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When Abraham Lincoln was first elected, most Southerners did not favor rebellion, says historian William Freehling, Ph.D., of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. They allied with the Confederacy only after Lincoln called up troops to prevent secession.

When Abraham Lincoln was first elected, most Southerners did not favor rebellion, says historian William Freehling, Ph.D., of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. They allied with the Confederacy only after Lincoln called up troops to prevent secession.

Freehling will speak on these topic in a free public lecture Oct. 30 at 3:30 p.m. in the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on Stadium Drive. His talk, “The Road to Disunion: The Climactic Uncertainty,” is one of this fall’s James A. Hutchins Lectures sponsored by the UNC Center for the Study of the American South, with support from the General Alumni Association. The series honors UNC alumnus James Alexander Hutchins Jr. (1917-2002).

A senior fellow at the foundation in Charlottesville, Freehling has taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities and the universities of Michigan and California, Berkeley. He has studied the Civil War and the South for 40 years and wrote the trilogy “Road to Disunion.” The three volumes are subtitled “Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina,” “Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861” and “The South Versus the South: How Southern Anti-Confederates Shaped the Course of the Civil War.”

For more information, visit http://www.unc.edu/depts/csas/Hutchins2007-2008/Freehling.html or call (919) 962-5665.

The last Hutchins Lecture this fall, also free to the public, will be “Unleashing the Loas: The Literary Legacy of the Haitian Revolution in the U.S. South and the Caribbean,” on Nov. 6at 3:30 p.m. in the Alumni Center. The speaker will be John Wharton Lowe, a professor of English and comparative literature at Louisiana State University.

Photo of Freehling: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/releases/Bill%20Freehling1%20(2).JPG

Center for the Study of the American South contact: Lisa Eveleigh (919) 962-0506, eveleigh@email.unc.edu

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