Join us for the final installment of “Warning Signs: Lincoln’s Response to Rising Threats to Freedom, Justice, and Democracy.” This project, developed with generous support from Iron Mountain, draws on primary sources and experts to create new resources for the public to explore issues Abraham Lincoln witnessed—polarization, political violence, and more—and how he responded.  Understanding history provides important context to challenges we face in our own time.

This program will feature screenings of “Warning Signs” film footage and a discussion with Dr. Silvana Siddali on Westward expansion’s role in this period, Bleeding Kansas and state constitutional conflict, and Lincoln’s House Divided Speech. The discussion will be followed by audience Q&A. 

Silvana R. Siddali writes widely about the political, social, and military history of the United States during the nineteenth century. Siddali is the Eugene A. Hotfelder Professor of Humanities at Saint Louis University and the author of From Property to Person: Slavery and the Confiscation Act, 1861-1862, Frontier Democracy: Constitutional Conventions in the Old Northwest, and editor of Missouri’s War: The Civil War in Documents.