OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile
An associate professor of history at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Michael S. Green specializes in nineteenth-century politics and the American West. His works on the Civil War era include Freedom, Union, and Power: Lincoln and His Party during the Civil War (2004); Politics and America in Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War (2010); and Lincoln and the Election of 1860 (2011). His books on Nevada include Las Vegas: A Centennial History (2005), with Eugene Moehring, and Nevada: A History of the Silver State (2015). A recipient of the American Historical Association's Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award, he is also on the board of directors of Las Vegas's nationally known and highly respected Mob Museum. He serves as the executive director of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association and the director of Preserve Nevada, the state's only statewide historic preservation organization.
Abraham Lincoln came from the farthest west of any president up to that time, and contemporaries viewed him as a westerner. Lincoln also made policy in connection with the West, including the idea that slavery should not go there, but in other ways that shaped the country to this day. This lecture examines how Lincoln sought to export Republican ideology to the West, and build up the region and thus the country--including at the expense of those who had lived there for generations.
