Join Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center staff at the historic Mary Thompson house, which is open in conjunction with the American Battlefield Trust. On-site interpreters are ready to answer questions and tell the story of this crucial ground, which witnessed deadly fighting on July 1, 1863, and subsequently served as the headquarters for Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Meet at 401 Buford Ave. (Route 30), 0.2 miles north of Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center.

American Battlefield Trust may open the house at other times.
Click here to view their calendar.

This year, experience Gettysburg’s Independence Day fireworks from a unique perspective! On July 4, join Seminary Ridge Museum and Education staff in the historic Cupola for a special sunset tour and stick around to enjoy a fireworks display from the Gettysburg Rec Park, courtesy of the Rotary Club of Gettysburg, Gettysburg Area Recreation Authority, and Destination Gettysburg.

Click Here to Register Today!

Tickets for this event are always limited and is an experience like no other in Gettysburg! 

Please arrive by 8:15 to begin the Cupola tour, followed by fireworks at 9:20pm.

Light refreshments will be provided.

All registrations will include Museum Admission during regular business hours.

If registration is full, please email info@seminaryridgemuseum.org to be placed on a waiting list.

Refund/Cancellation Policy

• In the event of inclement weather, a rain date of July 5 may be scheduled. If you are unable to attend the rain date, a 75% refund will be offered.

• 100% refunds will be offered with notice given at least 72 hours (3 days) prior to the event.

• 50% refunds will be offered with notice of less than 72 hours prior to the event.

• If the event is canceled entirely, a 100% refund will be offered.

Important Announcement

To help everyone stay cool and comfortable during the near record breaking heat, all events originally scheduled outside have been relocated to inside the United Lutheran Seminary Chapel, located next to Seminary Ridge Museum.

presents

’The Great Anniversary Festival’: A July 2nd Independence Celebration

John Adams predicted, “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.” Of course, Adams was off by two days regarding the date Americans associate with independence. But for the semiquincentennial of the United States, you are invited to honor the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth on July 2nd, when a vote on the Declaration of Independence officially passed the Continental Congress. 

Join Seminary Ridge Museum, Gettysburg Foundation, Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg Film Commission, and more community partners for a memorable evening on Gettysburg’s historic Lutheran Seminary campus.

The commemoration includes readings of the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address, a panel discussion focused on the history and legacy of the occasion, and an outdoor screening of the episode “Independence” from the award-winning HBO miniseries John Adams. This unique celebration honors the man whose name inspired Adams County, the nation that Adams and his fellow founders helped create, and the lasting meaning of the Declaration of Independence throughout the past 250 years in Gettysburg and beyond.

Schedule of Events

• 6:30pm-7:00pm - Opening Remarks (by Judy Morley, Ph.D., SRMEC Executive Director) and Reading of the Declaration of Independence (by Codie Eash, SRMEC Director of Education and Interpretation). FREE. Indoors. Meet at United Lutheran Seminary Chapel (directly next to Seminary Ridge Museum).

• 7:30pm-8:30pm - Panel on Historical Legacy (Featuring Tom McMillan, Jake Wynn, Erin Pearce and Dan Vermilya; Moderated by Judy Morley, Ph.D., SRMEC Executive Director). FREE. Indoors. Meet at United Lutheran Seminary Chapel (directly next to Seminary Ridge Museum).

• 9:00pm-10:30pm - Outdoor screening of “Independence” from the award-winning HBO miniseries John Adams. FREE. Indoors. Meet at United Lutheran Seminary Chapel (directly next to Seminary Ridge Museum).

CJ’s Food Truck will be on site all evening!
Food truck canceled due to heat

- FREE -
Bring a chair!

Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

Dinner tickets are now sold out.

Featuring

Food catered by Northern Redneck BBQ

Pulled Pork
Pulled Chicken
Mac and Cheese
Broccoli Salad
Green Beans

Additionally, a special gift basket raffle will feature prizes donated by local businesses, including:

Adams County Winery
Dale Gallon Art
Gettysburg Cookie Co.
Harrisburg Senators
Hershey Gardens
Lincoln Links
Majestic Theater
Mister Ed’s
National Civil War Museum
Seminary Ridge Museum
Totem Pole Playhouse
…and more!

As anyone who has done historical research can attest, for every question answered, another remains unresolved. Such has been the case at Seminary Ridge Museum, where we’ve created educational and interpretive programming for more than a decade, delving deeper into archival sources with each passing year—but realizing along the way that there are some things we may simply never know.

Join Codie Eash and Kaleb Kusmierczyk for our inaugural Sunset Schmucker House Porch Talk, as the duo discusses some of this campus’s most baffling historical mysteries.

- FREE -

Outdoors - Weather Permitting
Meet at Schmucker House Porch - Chairs Recommended
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

Join Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center staff at the historic Mary Thompson house, which is open in conjunction with the American Battlefield Trust. On-site interpreters are ready to answer questions and tell the story of this crucial ground, which witnessed deadly fighting on July 1, 1863, and subsequently served as the headquarters for Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Meet at 401 Buford Ave. (Route 30), 0.2 miles north of Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center.

American Battlefield Trust may open the house at other times.
Click here to view their calendar.

Join Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center staff at the historic Mary Thompson house, which is open in conjunction with the American Battlefield Trust. On-site interpreters are ready to answer questions and tell the story of this crucial ground, which witnessed deadly fighting on July 1, 1863, and subsequently served as the headquarters for Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Meet at 401 Buford Ave. (Route 30), 0.2 miles north of Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center.

American Battlefield Trust may open the house at other times.
Click here to view their calendar.

Through our collaboration with Adams County Library System, come join us at the Schmucker House every other month on the third Tuesday for a discussion on a selected nonfiction book.  This month we will explore the book, Stealing Lincoln’s Body by Thomas J. Craughwell.

Copies of the book are available at the Gettysburg Library's second-floor desk.

Registration Recommended

Join Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center staff at the historic Mary Thompson house, which is open in conjunction with the American Battlefield Trust. On-site interpreters are ready to answer questions and tell the story of this crucial ground, which witnessed deadly fighting on July 1, 1863, and subsequently served as the headquarters for Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Meet at 401 Buford Ave. (Route 30), 0.2 miles north of Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center.

American Battlefield Trust may open the house at other times.
Click here to view their calendar.

Join Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center staff at the historic Mary Thompson house, which is open in conjunction with the American Battlefield Trust. On-site interpreters are ready to answer questions and tell the story of this crucial ground, which witnessed deadly fighting on July 1, 1863, and subsequently served as the headquarters for Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Meet at 401 Buford Ave. (Route 30), 0.2 miles north of Seminary Ridge Museum & Education Center.

American Battlefield Trust may open the house at other times.
Click here to view their calendar.

Codie Eash, SRMEC Director of Education and Interpretation, will present “‘To Make True and Complete the Declaration’: Gettysburg Veterans and the Legacy of the Revolution” at the Gettysburg Library. The program begins at 6:00pm in the Third Floor Meeting Room at the Gettysburg Library (140 Baltimore Street, Gettysburg, PA, 17325). For more information from Adams County Library and to register, visit https://www.adamslibrary.org/event/make-true-and-complete-declaration-gettysburg-veterans-and-legacy-revolution-77537.

In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln famously opened with a call back to America’s founding “four score and seven years” earlier, in 1776. Many of the “brave men, living and dead, who struggled here” likewise made similar statements of their own, during and after the Civil War. Join Codie Eash as he explores the meaning of the Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution through the writings of those who fought here in 1863.

Registration required.

On July 1, 1863, Brig. Gen. John Buford had his finest hour, commanding United States cavalry in the opening hours of the Battle of Gettysburg. In serving his country amid the American Civil War, Buford carried on a military pedigree that went back to the country’s founding days, as the grandson and grandnephew of a pair of officers in the War of American Independence, amid a family tree full of martial stock.

Join Codie Eash as he explores the Revolutionary War connections to the soldier most associated with Seminary Ridge.

- FREE -

Outdoors - Weather Permitting
Meet at Luther Statue

Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

Codie Eash, SRMEC Director of Education and Interpretation, will present “Did Robert E. Lee Use the Seminary Cupola?” at the Civil War Round Table of Gettysburg. The meeting begins at 7:00pm at the Beyond the Battle Museum (625 Biglerville Road, Gettysburg, PA, 17325). For more information, visit https://cwrtgettysburg.org/.

For nearly 13 years, since Seminary Ridge Museum opened on July 1, 2013, among visitors’ most asked questions has been, “Did Robert E. Lee use the Seminary Cupola?” Codie Eash, who has been part of the Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center staff since 2012, has pondered that inquiry for the past decade-plus, frequently engaging with inquisitive minds on evidence for and against the Confederate commander’s potential use of Gettysburg’s most famous observation post. Having amassed dozens of primary sources, historians’ perspectives, and statements from Gettysburg National Military Park, Adams County Historical Society, and leading Lee experts, now Codie takes on that question in a standalone program, and invites audience members to draw new conclusions based on the evidence presented.

Join us for Meet the Collectors, an exciting, one-of-a-kind, evening of discovery in which some of the collectors, who have graciously loaned some of the artifacts currently on display in Seminary Ridge Museum, will share rare artifacts not available for public viewing.

Enjoy an exclusive, up-close look at remarkable pieces from private collections, hear the stories behind them straight from their caretakers, and experience a uniquely personal connection to history. 

Featured items include General George Gordon Meade's felted wool slouch hat, the presentation sword and scabbard of Col. Thomas E. Barker, 12th New Hampshire Vol. Inf., Congressional Medal of Honor of Pvt. Joseph B. Goodwin, 27th Maine Inf., and more!

Click Here to Register

Codie Eash, SRMEC Director of Education and Interpretation, will present “‘The Nation Shall Live and Slavery Shall Die’: The Presidential Election of 1864” at the York Civil War Roundtable. The meeting begins at 7:00pm at the York County History Center Museum (121 North Pershing Avenue, York, PA, 17401). For more information from the YCWRT, visit https://www.yorkhistorycenter.org/event/civil-war-roundtable-3/.

As Americans struggled through the Civil War’s fourth autumn, voters cast their ballots in the presidential election of 1864. The campaign pitted incumbent Abraham Lincoln against his former general-in-chief, George McClellan, and its results framed the ultimate effects of the conflict itself. Soldiers and citizens determined whether the nation would quell a rebellion, or open peace negotiations; expand the rights of freed people, or de-emphasize personal liberties; and end slavery, or keep the institution intact. More than any wartime event not decided on a battlefield, the course and consequences of this election are among the most significant in U.S. history.

The burning of the Wrightsville-Columbia Bridge on June 28, 1863, set into motion a series of military events that reverberated throughout south-central Pennsylvania. Beyond affecting those who fought and lived on either side of the Susquehanna River, the blaze influenced the maneuver of two massive Civil War armies, impeded the ability of aid workers to traverse a mile-wide waterway, and swayed both early and long-term interpretations of the Gettysburg Campaign.

Join Codie Eash as he explores how events in Wrightsville impacted soldiers and civilians—men and women, Black and white—throughout the Battle of Gettysburg and its aftermath, including here at the Lutheran Seminary and along Seminary Ridge.

- FREE -

Outdoors - Weather Permitting
Meet at Luther Statue - Chairs Recommended
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

The Civil War destroyed millions of acres of farmland, forests, and wilderness, which endured untold devastation from four years of the fiercest armed combat in the history of the North American continent. For many veterans of the conflict, that lived experience inspired a newfound appreciation for protection of the country’s biological and ecological landscape, as preservationists of battlefields, designers of parks and green spaces, and professionals in the fields of forestry and conservation—now no longer on the frontlines of warfare, but of a new national effort to create and expand public lands.

Join Codie Eash for this special Arbor Day presentation, as he explores how veterans’ experiences shaped their attention to environmental concerns, forever changing the natural landscape across the postwar United States.

- FREE with Museum Admission -

Lydia Ziegler Clare Education Center
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

Through our collaboration with Adams County Library System, come join us at the Schmucker House every other month on the third Tuesday for a discussion on a selected nonfiction book.  This month we will explore the book, The Last Slave Ship by Ben Raines.

Copies of the book are available at the Gettysburg Library's second-floor desk.

Registration Recommended

Many Civil War buffs will recognize the name Rufus Dawes, and dedicated students know that he fought with the famed Iron Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg.  However, his importance in American history goes much deeper than that.

                Born in 1838 in Marietta, Ohio, Dawes was the great grandson of two pillars of the Revolutionary War.  His great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Manessah Cutler, was the author of the Northwest Ordinances and the first to establish the Ohio Territory.  His great-grandfather on his father’s side, however, was well know in his time as the other rider with Paul Revere, warning the American colonists that the British were coming. 

                This event will take a look at ancestry of one of Gettysburg’s most notable figures and tie it directly to the very foundation of the American Revolution.

- FREE with Museum Admission -

Lydia Ziegler Clare Education Center
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

As the nation’s future hung in the balance, the Weather Gods delivered a wrath of fury on Union and Confederate forces throughout the Gettysburg Campaign. First, record-breaking heat and humidity wore down the warring armies during ungodly forced marches. Next, relentless storms plagued the soldiers with resultant muddy slogs on nearly impassable roads. As the armies met in mortal combat, soul-crushing heat turned the bucolic fields of Gettysburg into a sanguinary and barren expanse. Finally, torrential rains haunted the Confederate retreat and narrow escape across a swollen Potomac River. Jeffrey J. Harding and Jon M. Nese, authors of The Weather Gods Curse the Gettysburg Campaign (The History Press, 2025), present firsthand accounts, harrowing narratives and groundbreaking meteorological research that reshapes how we view the Civil War’s Gettysburg Campaign.

Click Here to Register 

Jeffrey J. Harding currently works as a licensed battlefield guide at Gettysburg National Military Park, independent historian and leadership consultant. Previously, he served thirty-three years as an intelligence analyst and professional development specialist with the Office of Naval Intelligence. He is the author of the highly acclaimed Gettysburg’s Lost Love Story: The Ill-Fated Romance of General John Reynolds and Kate Hewitt (The History Press, 2022). 

Jon M. Nese is a teaching professor in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Penn State, where he also oversees the undergraduate program. Prior to joining Penn State, he was chief meteorologist at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and on-air storm analyst at the Weather Channel. He is the coauthor of The Philadelphia Area Weather Book (Temple University Press, 2002), which was awarded the 2005 Louis J. Battan Author’s Award from the American Meteorological Society.

This event is FREE and open to the public.

Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center presents GETTYSBURG: ONE WOMAN’S WAR, on Monday, March 30, at 6:30 p.m. in the Valentine Hall Auditorium at 61 Seminary Ridge on the Gettysburg campus of United Lutheran Seminary (ULS). This unique dramatization views America’s Civil War through the eyes of young townswoman, wife, and mother Mary Bowman. Professional actress Michèle LaRue brings Mary vividly to life, spiriting audiences back to July 1, 1863—as the assault on Gettysburg, PA, begins. That murderous battle, fought 163 years ago, altered the course of the war and created our first National Cemetery. This one-woman play was praised as, “priceless. . . . masterfully, professionally, affectively and effectively presented … Truly a treasure,”* when performed for Historic Gettysburg Adams County, in Gettysburg.

LaRue adapted this presentation from novelist Elsie Singmaster’s classic Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath—published in 1913, the semi-centennial of the War Between the States. A century-plus later, Singmaster’s fictional wife and mother still grabs our imagination and our hearts. With Mary Bowman, we travel the emotional and physical terrain of 50 years: from the cannons’ first roar to the grief and devastation that follow; from the promise of Lincoln’s visit and commemoration, to the healing only time can bring. LaRue’s performance brings the work of Elsie Singmaster back to Seminary Ridge, where the writer resided during her father’s tenure as an early 20th-century campus president at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (now ULS), a setting that directly inspired her Newberry Award-winning novel Swords of Steel (1933).

LaRue tours nationally with a repertoire of productions that revitalize writing from America’s Gilded Age. A Chicago native, transplanted to New Jersey, she has presented her offerings at nearly 600 venues—most prominently Washington’s Smithsonian Institution and Chicago’s Newberry Library. “Back in 2013, to honor the Civil War Sesquicentennial, I searched for stories featuring women,” LaRue explains. “I’d about given up when a knowledgeable friend ** recommended Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath. Decades before, I had read a marvelous Singmaster novel called A High Wind Rising. This proved even better; it’s a stunning work.” 

VALENTINE HALL AUDITORUM – 61 SEMINARY RIDGE, GETTYSBURG, PA, 17325 

Elsie Singmaster (1878 – 1958) received little public schooling, yet graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe. Of Pennsylvania German heritage and raised in small towns in the state, she lived most her adult life in Gettysburg. Her intimate knowledge of the town’s geography amplifies the vividness and clarity of her Gettysburg stories. Her best-known novels include I Speak for Thaddeus Stevens, A High Wind Rising, and Swords of Steel, a Newbery Honor Book. 

Michèle LaRue, a graduate in Acting from the University of Kansas, is a longtime member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, the editor of multiple notable theatre books and periodicals, and a history enthusiast. http://michelelarue.com

GETTYSBURG : ONE WOMAN’S WAR

“July the First”: War comes to Gettysburg—where are the armies?

“The Battleground”: Lincoln comes to Gettysburg—where will it end?

“Mary Bowman”: Sightseers come to Gettysburg—where has it led?

Three stories from Elsie Singmaster’s classic Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath

Singmaster’s 1913 short story collection vividly explores the physical and emotional terrain of a Civil War icon. With townswoman Mary Bowman, live the battle and its legacy—from the cannons’ first roar to its echoes a half century on.

* “What you have to offer is priceless. There is almost nothing in the whole big 150th celebration that focuses on women. . . . So masterfully, professionally, affectively and effectively presented… Truly a treasure.”

--Paula Olinger, Associate Professor, Gettysburg College; Member, Historic Gettysburg Adams County

** Susan Koppelman, renowned editor of stories by nineteenth-century American women

- FREE with Museum Admission -

Lydia Ziegler Clare Education Center
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

When Abraham Lincoln opened the Gettysburg Address with an allusion to “four score and seven years” earlier, he referenced the Declaration of Independence. But two other revolutionary documents saw the light of day over that same span, as well: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, issued almost exactly four score and seven years after Thomas Paine’s Common Sense of January 10, 1776.

Join us for our first installment of “Revolution on the Ridge,” as Codie Eash opens our America 250 commemorative programming by exploring the significance of these two January pronouncements, one an official presidential decree and the other a public rallying cry—both amid civil wars, and both in the name of liberty.

- FREE with Museum Admission -

Lydia Ziegler Clare Education Center
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

Drawing on three decades of his experience as a registered nurse and a lifelong interest in the American Civil War, join Noel Kline as he explores the injuries and lethality of 19th-century warfare, discusses the religious doctrine of “God's Will” in the period, and utilizes his unique behind-the-scenes photographs of Seminary Ridge Museum exhibits when they were first installed.

- FREE -

Lydia Ziegler Clare Education Center
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center

Noel has 30 years experience as a Registered Nurse in acute and long-term care as well as home health with 16 years EMS experience. He has taught nursing school for 12 years at HACC and PSU Harrisburg.  

Noel has a AS degree in nursing and BA degree in communications from Penn State. He earned his MS degree in nursing from the University of Phoenix. Noel also has a minor in anthropology from Penn State.  

Noel's interest in the Civil War started when he was a teenager learning about his great-grandfather's service in the Union Army as told by his late mother Patsy Kline. As Noel researched his great-grandfather's life history and military records, he found Civil War history to be a life-long hobby. In recent years, Noel provides photography of battlefields and historic landmarks for the American Battlefield Trust. Currently, Noel is a freelance photojournalist for Local News 1.org of Waynesboro, PA providing history related feature stories.

This program highlights the relationship between General George G. Meade and his wife, Margaretta. The daughter of a prominent Philadelphian politician, Margaretta Sergeant married George Meade on December 31, 1840. Without question, Margaretta was Meade’s most intimate confident and loyalist, a relationship that sustained Meade through the trials of the American Civil War. Dr. Jennifer Murray, author of a forthcoming biography of General Meade, will look at several of their wartime letters and explore their relationship and marriage.

Click Here to Register

Dr. Jennifer M. Murray is an Assistant Professor of History at Shepherd University and the Director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War. Her most recent publication is On A Great Battlefield: The Making, Management, and Memory of Gettysburg National Military Park, 1933-2023, published by the University of Tennessee Press in 2014 and printed as a second edition in 2023. Murray is currently working on a full-length biography of General George Meade, tentatively titled Meade at War. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming, “They Are Dead, And Yet They Live”: Civil War Memories in a Polarized America to be published by the University of Nebraska Press in February 2026. Prior to joining the faculty at Shepherd, Murray taught at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. A native of Maryland, Murray worked as a seasonal interpretive park ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park for nine summers.

Rescheduled from original date of Saturday, March 7

With special coverage by C-SPAN!

Join us for an evening of dinner, history, book signings, and more!

Dinner options include:
Espresso-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with Apple Chutney
Brown Butter Seared Salmon with Citrus-Dill Beurre Blanc
Vegetarian (Chef’s Selection)

Cost: $100

Click here to secure your seat!
As always, members of the Iron Brigade Society will receive invitations as part of their membership benefits.

Sponsored and hosted by
The Barn Resort
75 Cunningham Road, Gettysburg

Featuring Special Guest Speaker
Dr. Matthew Pinsker

Brian Pohanka Chair of Civil War History
Dickinson College

discussing his recently published

Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln

An eye-opening portrait of Lincoln behind the scenes: Here is the career-long party politician whose brilliant coalition-building during the Civil War set the political foundation for emancipation and Union victory.

We know Lincoln as the eloquent, compassionate leader of a nation torn by civil war. But he had another, less visible side, equally central to his character and leadership: Lincoln was a master of party politics. Schooled as a Whig in the rough-and-tumble of Illinois electioneering in the 1830s, Lincoln skillfully navigated treacherous partisan crosscurrents and helped build the Republican party into a viable force. His decades of experience as a party leader proved invaluable to him as president and commander in chief during the Civil War.

Matthew Pinsker’s groundbreaking history draws extensively on Lincoln’s private correspondence to move beyond the marble icon and realize a flesh-and-blood character in Boss Lincoln. Behind closed doors he was shrewd and insistent, capable of deft manipulation, blunt intimidation, or thoughtful argument as needed. As a decision-maker he was attentive to detail but kept his own counsel and trusted his own acumen. His aides noted that in cabinet meetings Lincoln had the final say, and “there is no cavil.” Devoted to elections, he kept careful, handwritten tallies of party turnout, even gifting one to Mary Todd, another partisan, during their courtship. His hymn to democracy at Gettysburg in 1863 carried a partisan message to the political leaders gathered there: The fight for the union would take place at the polls as well as on the battlefield. Boss Lincoln often sacrificed candor for purpose. He used his White House meeting with Frederick Douglass in 1864, ostensibly about emancipation, to send a message to radicals about his need for their support.

With emancipation and the war’s outcome at stake, facing withering criticism from all sides, Lincoln won reelection by building a new political coalition through the Union party. Here was Boss Lincoln at his height, captured in absorbing detail in this indelible portrait of our greatest president.

About the Author

MATTHEW PINSKER holds the Brian Pohanka Chair of Civil War History at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and serves as Director of the House Divided Project (http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites), an innovative effort to build digital resources on the Civil War era.  Matt has previously held visiting fellowships at New America Foundation, U.S. Army War College and the National Constitution Center.  Matt graduated from Harvard College and received a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He is the author of three books:  Abraham Lincoln –a volume in the American Presidents Reference Series from Congressional Quarterly Press (2002) and Lincoln's Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home (Oxford University Press, 2003).  Matt’s most recent book is Boss Lincoln: The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln (W.W. Norton, 2026).  He also currently produces a popular Substack series called:  What Would Lincoln Do?  Matt has published widely in the history of American politics, contributing to the Journal of American History and several other academic journals as well as to newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, and USA Today.  He appears regularly on TV channels such as C-SPAN and A&E’s History. Matt has managed multiple digital projects on the Underground Railroad for the National Park Service Network to Freedom.  He has led numerous K-12 teacher-training workshops for organizations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He also currently serves the Organization of American Historians (OAH) as a “Distinguished Lecturer.” Finally, Matt sits on the advisory boards of several historic organizations, such as Ford’s Theatre Society, Gettysburg Foundation, National Civil War Museum, President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Soldiers’ Home, and the Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith Center for History & Democracy.