Upcoming Talk on Abraham Lincoln, The Emancipation Proclamation, and Spielberg's Lincoln

Professor Paul Finkelman, PhD., the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School and the Justice Pike Hall, Jr. Visiting Professor at Louisiana State University Law School will speak on how Abraham Lincoln came to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. In his talk, titled “How a Railroad Lawyer Became the Great Emancipator:  Abraham Lincoln, The Emancipation Proclamation, and Spielberg's Movie,” Finkelman will show the evolution of Lincoln's thinking on freedom and the changing constitutional understandings during the Civil War. He will also explain why the central moment of the Civil War and American history since the Revolutionary Period was the Emancipation Proclamation, and not the debate over the Thirteenth Amendment, as portrayed in the movie "Lincoln." Dr. Finkelman will be speaking at 7:00 on January 29 in the Walsh Theater.