Lehrman American Studies Center

Lewis E. Lehrman: Reinvigorating the Teaching of America's Founding Principles

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, teacher Duncan Campbell took his students to the Gettysburg battlefield where North and South fought the great battles of July 1–3, 1863. There, the Civil War conflict came alive for Lewis Lehrman, stimulating his lifelong study of American history. A high school teacher would add another dimension to Lew's scholarship. "Facts and circumstances, I learned from Garrett Greene, are the stuff of ideas and decisions," recalls Lehrman. Ever since, Lehrman's storied career has been guided by this critical synthesis between theory and practice, principle and statesmanship.

At Yale University, Lew's education was refined by a collection of scholars who "turned my thoughts to the role of culture, institutions, and war in the making of America. They caused me to reflect upon what was unique in the American common culture." It was that grounding in American history and its culture that led Lehrman four decades later to the doorstep of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, founding his Lehrman American Studies Center at ISI in 2005. Under its auspices, some of the finest young professors and instructors gather each summer for two weeks at Princeton University to reconnect with the principles of America's Founding.

Lehrman served as a Carnegie Teaching Fellow at Yale, later receiving an M.A. in history from Harvard as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. Most of his adult life, however, has been spent in the business world. He did take a sabbatical from business, however, in 1982 to run for governor of New York, losing narrowly to Mario Cuomo. And throughout, public policy and its historical antecedents have been quite important to Lehrman; in 1972 he founded the Lehrman Institute in New York City to bring diverse scholars together to study and discuss economic and foreign policy from an historical perspective. Lehrman pioneered the idea for such gatherings outside the university setting, establishing a muchneeded counterweight to the politicized American academy. He also developed his own monetary theory—following in the footsteps of the French financial statesman and economist Jacques Rueff.

In the late 1980s, Lehrman began to work with a longtime friend, philanthropist Richard Gilder, on a series of initiatives to reform the study of American history. Their first effort was the Gilder Lehrman Collection, which now includes over 60,000 American historical documents and manuscripts on deposit at the New York Historical Society. Together with Gettysburg College professor Gabor Boritt, they founded the Lincoln and Soldiers Institute, which annually presents the Lincoln Prize to the best work on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Similarly, the Frederick Douglass Prize is annually awarded by the Gilder Lehrman Center on Slavery, Resistance and Abolition at Yale University; and the Washington Prize is given each year to the best work on the American founding.

A clear highlight of this close and valuable collaboration is the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (GLIAH), which works to improve the teaching of American history in elementary and secondary schools as well as colleges. GLIAH sponsors teacher and student programs including traveling exhibitions, forty-two history high schools, and weeklong summer institutes at major universities—in which 6,000 educators have participated. According to Barnard College professor James Basker, who directs the institute's work, "The institute was the brainchild of Lew Lehrman and Richard Gilder. From small pilot projects, it has grown over twelve years to a point where we have programs in all fifty states, serve more than 3,000 teachers every year, and, through them, reach an estimated three million students annually."

Since the 1970s, Lehrman personally has focused his scholarly attention on the study of Abraham Lincoln, writing articles and teaching about him at Gettysburg College. The Lehrman Institute spawned the Lincoln Institute (www.abrahamlincoln.org), specifically devoted to the study of America's sixteenth president. Among its work are seven websites devoted to aspects of Lincoln's life which annually attract more than three million website visits.

Lehrman had closely read earlier in his life the eight volumes plus two supplementary volumes of Lincoln's writings, edited by Roy P. Basler. He was drawn in particular to a speech Lincoln delivered against the Kansas-Nebraska Act on October 16, 1854. The so-called "Peoria Speech" was one of several Lincoln delivered during that campaign— three in direct response to speeches given by the chief sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska legislation, Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas. The content of these 1854 debates foreshadowed the more famous series of seven debates that Lincoln and Douglas would hold four years later when in 1858 Lincoln challenged the more nationally recognized Douglas for his Senate seat.

Lehrman completed Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point during two decades of work, writing when his "day job" permitted. Released this summer, the book focuses on Lincoln's defense of the Declaration of Independence—particularly the clause that declared "all men are created equal." Lehrman notes: "Unlike Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln insisted that the equality principle applied to blacks as well as whites. At Peoria and thereafter, Lincoln made the case against slavery's expansion and for its ultimate extinction. The moral and political principles Lincoln defined at Peoria form the basis of his thinking and actions until his death in 1865." And as Lehrman keenly observes, "Getting right with the Declaration of Independence was a driving passion of Mr. Lincoln as he fought his way back into state and national politics in 1854. Armed with the 'sheet anchor of American republicanism,' he was determined to set right the historical record and America's future, as he was given to see it."

Lehrman credits the work of many other historians and political scientists for his insights. "One of the personal benefits of my collaboration with Dick Gilder," claims Lehrman, "has been the ability to get to know some of the great historians of America's founding and the reformulation of the founding by Abraham Lincoln. Many of these same historians teach in summer institutes we sponsor for high school history teachers—who thereby gain new insights and inspiration." Says Basker: "Schoolteachers cherish the opportunity to work closely with great historians —scholars such as Jim McPherson, Allen Guelzo, Eric Foner, Gordon Wood, Jim Horton, Drew Gilpin Faust, and David Blight—who in turn give generously of their time and energy. The ultimate testimony to the power and popularity of the teacher seminars is that we received 3,000 applications for 1,000 places this year, and the numbers are growing rapidly."

"I learned at Yale how much can be gained from the close interaction of students with historians," observes Lehrman. "We have tried to replicate that model at the Lehrman Institute, at the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and most recently with the Lehrman American Studies Center at ISI. At the Lehrman American Studies Center Princeton Institute each June, our faculty includes some of America's finest professors and our fellows are budding young scholars." Together, according to new the Lehrman American Studies Center president Lt. General Josiah Bunting III, longtime friend and colleague of Lew Lehrman, "Lehrman Center graduates are creating the kind of momentum necessary for a return to the traditional teaching of the American founding that is so desperately needed today on America's college campuses. This is a high achievement, one that Lew Lehrman deserves a great deal of credit for promoting."

ISI President T. Kenneth Cribb and Lew Lehrman converse following a lecture at the Lehrman American Studies Center summer institute at Princeton University

In the 1980s, Lew had come to know ISI president Ken Cribb when Cribb was working in the Reagan Administration; and Lehrman had already worked closely with ISI trustee and former chairman Edwin Feulner during the 1970s when Lehrman served on the board of the Heritage Foundation. "I knew of ISI's work from its earliest days in the late 1950s," wrote Lehrman, "and I knew it was just the kind of serious intellectual site for my American studies program."

Lehrman strongly believes that collaboration is the key to intellectual success. "My work with Ken Cribb and his team has been rewarding because it focuses on excellence. We can already see the impact of our scholars' work on college campuses as they introduce new courses that illuminate the American founding as amended." Their collaboration is, says Lehrman, "the kind of work Mr. Lincoln would have appreciated. As Doris Kearns Goodwin has written, Lincoln's cabinet, though a team of rivals, was harnessed to collaborate on a great cause. We would like to follow in Lincoln's footsteps."