On Wednesday, February 15th, Discourse in Democracy hosted over 200 students, staff, and faculty for a lecture by Dr. Diana Schaub of Loyola University in Maryland. Entitled “The Second Inaugural: Lincoln’s Rhetoric of Reconciliation,” the lecture explored how Lincoln’s second inaugural sought to unite the nation in the closing weeks of the American Civil War.
In addition to the lecture, Dr. Schaub hosted a seminar for around two dozen undergraduate and graduate students. The seminar explored Frederick Douglass’s famous “Oration in Memory of Abraham Lincoln,” a speech that was delivered at the unveiling of the Freedmen’s Monument in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Thomas Hatfield, a political science graduate student who attended the lecture, commented that “Dr. Schaub’s lecture on Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address was highly informative and spoke to the character of the man who expressed it. Lincoln’s address was filled with both hope for the Union and acknowledgement of the obstacles on the road to reconciliation. Dr. Schaub was simply a joy to listen to.”
Diana Schaub is a professor of political science at Loyola University Maryland and a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. From 2004 to 2009 she was a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, her books include Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu’s Persian Letters, His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, and What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song. A contributing editor to The New Atlantis, Dr. Schaub’s work has also appeared in National Affairs, The New Criterion, The Public Interest, Commentary, First Things, The American Interest, and City Journal.”
