Described by various historians as contentious, tumultuous, dangerous, and even the worst in history. What made it so . Susan on the face of it is what you have to recognize is this was the most consequential election transition in American History. The central issue, of course, is that several Southern States did not recognize the election of Abraham Lincoln as a legitimate. It considered him a sectional president for the fact that by and large to support came from nonslave states and no sooner had he been elected that South Carolina makes good on its promise to proceed toward seceding from the union on the grounds that the election did not represent its interest. Host lets set the stage for the transition. James buchanan had announced that he would be a one term president , but we did a regular president ial Leadership Survey and James Buchanan always falls at the bottom of the list as the worst leader in american president ial history. How would you characterize his leadership skills and how we conducted his administration and how he left the country as it moved toward the election . Susan it does seem to be the way historians assess him in large part because the next thing we know is the civil war. It feels a little bit like a categorical characterization of him. You are right that his administration came under a lot of criticism. He was fairly sympathetic to the proslavery interest of the south, he championed the dred scott decision, which Many Americans felt like a complete abdication of leadership editorial of interest that drove the Republican Party around the abolition of slavery in the west and he earns that number one spot in terms of how he conducts the transition, and that is a way in which he openly rejects secession, he believes in the union but he consistently says over and over and publicly that he has no power to prevent the Southern States from leaving. He sets up this real problem that secession is wrong but i will not do anything about it. Host in your analysis it is ineptitude on his part or an interpretation of his powers as president and sympathy towards the south and wanting to undo what the voters at actually chosen in 1860. Susan that is fair. He does not believe the election is illegitimate. He is frustrated by the Republican Party and openly blames the party for the crisis. The first Public Statement he makes after the election is his address to congress after november and the entire country is riveted. In the address, he is very caustic. He blames abolitionist for this fact that Southern States are seceding and that feels like an abdication of responsibility. It feels like he is making the crisis worse. Host how are we to interpret the fact that his party actually nominated two candidates in 1860 . Susan that seals the deal. When democrats meet in charleston, the sweltering heat of the summer the convention falls apart on the issue of slavery. Northern democrats and southern democrats cannot see eye to eye. They are sympathetic to slavery in terms of wings of the party that southern democrats are not satisfied that Stephen Douglas is enough proslavery so they walked out of that convention. Anyone paying attention to Party Politics in the summer of 1860 can see the election of Abraham Lincoln and republicans had gotten a tremendous boost of likelihood. Host what about the republicans that year . This is only the second time they had advanced a candidate for election. How united where they . Susan it is crucial for our viewers to understand as you just reminded them this is only the second time the Republican Party had mounted a president ial ticket. We are talking about a party that is five years old going from losing its first effort and two winning in the second. It was not the favorite candidate. He is known as the dark horse and has a strategy that i quite like. He is everyones second favorite. And he crucially doesnt alienate anyone. The leaders or presumed leaders are unacceptable to either weighing. Two either wing you have border states, more conservative republicans who find someone like seward who is antislavery unacceptable, but lincoln is the one that can bring all of them together. You hinted at something. After that election the forefront of lincolns of mind is not just having his cabinet and dealing with the crisis but unifying this new party. Host was the election really only fought on that single issue, the preservation of the union and the future of slavery . Susan it does come down to that. There are other issues in american politics in the 19th century but that is the key. The key elements are not just slavery but slavery in the territories, a referendum on that issue. Host lets look at the results on election day. There were four candidates and at that time only white males had the opportunity to vote in the united states. He won the election with a clear majority and carried 18 states. What are the things to know behind those numbers . Susan the things my students find most remarkable is that he was 40 of the popular vote. That is a statistic that deep southern democrats tout as an absolute definitive judgment on the illegitimacy of the election. Host did southern voters take part or do they sit it out because they saw it as a sectional election . Susan that is an interesting question. Most Southern States didnt participate in the typical way and in the deepest Southern States, the states considered most depended on slavery, southern democrats, the most ardent proslavery part wins, so you can see some contours that have everything to do with slavery but also the pattern of secession that will occur after the election. Host the fact that he only received 40 of the popular vote is interesting to your students. How about this . The fact if you tally all three candidates together they did not equal lincolns numbers . Why is that also important for him setting the stage to have a mandate . Susan we deal a lot with the data in the 1860 election and they say the problem was there was a four way election, the democrats split. That is just part of the problem. This is a fragmented election, that even as you said the constitutional union, northern and southern democrats banded together lincoln still would have prevailed. The key there is to understand that the electoral strength is moving in a certain direction that has to do with population trends. Host as we are wondering what will happen with the Senate Majority in the outcome of the 2020 election how did congress fare for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 . Susan the republicans do well. It is very sectional. It gives him a strong what i would call mandate. The other thing to consider about congress is that after South Carolina secedes, after the troubles that push Southern States to leave, you have an election where republicans do well and the rest of secession is compounded by the fact that deep southern prosecession slavery representatives are leaving for the capital what that makes possible is a republican agenda that might not otherwise have been possible. Lincoln does not face the kind of scrutiny and opposition and delay in his cabinet that he might if there was a full democratic strength Opposition Party and toward the end of buchanans administration it , makes it possible to bring in kansas as a free state and a whole host of new territories, including colorado. The country is simultaneously shrinking and also growing. It is remarkable. Host would you spend a minute talking about the journalism of the time and how they supported the candidates and their causes . It was an age of highly partisan media and the time people only read what their interests were, which has parallels to what we are seeing today in the country. Susan that is a wonderful observation. When you say partisan media that you mean it quite literally. You have the secession winter and interregnum for lincolns inauguration, you see all kinds of tension. What is lincoln saying this week . Why is he not seeing something on x . What is buchanan saying . All of it is filtered through your political identity. I cannot stress that enough. In some ways it is so resonant , with what we are seeing today that from november to march people saw events through the lens of their own party. Host we are in an era where inaugurations happen in march. Did the new inauguration start in march or did they begin their session in january . Susan they do not come back into session until july. It creates an enormous problem. This is before the 20th amendment. We still have president s inaugurated in march and i want to impress that upon your listeners. Think about what an interminable period what that winter was from the first tuesday in november until the first week in march. A seemingly endless period when the country is on a knife edge. When lincoln is inaugurated congress is not in session and , will not be back until july. That creates all kinds of problems because of lincoln as to face some of the first crises around fort sumter. He raises a militia without the permission of congress. That becomes an area in which he is scrutinized because congress is not in session. Host you told us James Buchanan made his speech to the nation shortly after the election. What happened with him . Did he stay in washington for the rest of the time of the transition and was he vocal during much of that time . Susan he does stay in washington, and scholars have pointed out is all you have to that all he really wanted to do is go back to pennsylvania. He is one of the oldest president s at that time. He is there for the crisis, and he is sending mixed messages, on the one side he is saying secession is absolutely illegal and on the other so that not doing anything and there are consequences for that. Not least of which is in that long interregnum before lincoln is inaugurated and some stronger someone who takes a stronger federal stance, Southern States are taking control of forts and garrisons, federal property. The confederacy, when it does that means that form and go to war, is stronger than it might have otherwise been. So buchanans action, or inaction, has consequences. Host why would a sitting president not use federal troops to defend federal garrisons . Susan the real question is whether he isnt violating state rights and whether he has the power to do that. And he does send the star in the west in early january off the coast of South Carolina to reinforce that, but they are fired on by South Carolina and they retreat. That action in early january is responsible for that second wave. You have South Carolina at the at christmas declaring itself out of the union, and right after that where they pulled back from using force, you had in rapid secession joining South Carolina to form the confederacy. Mississippi, florida, georgia, alabama, texas, and louisiana. Host we talked about what James Buchanan did. Abraham lincoln stayed in his home city of springfield, illinois. How visible was he during this period . Susan he takes visitors. He is visible locally, for sure. A lot of wellwishers as well, but the interesting thing is this is where lincoln is scrutinized. In other words i would say that , for a long time civil war scholars really look at this period and thought why did lincoln not do more . Why did he not reach out more, placate the south . He has come to be described as deploying a masterly inactivity. In other words he is careful , about what he says, he doesnt he does speak, but he does not speak about slavery and what he repeatedly says it is my record stands for itself. What he means is that on many issues he is open to hearing suggestions. He wants to halt the momentum of secession but there is one issue on which he is inflexible and that is the founding principle of the party that elected him. Congress has not just the right but the obligation to forbid slavery from spreading into the territories. Host all eyes were on his cabinet selections during that period of time and he did a lot of interviewing of people in springfield. What was he trying to do with the cabinet he was assembling and how was it viewed by partisans on both sides of the issue . Susan i think he is trying to create balance. The Republican Party is a Fragile Coalition as you implied earlier. It has ardent antislavery elements, the former whigs, a little more tentative about augmenting a quasiabolitionist position and those folks do not get along together always. The convention in chicago should showed off some of those divisions. Lincoln is carefully reaching out to certain types of people, including a more conservative republican from missouri as well as William Seward from new york who represents the ardent antislavery ring. It is complicated. It is also a cabinet that has gone down in history by scholars as choosing one of the more unfortunate individuals, simon cameron, who was known for being an open grifter when it comes to corruption and fraud. To placatesummoned the interests of people of pennsylvania. Host lincoln while he was in springfield did he use any , allies to help advance his issues or reach out to the Buchanan Administration . Susan it is not just in washington but around the country. His fellow senator is a close colleague, someone who had bested him in the race for Senate Several years earlier who is now his key emissary. To your point, he uses individuals like trumble to kind of telegraph messages into washington. There is a frantic effort to stave off secession, to end the crisis and reach some kind of compromise. The other thing i think it fascinating and my students led absolutely love this is that , in this time, december and january, lincoln is also writing to his former colleagues from congress, john gilmore, Alexander Stephens. These are men he trust and in the case of Alexander Stephens this is a man who openly criticizes this union. Stephen says to his fellow southerners this is not the way , to get what we want. We are safer in the union then out of the union. In my mind lincoln is reaching out strategically. It does not work out. North carolina and georgia joined the confederacy, but he is putting out feelers to push things in a certain direction. Host another interesting contrast between the incumbent and the incoming president. James buchanan was perhaps the most experienced politician of the era. He held almost every post you can think of it. Before ascending to the presidency. Abraham lincoln, one failed Senate Campaign and one term in congress. What do you make in terms of the difference and political fields between the two without the requisite experience behind it . Susan i was reflecting on that this morning. I thought to myself, Abraham Lincoln would have a tough time today in the experience realm. He would not fare very well as a one term congressman who goes back to practicing law in springfield. That is a tough one. Lincolns estimation grows in hindsight. One thing we fail to appreciate was how much criticism lincoln received during the war throughout the war from different games. From different camps. Obviously hated in many parts of the south but deeply resented by democrats in the north for provoking a war that was unnecessary, if you will, for ignoring overtures to peace. We consider lincoln a masterful politician. He remains the one not just historians but leadership types, communication scholars, everyone takes from lincoln what they will but much of that is because , we know the outcome of the story. Host in setting the stage for his administration lincoln decided to embark on a 13 date train trip from springfield to washington. Tell our listeners about that story. It brought out crowds at nearly every stop and he interacted with the public along the way. How important was that in setting the tone for his presidency . Susan that is a good question because it is a kind of symbolic move. It is a long train ride from illinois through what we would call the upper midwest toward the atlantic and down into washington. Not a lot of consequential speeches happen along the way. Those speeches are scrutinized and because the telegraphs can be printed or reported upon people are paying close attention to where he is, but it is more symbolic to where he is doubling down on the meaning of the union, on the fact that this country is more than an amalgamation of states. It has a higher purpose. And that is an element of lincolns thinking that this country has a purpose. It is more than just a nation as such. He was also bringing out crowds as large as 50,000 people in a much less populous country. It had to also build excitement among his supporters, which would be useful in dealing with congress and his own goals going forward. Susan i forget, it was not in philadelphia, but someplace along the way there is a young girl who write him a letter suggesting he might look good with a beard and that is the beginning of that. Host and shows he takes advice. Susan he is open to suggestions. Host it is well documented on the last leg of that trip that lincoln survived an assassination plot. Who was behind that ended and the second question is, did president Buchanan Spohn in any way to that attempt . Susan i have limited knowledge in that area. I do not have any record of it buchanan responding. It was pinkerton agents who brought the information to lincoln and that there was a heightened risk in baltimore and this is something that is really interesting. After the inauguration, the crisis at fort Sumter Lincoln needs to call up the militia, and the ones who march through baltimore are assaulted. I want you to think about that for a maryland is a state that second. Remains in the union despite the fact that it is a slave state. The sympathies in maryland in the opening months of the war were openly hostile to the union and openly proconfederate and you see that in the way they treat the union soldiers. There has been a lot of debate on how substantial those threats on lincolns life were but later behaviors show us it was not a peaceful thing to be marching in baltimore on the way to the capital. The upshot is that lincoln endures all kinds of grief as a coward who slinks into washington because he is trying to get around assassination attempts. Host lets move to Inauguration Day. What do we know about president buchanans outreach to his successor . Was he cordial . Was he welcoming to the new president . Susan to my mind it was a cordial handoff. I do not know the details of buchanans behavior that day. Buchanan was frustrated with lincoln, and lincoln has not much interest and not much to gain by responding to those overtures. Host we found a clip in our Video Archives of an actor reading the last paragraphs of Abraham Lincolns first inaugural address. Lets listen to the scenes that he closed his inaugural address on in 1861 and have you come back and talk about setting the tone even though we know the consequences of what would happen next. Lets listen. [video clip] we are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained. It must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hard stone all over this broad land will yet swell the courses of union when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature. Host susan, what was he saying there and how was it received . Susan that speech is so rich. You could spend weeks on it was with students because there are so many dimensions. The first thing i want to go back to is how deeply polarized the country had become by march 4, 1861. For northerners that speech is seen in one way as an overture, as in olive branch, essentially saying the ball is in your court southerners. We are not provoking. And yet by southerners it was seen clearly as an assertion of federal power. That is one thing to keep in mind. The most important thing i think about that speech is that lincoln holds his ground and asserts the primacy of the union. He says secession is anarchy. It is impossible. What he means there is that states cannot opt out of the union. The union was something larger than the states. It is older than the constitution, the declaration. There is a spirit that animates the union so secession does not make any sense. States do not exist outside of the union. So it is a new kind of constitutional ideal for what the nation will be in terms of its organic whole, and lincoln was committed to that. He is willing to expend a lot of lives in service to that but he makes clear there are many things in which he will compromise. He is even willing to consider a constitutional amendment. But he will not compromise on the extension of slavery into the territories, so the upshot of that speech really is to southern secessionists, you are complaining because you lost an election but nothing else has happened. Host as we know what a month later on april 12, the civil war got underway. As we close here, some perspective about this. We are looking at two difficult president ial transitions, consequential as you said in this case because it is almost the end of the union. Are there any specific lessons for what the country is going through today . Susan that one is tough and i want to be modest here that we have that we have a radically different world. In terms of the speed of the speed of information and the size of of the country. I hope 1860 is not 2020 and i think the kind of divisions at the country was facing in 1860 were ones where ideology wasnt was layered on top of geography. This is not to say it was fissurese, but the were much clearer then i think they are today. Host susan schelten chairs the history department. Thank you for spending time and giving us perspective on president ial transitions of the past. Host in our next half hour we continue our look at contentious president ial transitions with the 1932 election when , republican Herbert Hoover lost in a landslide to Franklin Delano roosevelt. We began with fdrs inaugural address in 1933. [video clip] the industrial enterprise lies in every side. Farmers find no markets for their produce. The savings of many years and thousands of families are gone. More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence and an equally great number toil. With little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the stark realities of the moment. Primarily this is because the ruler of the exchange of mankinds goods have failed through their own stubbornness and incompetence. Host dr. Eric rauchway we are talking about historic, difficult transitions between president s of opposing parties. You literally wrote a book about one of those. Set the stage for us about the state of the country during which this first transition into fdrs presidency took place. Eric during the Election Year of 1932 the great reached its the Great Depression reached its depth so you have an unemployment approaching if not quite reaching one in four workers without jobs. Many other people were underemployed. You have a situation where Agricultural Commodities have dropped so low it was often not worth it for farmers to harvest them and send them to market and so farmers were going out of business and that losing their mortgages. You had people going hungry in many parts of the country and food that was not worth it to sell and other parts of the country. It would not be an exaggeration to say the economy at it visibly broken. And therefore not only had capitalism and commerce reached a situation of crisis. So indeed had democracy. People had begun to lose faith in the government would do what they needed for them to do. That was the atmosphere as the nation approach the election. Host what was happening internationally . Eric internationally, the situation was much the same. The Great Depression was a global event. It afflicted europe badly and germany had slid into depression a bit earlier than many other countries, and in response you saw the rise of the nazi party to power. Adolf hitler had earned enough votes to make him chancellor. Imperial japan was on the march abroad and was about to leave the league of nations over an episode into manchuria and the International Order was falling apart. Host you said people were losing faith in the democratic process. What was the situation like on election day . What percentage of those eligible voted, and what were the results like . Eric i do not know what voter turnout was on election day. Host was a resounding defeat for hoovers policies . That is the point of the question. Eric the election of 1932 it definitely an ideological one where roosevelt promised a new deal and under that heading promised all manner of things. Most notably a Massive Public , works programs, support for agriculture, Unemployment Insurance, so not only a Recovery Program from the depression but a rebalancing of the economy to make it more equitable, and hoover attacks that program as being socialistic. He said he smelled the fumes had recently boiled over in russia and he would propose any such would oppose any such measures if he were reelected and he lost in a landslide. He only won majorities in six of the states. Host to twitter and insults about candidates being transmitted globally during the campaign. What was the tenor like between the two men in the 1932 election . Eric hoover did not shy away from explaining that he thought roosevelt was unsuited to be president. Because he belonged to the radical left wing of the Democratic Party. That roosevelts proposed policies were socialistic in nature, they would bankrupt the country, that they would crack the timbers of the constitution, that they would negate the ideas on which the American Civilization was founded. That sort of thing. Hoover was very clear she believed roosevelt was unfit to be president. And that the new deal would run everything that it made America Great to that point. Roosevelt himself singled out hoovers administration for criticism but mostly it was a fairly without victory because without vitriol because the fact were against hoover at that point with unemployment so high and prices so low and a sustained economic crisis for almost the full four years of his administration. Host i would like the audience to hear the two men in their own words. This is Herbert Hoover in his own words. Its one of his closing pages to the American Public in 1932, four days before the election. Lets listen to what he had to say about the state of the economy. [video clip] my fellow citizens, from the Congressional Elections in 1930 down to the present moment the strategy of the Democratic Party has an effort to implant in the unthinking minds of the deliberate misrepresentation, the falsehood that the Republican Party is responsible for this worldwide catastrophe. [indiscernible] says that the depression was manmade. I agree with that. But they say the men who made it was myself personally. They expressed no gratitude. That in my manufacture of this world crisis, i have lifted the country much easier than russia or south america. Host what do you hear there in that pitch to voters . Eric i hear things hoover generally said that American People should be thankful. [indiscernible] though it did so on a small scale and most would use the tariff on a small scale to influence the economy. As he said there i have let people off a lot easier then they have been in western europe and russia. He pitched himself as the champion of free market capitalism and less interventionist government and represented the democrats as being the opposite of that. Host lets move into the transition period. This is the day after winning the election, Franklin Roosevelt speaking to the American Public. [video clip] i am glad of this opportunity to extend my deep appreciation to the electorate of this country which gave me yesterday such a great vote of confidence. It is a vote that had more than mere party significance. It transcended party lines and became a national expression of liberal thought. It means i am sure the message of the people of the nation firmly believe there is great and actual possibility in an orderly recovery so they will through a well conceived and actively directed plan of action. Such a plan has been submitted, and you have expressed approval of the plan presented to you. Host it would take a month for that plan of action to begin. What happened immediately after the election . How did the states get set for such a difficult four months between them . Eric hoover conceded the election on election day. He had no choice given the nature of the vote and it was clear he had lost the election. He never conceded the substance of the argument. The new deal as roosevelt had framed it during the Campaign Began to work toward it represented a fundamental threat to the american way of life and so he devoted himself to preventing roosevelt from enacting it. This was the last time a president would be inaugurated on march 4 so there was a long wait for roosevelt would be able to take the oath of office, and during that time there would be the lameduck congress, the Congress Outgoing would continue to meet. Roosevelt worked with Democratic Party leaders and had his aides work with leaders to enact measures, most readily a farmer relief bill that closely resembled the act that would be enacted when roosevelt came into office. Hoover worked to defeat that to prevent anything like that to be enacted between the election and inauguration. Hoover was opposed on principle to new deal style legislation. He was determined to not cooperate with efforts to enact it so long as he retained the power of the president. He lobbied against it, and threatened to veto it. He made it clear that nothing like that would get through congress. He said i do not want the congress to do anything. He tried to make sure nothing would get through the congress. Host the first meeting between the two men happened on november 22. Are there any important things to tell about that conversation, what the dynamics were between the two of them . Eric this is a case where we only have a few direct sources about what happened during that conversation because there were four people present. Hoover, that then secretary, roosevelt and one of his aids who roosevelt took a because he was not an economist and businessman, and roosevelt did not want to signal any particular thing about what his cabinet might be or give anything away as far as his relationship to economic policies. We have these remarks and some of the things roosevelt had for notes and hoovers testimony as to what happened there. It seemed hoover tried to use this meeting as a way to demonstrate his mastery of International Diplomacy and tell roosevelt he could not Carry Forward with anything like the new deal, that he had to move forward with hoovers plan and he tried to get roosevelt to agree with him to establish a program moving forward. Host what was the outcome . Eric roosevelt understood it correctly that it would be disadvantageous for him to go it with hoover on continuing hoovers policies because he had promised very different policies so he politely declined. There is a feeling in the hoovers peoples part that was not gracious. Host how was this playing out in the press at the time . Eric people did not know what to expect from this kind of situation. It is kind of anomalous in American History and World History for their this to be this long hangover where it has lots that it could do, but no real instructions from the voters to do it. Earlier that year the congress had proposed the 20th amendment which would drastically shorten this period of time to where what we have today where the president is inaugurated on january 20. Which is still a long time when you compare it to most democracies in the world. Because of the nature of the crisis, which had begun to accelerate late in the summer of 1932 and get worse, i think people hoped that there would be some kind of policy coming out of this period to address the depression more aggressively, more in keeping with what roosevelt promised but that would have entailed hoover giving up on his principles. When she was not going to do. Host did the two men make any other attempts to reconcile or Work Together . Eric there was a lot of back and forth and most of it was not particularly conciliatory to borrow your word. Eventually hoover decided he was going to publish some of their snippier exchanges and that certainly spoiled things going forward, maybe most notably in february because the inauguration was not going to be until march. Roosevelt was the object of an assassination attempt in florida. He was narrowly missed by the bullet from an assassins pistol. A person near him, the mayor of chicago was fatally shot, and hoover wrote roosevelt a long letter to address the circumstances as they then were. Hoover spent a long time drafting this letter. We know that because of the archival record that we have. Hoover attempted to draft his letter in pencil, so he carefully drafted this letter to roosevelt which congratulated him for escaping death and went on for many pages to blame roosevelt for the current state of the economy and went on to state you and you alone could address the ongoing depression by renouncing his plans for the new deal. Host is the perpetrator of the assassination attempt important to know in the scheme of how people were responding to the tension in the country . Eric the wouldbe assassin was an italianamerican. I do not know we could say his motives bordered directly on the situation. Its not really clear. He seems to have been mentally unwell and to have had some hallucinations. He was an italianamerican, a registered republican. There were people to this day who believe he was not trying to shoot roosevelt, that his intended victim was the mayor of chicago. Host one detail i read about that nine page letter to fdr is that it actually was transmitted with the misspelled name of roosevelt. Is that correct . Eric i think that is an uncharitable thing to say of hoover. If you look at the archival evidence it may have been written in haste. I am not sure it was misspelled. Host no intent there. Eric i was going to say there were many petty exchanges between the two men but i am not sure that is one of them. Host this standoff between the two of them continued until inauguration itself. What was the day before the inauguration like . Eric by this time the price and the depression had deepened into a panic. Even banks that were sound were going to close their doors and were rushing to withdraw their money from the base. Many states add close the banks had already closed the banks to prevent this hemorrhaging and there was a widespread call for a federal bank holiday so that there could be an auditing of the books and a determining of which banks were sound in an attempt to stop the panic. The Federal Reserve itself was on the bank of collapse because people were taking their paper money to the Federal Reserve and were withdrawing gold in exchange. There was a massive withdraw from private banks, the Federal Reserve system and the whole Financial System was on the brink of some kind of catastrophe. There was an outcry even among conservative people for the president , so Herbert Hoover to close in the banks. Hoover refused to do that again that it was in the nature of capitalism that you kept the banks open so the bad ones could go under. And this was a regrettable but necessary process, and hoover refused repeatedly right through the inauguration to allow the banks to be closed even when the Federal Reserve assured that he was ordered to do so in the wee hours of the morning of the inauguration. Hoover knew by this point roosevelt would close banks immediately upon taking office, that he would take the nation off the Gold Standard to prevent that aspect of the panic and to pursue a policy of inflation. Hoover knew what roosevelt was going to do and he could have preempted roosevelt by placing his own restrictions. Again, as a matter of principle, he refused to do this. There was increasing desperation in the nation and hoover himself was increasingly frustrated and upset with the inability to get what he wanted out of the last days of his presidency as he told an aide at the end of business that day we have , reached the end of our strength. Host hoover attended the inauguration. What with the dynamic like between the two men on that day . Eric there are famous illustrations of the two of them of the apparent discomfort. Or at least on Herbert Hoovers face that appears evident. He was not vividly warm and generally so you do not want to read in too much but he doesnt he does look miserable to be there in a accompanying roosevelt to the inauguration and he appears to have exited as as soon as it was seemly to do so. It roosevelt was very charismatic, somebody very good at conveying a spirit of confidence and cheer. A famously expensive smile and that was on display on Inauguration Day and roosevelt had a confident speaking voice as we heard in the clip that you played and that was evident in , the inaugural address where he said addressing the banking and financial panic the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We can move forward in removing the moneychangers from the temple and move forward with our civilization if we can get this panic behind us. Host Herbert Hoover lived until 1964. How did he look back on this period of time . Eric hoover never stopped [indiscernible] roosevelt. For a time after 1932, he expected to be the the nominee of the Republican Party in 1936. That did not happen. He was widely regarded as a failure. He did begin to write immediately after the new deal, explained why the new deal ran counter to the principles of American Civilization and the way forward for the Republican Party was to make clear the new deal was antithetical for what for which the republicans stood. Being an antinew deal party was going to be the way forward for republicans, and at first he did not get a lot of traction with fellow republicans. He felt like an unheard prophet for many years but by the time you got into the 1950s and 1960s and there began to be republicans like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon who regarded what hoover thought as what the Republican Party will become. So by the time he died, when goldwater was campaigning for the presidency he did not live to the election. He did live to see is principles enshrined at the core of the Republican Party. Host if we look at this that one year later the 20th amendment was ratified shortening the inauguration and setting the date at january 20, something the administration urged states to ratify. If we look at this as having parallels with what the country is going through right now where would you see them . Eric time is shorter than it was in 1932 and 1933. On the other hand, things that move a lot quicker these days and the presidency is a much more powerful institution that what it was then largely as a result of roosevelts presidency. The current occupant of the white house can do a lot more in a short time than what Herbert Hoover could have done in 1932. We are in the middle of a great crisis, and it seems like it is the mismanagement of that crisis that led to the defeat of the incumbent which is an unusual thing in american political history. But we have a long time to go before a new policy of managing a pandemic can be implemented by an Incoming Administration and it looks like the Outgoing Administration has no intention of making that way for Crisis Management and quite the opposite, much like Herbert Hoover, may oppose it on principle and appear they will continue on their course as vigorously as they have at this point. Host when you look at the impact of the standoff, which was ideological and personality driven, they were very different kinds of people, so it was emotional and personal as well as ideological, when you look back at that period of type in of time in your research what was your conclusion as to how things could have been different if the two had found a way to Work Together . Eric when we look at the data on recovery from the Great Depression it begins immediately upon roosevelt taking office. Generally economic historians do , not think that is a coincidence. Because of roosevelts inflationary expectations, creating amongst americans the idea that prices are going to go up, that creates an incentive for people who have money to spend it because it will fall in value. People begin to have jobs to produce things, which is what turns things around, and you can see production indices rising immediately in march 1933, so that was the thing that spurred the recovery. We can say that could have happened earlier had hoover gone along in some way or another with roosevelts program, the farm bill or the policy of inflating the currency. Any of those things could have spurred that recovery earlier and if that recovery had begun earlier it is a lot more people who would not have lost their savings, their jobs or even their lives. Host another question about transitions as we close out. In addition to the 20th amendment passing by 1964, the , president ial transition act, legislation was passed to begin to pay for this through the federal government, and i am wondering if you look with this long lens of history about changes that were necessary to make transitions between presidencies work more smoothly, especially ideological changes or party changes, are there any changes that could be made to our system as it is structured now that would facilitate a change in power and make it work better for our nation . Eric apparently the thing that needs to happen is that these to clarify that these changes are in the hands of a nonpolitical civil service. We do not quite have in the federal government, at least not at the highest levels. There is a stipulation in that transition act that funds be allocated to the president elect as soon as the head of the General Services administration ascertains who that is, and there is no real stipulation about how that ascertainment needs to be made or whatever the objective criteria were. There needs to be clearer and less political ways to make those ascertainments smooth so that the transition is smooth. Host dr. Eric rauchway wrote the book on the transition between Herbert Hoover and fdr. Thank you for giving us some Historical Context to president ial transitions as the country worked its way through this one. I appreciate your time. Eric thank you very much. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at cspan. Org. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] with joe biden as president elect, stay with cspan for live coverage of the election process and transition of power. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. From the sunday news programs now, what some senators are saying about the prospects for another covert relief package. Thats beinge worked on is about 900 billion right now. Do you expect it to get past this week . Will be answered if it does, but we have a few remaining issues. I think we can work them out. If we can, and bring this forward, i hope that senator mcconnell will let us bring this as quickly as possible. We have a lot of work to do, and just a few days to do it. Any doubt that you will . I dont know the answer to that yet. He has expressed answers positive feeling toward it. There are five republican senators who are working night and day. He really is a superhuman effort on our part to get this together in time to help the American People as quickly as possible. Think of millions of people, 12 million will lose their Unemployment Insurance the day after christmas. Think of the businesses that are trying to decide now, in heartbreaking moments, whether or not they can continue. With about the logistics money in this bill. We want to make sure the vaccine is on the road and vaccinating people all across america as quickly as possible. These are really lifeanddeath issues and we ought to address those quickly. President trump has indicated he would sign a 908 going dollar package. There is only one package out there and that is ours. Leader mcconnell has said he is not interested in making a point. He wants something that passes into law. It only can pass into law if it is bipartisan in the house and the senate, and ours is. Neither have said we will sign your bill, we have final language. Our final language will probably come out earlier this week. Clearocrats have made it generally that they oppose liability, protection for businesses that reopen during the pandemic. Is that nonnegotiable for republicans . Does it have to be in the bill . Defined nonnegotiable. There has to be some liability protection. Think about it. At first, the cdc and dr. Fauci you were saying dont wear a mask. And then they were saying, wear a mask. So there has been ambiguity as we have been going through. And think about that small restaurant where people were told not to wear a mask. Now someone is going to file a claim. Just the discovery would make them bankrupt. So we have to have something we negotiate that is acceptable to both. And frankly, that is one of the sticking points right now. The chair of the Federal Reserve is concerned that its more likely we are under doing it than overdoing it. Do you concur that youre probably doing less and you should be doing . This is an emergency relief package only to get through the first quarter. Every indication says more money is needed. This gets us basically through the lifelines that people need and the Small Businesses that can survive and not go under. Unemployment checks that people will be losing. Every indications has more is needed. Joe biden says this is a down payment. His team can put together a different proposal that takes us down the road. If we dont do something now, and on both sides of the aisle, my colleagues have said, the 908 billion an investment we make into the citizens of this country to try to keep this economy from collapsing. Could be more important than 2 trillion would be in february or march. By then it might be too late for people in Small Businesses. Johnson took questions on the governments response to the coronavirus pandemic including the announcement of an approval of vaccine. Confirmed a vaccine would begin distribution. The u. K. Became the first country to approve the pfizer coronavirus vaccine. This is 35 minutes. On far too long and engaging with Northern Ireland and the Irish Government and fiscal policy of Northern Ireland and come back to the house, this has to be something done with the support and engagement with the engagement of Northern Ireland. That completes the questions for Northern Ireland and i start with chris green. I apr