Join us as Harold Holzer Headlines the Annual Lincoln Birthday Banquet

The Lincoln Group of DC and the Civil War Round Table of DC are excited to announce that Lincoln Prize winning historian Harold Holzer will keynote our annual joint Lincoln’s birthday banquet. Holzer will speak on the topic of “Lincoln and Immigration,” based on his just released book, Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration. In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry. Abraham Lincoln’s rise ran parallel to this turmoil, but even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split and ultimately destroy Lincoln’s Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were, and how interwoven they had become in American society.

Acclaimed historian Harold Holzer, winner of the Lincoln Prize and many other awards, charts Lincoln’s political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship.

This is an in-person event in the Patton Hall Officers’ Club at Fort Myer where we will celebrate Lincoln’s 214th birthday with our annual banquet. Festivities begin at 5:30 pm for social hour, followed by dinner, and then Holzer’s presentation and Q&A. Find more details and register on the CWRTDC website at . Please use the pull-down menu on the right side of the page to RSVP and pay in advance. Also, the CWRTDC site has instructions for filling out the online request for a pass to get into Fort Myer. The new online system makes the process easy but must be done in advance to facilitate entry.

Register and pay at: https://cwrtdc-meetings.blogspot.com  (this will be available after January 10).  

This is our annual joint LGDC/CWRTDC Lincoln Birthday Banquet, so we encourage everyone from both groups to attend.The event will be held on Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at Fort Myer in Virginia, beginning at 5:30 p.m.