Oxford celebrates Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday
5 February 2009
An Oxford professor is to receive a prestigious award on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday. This latest honour adds to the University's strong links with the former American president, following Barack Obama's swearing in on the Lincoln Inaugural Bible last month and preceding a unique Lincoln conference being held at the University later this year.
On Saturday (7 February) Professor Richard Carwardine, Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford, will receive a special Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial edition of The Order of Lincoln. This is the highest honour awarded by the State of Illinois. The Order is traditionally only awarded to those from Illinois but this year is being awarded to around 30 people with Lincoln connections - of whom Professor Carwardine, winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize for his political biography of the sixteenth president, is the only non-American.
Professor Carwardine said: "Naturally, I am delighted by the award. It's not only an honour, from a state that has come to mean much to me in recent years, but it makes yet another Lincolnian connection with Oxford - going back, as we've recently been reminded, to Lincoln's presidential swearing-in on an OUP Bible."
He will go to Illinois to receive the award and will deliver a lecture, days before the anniversary on 12 February 2009. He is also co-organiser of the conference, with Dr Jay Sexton, which will take place in July this year.
Dr Sexton, University Lecturer in US history, said: "Lincoln has emerged as an important political symbol, not only in the US but also across the world. As Obama has drawn inspiration and power from Lincoln, so too have an array of world leaders, including Gordon Brown, who used a Lincolnian phrase in his speech accepting leadership of the Labour Party, to Pervez Musharaff, who compared his suspension of the Pakistani constitution in 2007 to the acts of Lincoln during the American Civil War. Lincoln's recent global celebrity is nothing new. Time and again leaders and ordinary people alike have invoked him - not only because he is an example of certain political ideals, but because he has proven to be an enduring and powerful political symbol"
Richard Carwardine added: "It's extraordinary that for all the books written on Abraham Lincoln, who is more studied than any historical figure except Jesus Christ, we know so little about his international reception and legacy. Yet he gave universal significance to the American founders' ideals and regarded the American Union as the last best hope of earth. Three years in the preparation, our conference brings together some of the world's best historians to explore the multiple and often contradictory ways in which Lincoln has been celebrated and appropriated outside his own land."
Richard Carwardine and Jay Sexton will be available for interview. For more information contact the University of Oxford Press Office on press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk or 01865 270046.