ALBANY, N.Y. — Feb. 27 is an important date in Harold Holzer's life for a couple of reasons, not the least of which it's his wedding anniversary.

The other is linked to Abraham Lincoln, the subject of numerous Holzer books, essays, lectures and television appearances over the years. It was on that date in 1860 when the tall, gaunt lawyer from Illinois gave a political speech at Manhattan's Cooper Union, an address Holzer and other historians credit with setting Lincoln on the path to the White House in that year's presidential election.

Feb. 27 serves as another milestone for Holzer when his 42nd book — "Emancipating Lincoln: The Proclamation in Text, Context, and Memory," is published Monday by Harvard University Press.

The book's release is timed to the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which the nation's 16th president spent months contemplating, discussing and rewriting in 1862 before issuing it in September of that year, just days after Union forces turned back Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army at the bloody Battle of Antietam in Maryland....