Adjutant’s Call May 2026
Circular Memorandum #576, May 2026
“I Must Have Kentucky: Lincoln and the Place of my Nativity”
Presented by: Harold Holzer
Date: Saturday, May 9 Location: Big Spring Country Club
Cocktails: 6:00 PM Dinner: 7:00 PM Program: 8:00 PM
Meet Our Speaker – Harold Holzer
For our 600th meeting in our 65th year, we are honored to have renowned Abraham Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer come and speak to us on this special occasion. He is the winner of the 2015 Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize, and is one of the country's leading authorities on Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the Civil War era. A prolific writer, lecturer, and frequent guest on television, Holzer served for six years (2010–2016) as Chairman of The Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation. For the previous 10 years he co-chaired the U. S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission (ALBC), appointed by President Clinton. President Bush awarded Holzer the National Humanities Medal in 2008. And in 2013, Holzer wrote an essay on Lincoln for the official program at the re-inauguration of President Obama. He is now chairman of The Lincoln Forum. In his work as a historian Holzer has authored, co-authored, and edited 56 books and contributed more than 600 articles to magazines and journals, plus chapters and forewords for 71 additional books. Many of his works have received awards, including the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and four other awards in 2015 for his book Lincoln and the Power of the Press. His two most recent books are The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle between the White House and the Media—from the Founding Fathers to Fake News and in 2024 Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration.
“‘I Must Have Kentucky:’ Lincoln and ‘The Place of My Nativity.’”
Speaker’ Topic: Kentucky’s complex Civil War story—and Abraham Lincoln’s determination to keep his birthplace state in the Union—are well known. This talk will seek to explore Lincoln’s deeper, personal, almost mystical bond with the state he called “the place of my nativity”—bound up in his feelings for his best friend Josh Speed, his wife Mary, and his political hero Henry Clay—and also his less positive encounters with Kentuckians Jefferson Davis and Zachary Taylor. This talk will probe the personal, professional, and practical relationship between Lincoln and Kentucky, touching on his skills as a campaigner, his controversial efforts to curtail dissent during wartime, and his efforts to promote emancipation in the Union slave states.
Buffet Dinner for May 9th Meeting - $19.61
To celebrate our 600th meeting the buffet dinner for our May 9 meeting will be $19.61!! Why 19.61 you may ask? This is to remind us that the Round Table’s first meeting was held on January 19, 1961. Now 65 years later we are still going strong with over 200 members. We continue to be one of the very best Round Tables in the country. If you make your reservation using our website, you will be charged $19.61 on your credit card. If you pay at the meeting, the price will be $20.00.
Reservations Are to be Sent to Doug Krawczyk or Made on Our Website
If you do not make a reservation, you may not get fed!
The Round Table must give Big Spring an accurate count of reservations no later than Thursday before our Saturday meeting. Reservations can be made by emailing Doug Krawczyk at rdklou1@gmail.com or by calling Doug Krawczyk at 502-592-6864.
When making a reservation for more than yourself, please list the names of everyone for which you are making a reservation. If you are calling Doug, and get his voicemail, please spell your name so he can properly identify the reservation.
If you wish to join us for just the program, you must still make a reservation so we can assure you have space and a seat. If you are attending just the program, you can call Doug anytime up to 4:00 PM the day of the Meeting.
Reminder for Table Reservations: Tables for parties of eight (8) can be reserved. When making a Table Reservation, please list the names of everyone in your party. That will ensure everyone in your party will be at the same table and enable us to manage our meeting space in a more efficient manner.
Make Your Meeting Reservations Online!
Members of the Round Table now have new options for making dinner reservations, You can go to our new website, www.LouisvilleCWRT.com and make your meeting reservation and make your payment.
More About Our Speaker Harold Holzer
Holzer has appeared on numerous television programs: C-SPAN (200 times), Washington Journal, In Depth, and Q&A. He was also a guest on the 2008 special series, The White House, C-SPAN3 (American History TV), and several C-SPAN specials devoted to The Civil War Sesquicentennial (2010–2015). He also appeared on the 2005 History Channel special Lincoln, that network's History Center series American Heritage Presents the Lincoln Assassination (1995), and the specials; Assassins: John Wilkes Booth and Investigating History: Lincoln-Man vs. Myth, and the 12-part Fox-TV series Legends and Lies: The Civil War.
Holzer also lectures widely before Civil War & Lincoln groups, museums, colleges, and historical society’s conferences throughout the country. Among the more than 260 different talks he has given across America on land, as well as, on the nation's rivers, Holzer has twice delivered the R. Gerald McMurtry Lecture at the Lincoln Museum (now the Allen County Library) in Fort Wayne, along with the Lincoln Shrine Lecture in Redlands, California, the Frank and Virginia Williams Lecture at LSU/Shreveport, and the inaugural Frank and Virginia Williams Lecture at The Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University in Starkville.
He has also organized several Lincoln symposia and curated six museum exhibitions, notably the award-winning 1999 Lincoln Museum exhibit "Lincoln From Life." He served as lead historian for several exhibitions and symposia at the New York State Museum in Albany, including State of the Union: New York and the Civil War.
Holzer served as chief historian for a number of other acclaimed museum exhibitions, including The Lincoln Image (1984-85), which appeared at The Lincoln Museum, Gettysburg College Library, and other venues; The Confederate Image (The Lincoln Museum, Gettysburg College), Lincoln From Life (The Lincoln Museum), Lincoln and New York at the New-York Historical Society, and the 2015 show, Lincoln and the Jews at the New-York Historical Society.
Career
Educated at the Queens College of City University of New York, Holzer began his career as a newspaper reporter and, later, editor of the New York weekly The Manhattan Tribune. He then served as press secretary to Congresswoman Bella S. Abzug (on Capitol Hill and in her campaigns for the U.S. Senate and mayor of New York), press secretary to 1977 mayoral candidate Mario Cuomo, a government speechwriter for New York City Mayor Abraham D. Beame, and for six years as public affairs director for the PBS flagship station WNET. From 1984 through 1992 he served as Special Counselor to the Director of Economic Development and executive vice president of The New York State Urban Development Corporation, in the administration of Governor Mario Cuomo. He became Director of Roosevelt House in September 2015.
After 23 years of service, Holzer retired from his post as Senior Vice President for Public Affairs at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2015. He first joined the institution as Chief Communications Officer in 1992, was named vice president in 1996 and senior vice president in 2005. His responsibilities included Government Affairs, Multi-Cultural Audience Development, Admissions, and Visitor Services. He joined Roosevelt House that September, where he oversees academic programs for Hunter College undergraduates in public policy and human rights, and hosts public programs on history and current events.
Family
Holzer lives in New York with his wife of 52 years, Edith Holzer, retired director of public affairs for the New York State Council of Child Caring Agencies. The Holzers have two daughters: Meg, an attorney who attended Yale University and NYU Law School, and Remy Kirsch, a Harvard graduate with a Masters in Film Studies from NYU, who is an independent film historian and fundraiser; she is married to author and book critic Adam Kirsch. The Holzers have two grandsons, Charles, 15, and Leo, 3. Listen to Charles' theater podcasts on Backstage Babble.
Harold Holzer Author
Harold Holzer has authored, co-authored or edited 56 books. His latest major book is Brought Forth on this Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration. A book release in 2020 is The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between The White House and the Media—From the Founding Fathers to Fake News (2020) which the New York Times called "a panoramic survey" and the Washington Post hailed as "a lively, deeply researched story" filled with "colorful detail." His previous book was the award-winning Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion, which won the Gilder-Lehrman Lincoln Prize, as well as The Mark Lynton History Prize from the Columbia University School of Journalism, The Hazel-Dicken Garcia Award, and the 2016 Goldsmith Book Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School. Holzer's recent titles include A Just and Generous Nation: Abraham Lincoln and the Fight for American Opportunity (co-authored with Norton Garfinkle); President Lincoln Assassinated!!, a Library of America Anthology of public and private responses to Lincoln's death; Exploring Lincoln and 1865, two co-edited collections of scholarly essays by leading historians. Holzer also issued the 2014 book The Civil War in 50 Objects, written for The New-York Historical Society, for which he served for three years, 2013–2015, as Roger Hertog Fellow. His other recent volumes include Lincoln: How Abraham Lincoln Ended Slavery in America, the official young adult companion book to the Steven Spielberg film, for which he served as historical advisor.
Brought Forth on this Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration
In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation's demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America's newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry. Abraham Lincoln's ascent ran parallel to this turmoil; even Lincoln himself did not always rise above it. Tensions over immigration would split, and ultimately destroy, Lincoln's Whig Party years before the Civil War. Yet the war made clear just how important immigrants were and how interwoven they had become in American society. Harold Holzer charts Lincoln's political career through the lens of immigration, from his role as a member of an increasingly nativist political party to his evolution into an immigration champion, a progression that would come at the same time as he refined his views on abolition and Black citizenship. As Holzer writes, "The Civil War could not have been won without Lincoln's leadership, but it could not have been fought without the immigrant soldiers who served and, by the tens of thousands, died that the nation might live." An utterly captivating and illuminating work, Brought Forth on This Continent assesses Lincoln's life and legacy in a wholly original way, unveiling remarkable similarities between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first.
Harold Holzer Books for Sale at the Meeting
We will have these Harold Holzer books for sale at the May meeting.
Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion (Paperback)
Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration (Paperback and Hardcover)
Monument Man: The Life & Art of Daniel Chester French (Paperback)
President’s Note: Our 600th Meeting in our 65th Year
President’s Note May:
Happy Spring🌷 The field trippers are getting packed for North Carolina, and Harold Holzer is all set to join us in May for our 600th meeting celebration. Don’t miss this VERY special evening with Harold – he is the preeminent Lincoln scholar in the country. We are lucky to have him joining us – bring a friend or three for a wonderful evening of Civil War fellowship. We have Doug Krawczyk to thank for putting this together. Thank you, Doug! And, note, the price for the May dinner is $19.61 – you should all know the significance of that by now!! If you plan on paying with cash at the door, the price will be $20 (Patrick is not bringing coins to the check-in table).
2025 – 2026 Schedule
Saturday May 9 Harold Holzer “I Must Have Kentucky: Lincoln And the ‘Place of My Nativity’”
Friday September 11 Brandon Carter “Savannah in the Civil War”
Friday October 9 Chris Mackowski “TBA”
Saturday November 7 William C. Davis “The Orphan Brigade”
Friday December 11 Phillip Seyfrit and George Ridings “The Battle of Richmond Kentucky”
New Name Badge Policy
We are implementing a new name badge policy. Each member will be responsible for keeping their name badges. No longer will the name badges be brought to the meeting and placed on racks. There will be a box with the name badge sorted alphabetically and you can check this box. When you leave the meeting do not leave your name badge, take it home with you and bring it to the next meeting. New members will be given a name badge and if you lose your name badge you can email John Davis at jddavis1122@gmail.com to get a new one.
Not Receiving the Newsletter?
If you are a member of the Round Table, you should be receiving the newsletter in your email. The newsletter is sent to your email about 12 days before each meeting. There are still a few members who receive the newsletter by mail; we would like all members to receive it by email. If you are not receiving the newsletter, please let us know by emailing John Davis at jddavis1122@gmail.com. It may be that we do not have your correct address or you may have changed your email address to a new one.
The Newsletter is on our Website
If for some reason, you do not get the newsletter or lose or delete your copy, the Newsletter is on our website www.LouisvilleCWRT.com. It is posted on the website approximately 12 days before the meetings.
PINS, PINS, PINS!!!
We are pleased to announce the arrival of our NEW LCWRT LAPEL PINS. THEY LOOK GREAT! Celebrate our amazing history and show your LCWRT pride by picking up a pin and joining in the anniversary celebration (donations for the pins will be accepted and used to support our mission to study and preserve CW history). Quantities limited.
Attest: By Order of:
John Davis Julie Bartlett
Adjutant President