Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminars: Abraham Lincoln

Each summer the Gilder Lehrman Institute holds seminars for public, parochial and independent school teachers "designed to strengthen educators' commitment to high quality history teaching." More than 6,000 teachers have participated in the program through the years. In the summer of 2006 600 participants from 49 states and 6 foreign countries took part. HNN asked participants to write up their reflections, which we will be publishing over the coming months.

“The battlefield will speak to you, if you let it.” With this charge, renowned Lincoln-scholar and educator, Gabor Boritt, had given direction to our small group’s intellectual curiosity. Many of the program participants had visited the Gettysburg Battlefield previously as tourists or with students, but few of us had considered the battlefield’s unique place in a Lincoln context. For a single week in July 2006, I joined 30 participants, representing schools and national parks from around the nation, at Gettysburg College to discuss, learn, and experience the life of Abraham Lincoln. True, I was prepared for this and the seminar more than met my expectations. What I didn’t expect was the incredible value of what we shared about ourselves with one another.

Co-sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Gettysburg College’s own Civil War Institute, the seminar immersed its participants not only in the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, but also in the world in which he lived. Central to Lincoln’s legacy was what some consider his greatest piece of writing, his “brief remarks” at the November 1863 dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery. Today, we refer to Lincoln’s remarks as his Gettysburg Address. To understand this seminal work, the seminar devoted not only its location, but much of its instructional time to interpreting the community of Gettysburg and the battle that occurred there in July 1863. Participants experienced the battle through walking and driving tours, we marched the route of Pickett’s Assault on the Federal Center, and we ambled among the rocky shoulder of Little Round Top. Our group also experienced the Civil War through a tour of Gettysburg College; we explored the town on our own, and we reflected on the human tragedy of war through a guided walk of the graves of fallen soldiers. During this walk, our guide revealed the true location of the platform from which Lincoln issued his brief remarks. For a brief moment, one could almost feel transported to the day of his speech.

It was with great pleasure that I could meet with colleagues from the Northeast, Old Northwest, Deep South, and the Southeast. We spoke with different accents, but we shared identical experiences with our students and a common enthusiasm for history. We compared our school programs, we freely suggested lesson plans and strategies, and we spent a great deal of time talking about kids. It was as though the best of the nation had been assembled in one place, a fraternity of educators. As a result, I felt that I had gained colleagues from beyond the borders of my own state.

In addition to immersing ourselves in the texts provided to us prior to the seminar, we engaged in open, frank discussions with leading Lincoln scholars during the week. Professors Gabor Boritt, Craig Symonds, and Jean Baker conducted lectures in an open, question and answer format. Apart from the formal lecture sessions, our speakers even responded to questions while eating with participants at breakfast and lunch! What I enjoyed the most was observing the friendly, interpretive disagreements between the speakers and how they clearly respected each others’ views. This modeled discourse helped set the tone for discussion among seminar participants. It made for some scintillating, if not daring scholarly exchanges. I appreciated thoroughly the intentional application of historiography to the Lincoln history. This is so often missing in school textbooks and popular histories of the man. Above all, these scholars ably dispelled the various Lincoln “myths” that have developed over time. As a group, we speculated on their possible origins and we learned the value of studying history within context.

The Gilder Lehrman staff provided participants with lavish quantities of primary source documents pertaining to Lincoln. From these documents and those available from other sources, each participant was required to present two Lincoln-related primary sources to our colleagues. We were to study each document, present the context in which each document was written, and write study questions that would guide the reader in interpreting the documents. Gettysburg College generously allowed participants considerable access to its online holdings as well as time in the computer lab facilities, often late into the evening each night. By the end of the week, the seminar staff had collated and bound all 60 of our prepared documents. Each participant received not only a spiral-bound edition, but also the complete collection of documents on a CD. I walked away from the seminar with not only a great experience, but with a thick gathering of ready-made, pre-formatted teaching resources for my classroom.

As a participant, I felt valued as a member of a scholarly, academically-focused community. The seminar sponsors went out of their way to make sure that the seminar participants felt respected and treated like honored guests. I, like many others, was able to share my ideas and impressions with our visiting professors and special guest speakers. Furthermore, the seminar sponsors were careful to respect the time of the participants and made adjustments to our schedule as needed. They also included fun activities such as the campus “ghost tour” and a complementary viewing of the Civil War musical, “For the Glory” at Gettysburg’s newly-renovated Majestic Theater. Above all, I felt plugged-in to the seminar and its team from the first day to the last. Even by the second day of the seminar, I knew that its faces, its discussions, and its experiences would be ones that I would remember fondly. I now feel a personal connection to cities, teachers, and places far away from my own home that I did not feel before. I also emerged from the experience a better teacher, an empowered educator proud of my profession and those in it. The battlefield may not have spoken to us directly, but gave us the forum by which we could speak with one another, with the “better angels of our nature.”