Civil War Scholar Vorenberg to lead MSU Frank and Virginia Williams Lecture Sept. 29
Contact: Alyssa Edwards
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State welcomes Brown University historian Michael Vorenberg as the featured scholar for this year’s Frank and Virginia Williams Lecture on Abraham Lincoln and Civil War Studies.
Vorenberg, the Royce Family Professor of History at Brown, joins MSU Williams Chair Susannah J. Ural Sept. 29, 6 p.m., for a conversation on his award-winning book “Lincoln’s Peace: The Struggle to End the American Civil War.” The lecture, with the same title in Mitchell Memorial Library’s John Grisham Room, will explore President Lincoln’s vision for ending the Civil War, how that plan evolved following his assassination, and how the war’s end, or multiple endings, shaped the way Americans remember the conflict today. The lecture is free and open to the public, and a reception follows.
“Michael Vorenberg’s book offers a compelling examination of one of the
most consequential questions of the Civil War: how the nation would move from conflict to
peace,” Ural said. “We are delighted to welcome him to Mississippi State to discuss Lincoln’s vision, the complicated end of the war, and ways those events continue to shape our understanding of American history.”
Published by Knopf in 2025, “Lincoln’s Peace” was named one of the Los Angeles Times’ “top 10 books to read in 2025” and received coverage from The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Winner of the Society of Civil War Historians’ Tom Watson Brown Book Award and Nau Prize in Civil War History, it also was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.
At Brown, Vorenberg teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, as well as legal and constitutional history. He served as a member of Brown’s pioneering Slavery and Justice Committee. Previous books include “Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment,” a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and a major source for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film “Lincoln,” and the 2010 book “The Emancipation Proclamation: A Brief History with Documents.”
The Frank and Virginia Williams Lecture on Abraham Lincoln and Civil War Studies brings distinguished scholars to Mississippi State to examine the history, legacy and continuing significance of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters