, "The Internet and Civil War Studies" in Civil War History (2019).
  15. Sheldon (2013), review in Civil War History, 59-2, pp. 238–239. Retrieved on 11 July 2020.
  16. "Guelzo, Dr. Allen C." Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. 2009. Archived from the original on 2009-08-13. Retrieved 2009-06-29.
  17. "Claremont Institute | Recovering the American Idea". www.claremont.org. Retrieved 2022-04-10.
  18. "Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation". HFG. Archived from the original on 2014-08-25. Retrieved 2014-06-10.
  19. Schuessler, Jennifer (20 March 2014). "Book on Gettysburg Wins $50,000 Military History Prize".
  20. "Laureates by Year - The Lincoln Academy of Illinois". The Lincoln Academy of Illinois. Retrieved 2016-03-04.
  21. "Allen C. Guelzo, Distinguished Civil War Era Historian, Lincoln Scholar and Gettysburg College Professor Wins Prestigious Bradley Prize" (PDF). The Bradley Foundation. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
  22. Riches, Leonard (1981). "REPORT OF BISHOP LEONARD W. RICHES" (PDF). Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Third General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church: 58. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
  23. Gillin, R. Charles (1999). "REPORT OF THE DIOCESE OF NORTHEAST AND MID-ATLANTIC" (PDF). Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Ninth General Council of the Reformed Episcopal Church: 277.

Further reading
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