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Related Events

Opening Reception

View the exhibit and enjoy light refreshments. Skip Crittell, Lincoln presenter, will read from the Gettysburg Address and other speeches and writings.

Forever Free Keynote Lecture

Dr. Darrell Millner, professor of Black Studies at Portland State University, explores the portrayals of Abraham Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator” and the ways in which his reputation has evolved. Reexamine many of the traditional assumptions attached to Lincoln's role in the pre-Civil War and Civil War eras.

Film Screening: Glory (1989)

This dramatic account of the American Civil War's first all-black regiment, based on the letters of Colonel Robert G. Shaw, won three Academy Awards, including best supporting actor for Denzel Washington. Shaw (Matthew Broderick), an idealistic, privileged, northern white commander, volunteers to lead the first company of black soldiers, but is forced to deal with the prejudices of the enemy and his own fellow officers. Morgan Freeman also stars. Rated R for violence and adult language; 122 minutes.

William and Carla Coleman

The Haunting War: An American Tragedy Revisited

Hear the stories of the men and women of the Civil War through a series of vignettes bound together by period and original music, and complete with historically accurate costumes and props. Nationally-recognized Civil War educators William and Carla Coleman present a moving program with dialogue taken from authentic letters, diaries and journals of the time. This Oregon Chautauqua program is funded by the Oregon Council for the Humanities.

Of Love and War: Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman

Working as a hospital nurse in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War, Walt Whitman came to believe that President Lincoln was the nation's only politician able to end slavery and preserve the Union. Whitman's great elegy for Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd” forever links the two men. David Biespiel of The Attic Writers Workshop discusses this tragic period in American history, how a public death can touch an individual life, and how poetry can express both praise and loss through the subject of love and war.