The traveling exhibition – from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History – will be shown at Suffolk University’s Adams Gallery August 27 through September 29, 2012.

More books have been written about Abraham Lincoln than about any other American, yet public knowledge about our most famous president is dominated by a series of iconic images: the son of an illiterate frontier farmer who taught himself to read; the savior of the Union; the Great Emancipator; the martyred leader. 
Less is known about how Lincoln’s ideas on slavery evolved, why he deemed it imperative to preserve the union and his shrewd political instinct.

The exhibit Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, A Man for All Times presents Lincoln through his own words in speeches, letters and proclamations. The words and images foster a deeper understanding of our 16th president’s life, accomplishments and legacy.

This exhibition encourages viewers to explore fundamental questions raised by Lincoln’s life:

• How did a self-educated, rough-hewn lawyer with virtually no administrative experience succeed in guiding a divided nation through the crises of secession and Civil War? 
• How and why did Lincoln champion emancipation? 
• How did Lincoln’s capacity for intellectual and moral growth shape his presidency? 
• How did Lincoln’s eloquence change the nation? 
• What was Lincoln’s plan for the nation’s future? 

Lincoln believed that America’s greatest strength lay in guaranteeing its citizens their natural rights and opportunities to succeed. Like Jefferson, Lincoln believed that “all men are created equal,” and he carried these democratic ideals further than any president had done before him.

Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, A Man for All Times is a national traveling exhibition organized by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The traveling exhibition has been made possible in part through a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, dedicated to expanding American understanding of human experience and cultural heritage.

Abraham Lincoln: A Man of His Time, A Man for All Times

Panel to discuss Emancipation Proclamation

A forum on The Emancipation Proclamation: 150 Years Later will be held in conjunction with the exhibit at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, in Sargent Hall.

Adams Gallery 
David J. Sargent Hall 
Suffolk University 
120 Tremont St., Boston 
Free and open to the public 9 a.m.-7 p.m. daily

Captions: 

“National picture. Behold oh! America, your sons. The greatest among men,” print based on an image by Louis Kurz, printed by Charles Shober, c. 1865. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. 
This is one of many patriotic images produced in the months after Lincoln’s death showing national devotion to the martyred president. Lincoln is compared to the likes of George Washington. Washington holds the Constitution in his hands while Lincoln holds his Proclamation of Emancipation.

“The Union is dissolved!” Charleston (S.C.) Mercury, extra edition, December 20, 1860. The Gilder Lehrman Collection. 
The election of Lincoln convinced Southern states that the federal government would initiate judicial and legal action against slavery. This broadside was printed when South Carolina voted to repeal the Constitution of the United States and seceded from the Union. The Constitution of the new Confederacy would sanction the unrestricted right to hold slaves.