Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State University Libraries welcomed a distinguished Civil War scholar to campus Thursday [Oct. 31] for the third annual Frank and Virginia Williams Lecture on Lincoln and Civil War Studies.

William C. “Jack” Davis, former executive director of the Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, discussed the wartime leadership roles of Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis.

Davis organized his talk around four fundamental areas of performance that he said are faced by all chief executives during war—formulation of national policy and goals; management of the armed forces; marshaling of political and social tools of war necessary for a democracy to conduct the conflict; and mobilization of the public spirit and morale.

“Any judgment of the effectiveness of Lincoln and Davis has to be viewed in the context of what was possible for each to achieve,” he emphasized. “Taking them as history leaves them to us, they can seem almost evenly balanced based on their skills and not on the ultimate result of the war.”

A Missouri native, Davis has authored or edited more than 60 books in the fields of Civil War and Southern history. He is the only four-time winner of the Jefferson Davis Award, and was a member of the advisory board for the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

The Williams Lecture on Lincoln and Civil War Studies was established in 2017 by former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams and his wife, Virginia. The couple established the lecture series for the MSU community and others to have a chance to reflect on Lincoln and the Civil War by bringing leading scholars to campus. For more, visit http://lib.msstate.edu/williamscollection/lecture/2019.

In addition to the lectureship, the Williamses gifted their extraordinary private Lincoln and Civil War collection amassed over the past 50 years to MSU. Located next to the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mitchell Memorial Library, The Frank J. and Virginia Williams Collection of Lincolniana boasts rare historical memorabilia; priceless artifacts; original, signed documents; ephemera; books published over a span of 150 years; and both original one-of-a-kind, and early mass-produced artwork relating to Lincoln and the Civil War era. Learn more at http://library.msstate.edu/williamscollection/about.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.