Historian Speaks on Gettysburg

It’s not often that students hear a speech about a speech, especially not one given nearly 150 years ago.

But last night at Zellerbach Hall, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills argued that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address remains as relevant in the 21st century as it was during the Civil War.

Speaking to about 600 people, Wills discussed his book, “Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America,” touching on the religious and political circumstances that surrounded the president and his famous speech.

“This too is a time of great trouble in many ways. ... There have been some hellish things about religion and politics lately,” Wills said. “Lincoln was always trying to calm people down in times of religious fervor. He tried to expel fanaticism in times of war.”

Wills’ book is featured this year in UC Berkeley’s On the Same Page program. Around 6,000 copies were mailed to incoming freshmen and transfer students over the summer with the goal of stimulating campuswide discussion of a single literary work, program organizers said.

The book garnered a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award more than a decade ago.

In March, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking spoke at Zellerbach about “A Briefer History of Time,” which the program featured last year.

Last night, Wills argued that Lincoln was “elusive” when it came to pinning down his spiritual profile.

Lincoln both related to what Wills called “the Biblical sense of the struggle for freedom” and separated himself from the evangelical movement of the 19th century, instead drawing from transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“He was the champion of the common people, but he didn’t share their religion,” Wills said. “He was an uncommon man with a radically different mind.”

In discussing Lincoln’s modern-day relevance, Wills sometimes criticized President Bush and his administration. Asked how Lincoln would handle the conflict in Iraq, Wills replied that “he never would have gotten us into it.”

Wills is a professor emeritus of history at Northwestern University who has written more than 30 books exploring topics such as Christianity in America and the lives of presidents.

“He’s one of the greatest historians alive today,” said Jon Gjerde, dean of the social sciences in the College of Letters and Science. He said Wills’ book was selected for On the Same Page because its historical and rhetorical content could appeal to a wide variety of students’ interests.

The book was at the center of Welcome Week discussions with faculty and seminars, including “Political Words: From Lincoln to Jon Stewart” in the American studies department.

“I’m a fan of the book, and I’m glad he ... touched on themes like transcendentalism, and how it was brought out in the Gettysburg (Address),” said sophomore Chadd Hollowed, a history and political science major.

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