‘Gettysburg’ hits the press

By Margaret Cipriano ‘15

As the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s April 15^th death nears, Bradley sociology Associate Professor Dr. Jacqueline Hogan and Caterpillar Professor of English Dr. Kevin Stein will be featured in the new book “Gettysburg Replies: The World Responds to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.”

The project, hosted by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, challenged participants to use 272 words to celebrate Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address and the collection of these replies is now in print and eBook. The book also includes important images and artifacts from Lincoln’s personal and political life

In addition to the Bradley faculty, the book will include pieces from people such as President Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

“Certainly, the speech’s sparse prose beautifully captures the mood of the nation at that terrible moment in history, but it also somehow transcends that moment,” Hogan said. “Lincoln’s ‘four score and seven years ago’ evokes the whole weight of our national history, and reminds us that our nation was ‘conceived in liberty’ and dedicated to the ideal of equality.”

Reflecting back on his participation in the project, Dr. Stein added, “What it is to be American is a notion always under construction, always open to reconstruction and deconstruction. Lincoln's person and his language in the Address offer a poignant embodiment of Americanness, a model to be examined and, dare I say it, revered.”

Though the book’s royalties will benefit charity, namely the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation to benefit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Hogan noted the project was personally beneficial as well.

“This project made me even more keenly aware of the power of words — the power both to shape individual experiences of traumatic events, and to shape the course of human events,” she said. “I was humbled and honored to be asked to contribute my own thoughts on one of the most powerful, most recognizable, and most quoted speeches in our nation's history.”