The Shot That Really Was Heard ‘Round the World by Allen Guelzo

Dr. Allen Guelzo delivered these remarks at the 2025-2026 series of the Levy Forum for Open Discourse. The Levy Forum is a speaker series hosted at the Palm Beach Synagogue, sponsored by ACTA board member Paul Levy and ACTA. The goal of these events is to promote the epistemic virtues that ACTA seeks to promote on university campuses across the country, such as curiosity, objectivity, and wisdom.

Dr. Guelzo is a professor of humanities in the Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. Previously, he served as the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and director of the James Madison Program’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship at Princeton University. An authority on the life and politics of Abraham Lincoln, he is the author of many books on the American Civil War. He is a recipient of the Bradley Prize, and three of his books have been awarded the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.