In this 200th anniversary year of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, a Pittsburgh-born historian wants to add another name to the mix: Andrew Carnegie.

The short, sturdy Scot and the tall, lanky politician both believed in the golden opportunities America offered -- if you worked hard, Paul Krause points out.

"Carnegie agreed with Lincoln on several key issues -- what it means to be a good man, how to organize society along just lines and what the good life really is," he said, giving a glimpse of his lecture tonight at Duquesne University.

"Both men worked hard and both had ambition that knew no rest," said Krause, "and both succeeded. What they failed to realize is that [in the United States] one can work as hard as Lincoln, work as hard as???Carnegie, do all the right things and still not succeed, through no fault of his own."

The University of British Columbia historian is one of several speakers in the school's monthlong "Darwin at 200: Contributions and Challenges" lecture series co-sponsored by the Bayer School of Natural and Environmental Sciences and the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts.

He's taking up the topic of "Social Darwinism and Philanthropy in Pittsburgh's Gilded Age."

Neither Lincoln nor Carnegie were very familiar with Darwin's theory of evolution but were men whose ideas were formed in the 1850s, "when upward mobility was a realistic possibility for working white men," said Krause.

Said Lincoln, in a statement that Carnegie embraced, "The normal condition of man is hard work, self-denial, acquisition and accumulation."

"The road to success for such men was simple, in Lincoln's view. He called it 'self-improvement,' " Krause said.

"Fortunately for him, he did not live long enough to see how ill-fitted his views were" in the country after the Civil War, he added.

"Both Lincoln and Carnegie were inclined to blame those who did not make it for not working hard enough," Krause said, "but there are lots of ex-steelworkers out there who worked hard and were dedicated to their family, and they still could not make it through no fault of their own."

The Civil War would serve as the impetus to launch a "second industrial revolution" that gave Carnegie the chance to amass his huge fortune. After paying $300 for an exemption from military service, he managed the Pennsylvania Railroad's role in delivering supplies for the Union army.

After the war, he moved to the steel industry to provide the transportation industry with rails for its expansion, naming one of his main mills for the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Edgar Thomson.

And, while Carnegie would later cite the philosopher of social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer, as his guide ("after him all had become light and right"), Krause says "the teachings of Ben Franklin and Abraham Lincoln spoke more directly to Carnegie and his colleagues than anything Spencer -- or Darwin -- published."

Krause is the author of "The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892," called a definitive history of the union clash with Carnegie's steel company. He speaks at 7 tonight in Union Ballroom on the Duquesne campus. For more details, 412-396-6332.