MOUNT VERNON — “How Did Abraham Lincoln Really Get to be President: A Story of Politics and Danger” is the topic for a special visiting author program at the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, Thursday at 7 p.m. Leading the program will be historian and author Peter Dickson, who will have copies of the latest edition of his book, “Old Kenyon and Lincoln’s Kenyon Men.”
The focus of Dickson’s presentation will be the true story of how certain men, especially two men, David Davis and Columbus Delano, associated with Kenyon College and Mount Vernon, played pivotal roles in securing the Republican presidential nomination for Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago.
Davis was a colleague of Lincoln’s on the 8th Judicial Circuit of Illinois. A classmate of future Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon, Davis gathered other lawyers into a team that “wheeled and dealed” on Lincoln’s behalf, stealing the nomination away from New York’s Sen. William Seward at the eleventh hour.
Dickson is a fourth-generation native of Mount Vernon, who graduated from MVHS in 1965 and from Kenyon College in 1969. He went on to earn three master’s degrees from Michigan, Georgetown, and Harvard universities while he was employed as a political military analyst on European affairs and the global nuclear proliferation threat at the CIA.
The program, free and open to the public, will be held in the multipurpose room of the main library, 201 N. Mulberry St. Refreshments will be served. For more information, call the main library at 392-2665, Ext 243.
Published on February 29, 2012
