On Monday, Jun 5 at 5 pm Eastern we will be joined by John Avlon of CNN (and much more) for a Casual Conversation prompted by his bookLincoln and the Fight for Peace (Simon & Schuster 2022). Here is the first paragraph of the bio he has posted on his website,https://johnavlon.com/about-john-avlon/ :
John Avlon is an author, columnist and commentator. He is a senior political analyst and fill-in anchor at CNN. From 2013 to 2018, he was the editor-in-chief and managing director of The Daily Beast, during which time the site’s traffic more than doubled to over one million readers a day while winning 17 journalism awards. He is the author of the books Lincoln and the Fight for Peace, Independent Nation, Wingnuts, and Washington’s Farewell as well as co-editor of the acclaimed Deadline Artists journalism anthologies. Avlon served as chief speechwriter to New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and won the National Society of Newspaper Columnists award for best online column in 2012.
The book is a continuation of the study we began with the Casual Conversation with Loyola of Maryland Professor Diana Schaub and her book His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, a close reading of Lincoln’s three most important speeches, including the Second Inaugural and the Gettysburg Address. It was an exercise in learning the craft of reading even while we gained a much deeper understanding of the extraordinary man who wrote them.
In Mr. Avlon’s book, we take another look at the Lincoln who would demand victory in war and seek reconciliation in peace, the latter effort cut short by an assassin’s bullet. When Lincoln visited Richmond at almost the end of the Civil War he met with John Campbell, a former U.S. Supreme Court Justice who turned assistant Confederate Secretary of War. To him, Lincoln repeated his three “indispensable conditions” for peace: no ceasefire before surrender, restoration of the Union, and the end of slavery. Everything else, writes Mr. Avlon, was negotiable.
Mr. Avlon looks not only to the failures of Reconstruction, but also to the experiences of post-World Wars I and II. Mr. Avlon quotes Churchill as saying: “Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who can make a good peace would never have won the war.” Mr. Avlon writes: “Lincoln was the exception to this rule.”
It is apparent from not only this book but also Mr. Avlon’s work in the public arena that he means for us to take more from Lincoln’s career than merely how to win a war and secure a peace. Rather, from the introduction through to the end of the books, Mr. Avlon would have us find lessons in how to live life in a battle of ideas, and not just in a conflict waged by arms. What, indeed, are we take from Mr. Avlon’s description of Lincoln’s struggles with his own belief in the Almighty: “At the limits of reason, we find either faith or despair”?
If you want to put that question, and others, to Mr. Avlon, you will have to join us on Monday, June 5, at 5 pm Eastern Time on Zoom. If you choose to do so, please RSVP by sending an email to me at arthur.fergenson@ansalaw.com by the end of the day on Saturday next, June 3.
We have classmate Peter Schaeffer to thank for making the contact and securing the commitment for Mr. Avlon to spend time with us.
Arthur Fergenson