You can cherry picked certain things, but later on during his presidency he gains quite deep respect and affection even springfield. He lived in the neighborhood, this was back in illinois, a neighborhood that was full of africanericans. He became friendly to them and he kept corresponding with several of them while he was in the wte house. While he was in the white house Frederick Douglass who was at first thought he was quite conservative of slary that in a couple of timesn the white house and really was astounded. He came out of this thing, this is the least prejudiced white person i think ive ever met. The same thing with sojourner truth. She was an oer africanamerican feminist and she said before i die i want to et this guy, this president abraham lincoln. Sh had a delightful time with him and felt very, very close to hi Martin Delaney who was, we would call him beyond black lives matter. Heas like a black nationalist. Very militant. He became at the end of the war, lioln appointed him the highest appointed army officer he didnt get to serve very ch because the war was almost over but when he became rather close to lincoln and when lincoln died he just cried for like half a day. He was totally devastated, Martin Delaney was. He propose a monument to lincoln that would be an africanamerican woman kneeling, think of that, not a monument of lincoln that a woman with 4 million tears coming out of her eyes and each tier being paid for b a penny from each of the enslaved 4 million enslaved people. On a personal level he was very close and it also grew to respt africanamericans in the civil war the way they fought. If you seen t movie glory you haveince of theort wagner battle but many of the battles of which they fought with the me devotion sometimes even more, sometimes more energy and selfsacrifice. Heeally, really, really admire that but he also relied to a great degree on petroleum nasty who was a popular humorist who was fighting the war on race on the cultural front. He impersonated the copperheads who are thepponents, the conservative democrats. Back then the democrats were merely conservative. At least on the issue of slavery and race. So natspeak impersonated nasby. Full of the in the word but all he was doing when nasby usehat word and used over and or again was my main or impersonating these racist copperheads. People would laugh about this and a lot of people have several people said nasby was jt as greater force as german shermao grant indicating slavery because he w so popar. Lincoln would carry in his cket the nasby papers, the sketches by nasby and would pull them out and read them and he once said i will give up by president s if i could just write like this guy. It sws how deep his hatred of racism was because nasby really makes these copperheads look very, very ugly, really disgusting. Its almosts if though saturday night live ski lets say against to ever, a political figure were accepted as a huge cultural force. Today we are so dispersed in our culture its hard to have o, a single humorist or something at the force that nasby was this real beseller back then. Little more dispersed today but the same idea. Made me think of something, it seemed to me most of the time when lincoln uses the nword, hes doing what youre describing nasby is doing. He tends to use it in a way that is satirical by putting in the mouth of his opponents. It me me wonder when did nasby start fighting the stuff works because lincoln was doi that already by the mid to le 1850s but its a true. It made you undermi the racist argument by caricaturing it and stereotyping it, that mns it sounds in the way,ts almost l brooks type, you know . Im not sure you can get away with that today, the cultures are different now. Its a different culture. When i first encountered nasby, hugh hewitt in newspapers because i read a lot of old wspapers, i said this person frankly is very disgusting. So offensive i can read this then i realized this guy is being funny. I said, yeah he is dissting, so appalling. I realized, he was criticizing lioln left and right of what haens, his real name was david ross locke, hiseal name. Locke had met linco back in the 50s and almost think lincoln a new sort of as you say satirica use of thatord sort of impersonating stephen dougl during the debates might have influenced nasby in the sense because nasby had never written locke had never written that way before, and he had a long interview with lincoln bause he overtook of the debates and would follow lincoln rendered he was a reporter at thatime. A medic minutes hotel room and there were discussing Stephen Douglas a great length. Locke detested Stephen Douglas. I wouldnt be surprised he heard lincoln impersonating a maybe because it was like three years late that he comes up with the first nasby sketch and the first sket one of the first ones is petroleum, this is lincoln in the whiteouse. Theres a kind of direct connection from a vy, very beginning. It could be a case where lincoln let a sense of hum anyway and used his humor again douglas mightve prompted something right. There is a minor strain in at five slavery political culture that doe that, theamous exchange on the senate floor between william seward, the leadingepublican of the day, and Stephen Douglas in which everyone to Stephen Douglas, who were both angling for the esidency. Seward says to douglas, he belittles idea he could possibly elect present on the ground no one could be elected to present who spells the word negro with two gs. Nevertheless, we are attaching lincoln as he is thepecial in the late 1850s, increasingly aplled by the explosion of demagogic racism, and particarly for him because hes in illois facing someone who is arguably the most influential racist demogue. Unlike what we can say about views about slavery which were hostile from the very beginning, he does grow. I think he does grow. On the issue of race, right . When he was in the legislature in the 1830se introduced the suffrage bill wouldorgive the right to vote all white men and exclud black men. And yet as you note correctly in your book, at the end of his life, the very last speech he gives, right, he is the first president toublic indoors giving blacks the right to vote, greg . Yeah. He has grown a lot and sadly of course John Wilkes Booth was in the audience and he says that means to use the nword work, citizenship, im going to put this man through and thats the last three days later he killed hi oth was a white supremacist a lidnd so forth. But yeah, he slowly, i think he did progress. I agr with you, i agree with eric phone in that sense and others that does progress. By 1864 he is sending a letter which he says i think we should at least have limited suffrage of africanmericans. Africanamerican mal because when we didnt get the book until 1920. But still he was really the first one publiy to tragically come out for it, the first esident. The other thing, stick on the subject because its an important subject today specially. Despite some of those remarks you mentioned, t wanted charlson charleston where he said i do not now and never have supported blackserving on juries, voting, really the worst ever made. Despite that, most lincoln had to say about race especially in the 1850s [inaudible] and leaps back to politics. Right from the beginning, in a speech, the negro is a man, my faith tells me all that are created equal and he says that over and over again. The black woman is my equal and Stephen Douglas is [inaudible] he says dosing over and over and over again. Where as when people talk about him as a racist, they picked this one or two quotations out that are clearly driven byhe incredibly demagogic racism that has been thrown at him by Stephen Douglas. Yeah. And i put them in this culture in the 1850s because the reason that Harriet Beecher stowe uncle toms cabinade such an impact, it was aairly simple thing. It showed enslaved people were human beings with rl feelings, family feelings, religious feelings, with the sense of humor, with a love of music today to us tt sense the oldfashioned or to tnk about at, but enslaved people were being treated as things come as property. Legally they were property. They were not reall human beings. All of thisas supported by the pseudoscience of that era, some of which said tha African People were of a a different species and so forth. Paula genesis, the was some of that going on and was all kind of pseudoscientifically and even religiously supported by supposedly the curse of ham in the bible a all that stuff. Lincoln contracted that in the pure speech and says these are humans. Enslaved people are felw humans beings. Even to say that he doet go on and on about bute says thats a fundamental point of view. In the sense even thoh he progresses, he doesnt really move beyond the basic fundamental understanding of the hunity of enslaved people and the black people. Let me see if the are any questions. Has your view of lincoln changed over the years . Did it change as you were writing this book . It did change a lot because i had read the wonrful biographies by other people, b becaus they are what i called standard biographies, they they follow his life facts, and the other interesting and important, i really thought that in the way he was like a star in the heavens. Walt whitman wrote a poem saying lincoln will alway be the western star in the landscape. Thats the way i vie them, kind of distanced and doing his own thing. I was surprised and thrilled by the fact he was so incredibly involv in his culture here what i try to do is leave it like a tapestry. I try not to get too lost i the cultural digressions. I like to always bring it back to linco because hes at the center of my book and so that was a wonderful surprise for me, but he was. Had a similar sense when i first started thinking about lincoln. I had this like you said he was out there, but i couldnt place him. My interest was in his relations [inaudible] and the more i studied him the more it seemed to me he was embedded it returned to be a much deeper, richer, richer culture, antislavery. If i can give people a hint in your forthcoming book, you anchor him very, very deeply in the antislavery point of view in a wonderful way. Let me ask one last question before we go to the questions. About lincolns private life. You have what i think is a very sensible,ensitive, evenhanded view of lincoln marriage to mary todd. You also have a very interesting way of [inaudible] on your than it was also very different from the typical kind of marriage. What ways was a different or represend as this marriage . It was different in the sense that american cture back then was quite patriarchal. The women when he married they gave up their property. There was this thi called by which in way women gavep the independent identity. Women were absorbed into tir husbands and thats part of t reason why Seneca Falls Convention happens in 1848 to protest covert shirt and exclusion of women so forth. But Mary Todd Lincoln was in the sense domestica she called herself a domestic and she took care of the kids and all of that. Shes very independentminded and she wasot afraid of expressing her political opinion. As parents we were unusual because back then people in general punishment gs a lot but they really gave theids quite a lot of latitude. There were certain limits to be sure but lincoln would be in his law office and his voice would come in and upset the ink and scatter the ashes and break the pins. His law partner said if his kids used the as word, sha in his hat lincoln would rub it on his boots and he would appve of it, would le it. He admitted, but he said theres time enough for them to get pokey, to get pokey and old and everything. Let them have fun. Let them enjoy themselves. One of the oldest one you used to be a pnkster, turned out to be aather stuffy man come he became quite pokey to others, unfortunately died, willie died while lincoln was in the white house, and thad died at age 18 bu thad was very mischievous and used toome in during cabinet meetings and climb on and construct and everything like that. But another very unconventional thing was the fact during the law years when they livedn springfiel lincoln was away for almost half of the year because he was on the law circuit. Back then the little towns did not have lawyers so lincoln and a bunch of other lawyers hado go to these little towns. It was about the size of connecticu the circuit. He was gone about 120 days a year so that was unconventional. They had big spaces in their togetherness. In a way it develop a sense of independence on the part ofary todd and lincoln, and evenn the part of abe lincoln. Quite unusual in many respects. There are some questions. Some of the i think you or i could answer very quickly and i will just run through tho before we get to those tt will take little more time. Is there any evidence linking in october 1864 was willing to let the winner of the election a point my senses was no eviden for that kind of no, never. And thus no reason he wouldve ever made an servation until december. My sense is it never came up. No, no, no it didnt come up. I will say that he had written august before that september he had wrien a note and a kind of looks like im going to le, and he wrote a note t his cabinet, he sealed in an envepe and it said it aears, at that time the war was going very badly. I just want to have a Fair Election but also a smooth transition to my sucssor. He assumed he was going to lose. But no, we really dont know about the Supreme Court thing. Another one, did he keep a diary of any kind . No, unfortunately, he didnt keep a diary of any kind. Even the diligent researchers Michael Burlingame has not found. He finds every source. He does. Use one. What is your opinion of danie daylewis, the portrayal of lincoln . Its the first time in my life i began to believe in guns, because when he heard later that he is going to quit actg and retired, that im going to get, im going to go by i got an safe you are not allowed to retire. No, no. I was stunned. I loved it. The film, takes a little latitude here and there, we all know that, but i think he did a really great job. Same thing. Ilmost cried. I never would imagine someone cod do linln. I dont really believe in guns. This one, how would you scribe lincolns leadership styl thats a big question. His leadership style was relaxed, casua but at the same time could be very, very firm. Extremely firm. At the beginning of the war, just before the war broke out six or seven people around and said we have to strike a compromise. Let them take fort pickens and let them take this fort. He said no. If they fire on fort sumter, its war. They fired on fort sumter and he called the5,000 troops. It was war. He kept another goodhing about him was that he managed to negotiate with people in kind of a printed level, even people like mcclellan who ended up being very, very ineffectiven the battlefield. He managed to finesse that relationship enougho he could work his way through his generals and he finallyires mcclellan. He likes upon grant and grant is his bulldog. He allowed himself to sort through very wisely his generals, and to thi strategies of war and you alize war could no longer be ught with what he called squirt gs full of rose water. Sadly it had to be a hard war. Grant and srman with the two people he finallyndsp with them and they indeed and a few other generals likehem under them, vanish off the civil war. I think he did a great job. He alsoddresses his cabinet pret well. Two things that strike me as ias reading your book. He came into his relationship with other people without putting his ego on the line. With mlellan, for example. Mcclellan w horrible to him. He didnt care that mcclellan was nasty and said awful things out him behind his back, as long as mcclellan would fight. And even his cabinet. Someone at theeginning of the worstedoure going to hire chase as your secretary of the treary . Listen, psident lincoln, he feels so much moreuperior to you. He says really . Thats exactly the kind of person i want around me. He didnt want persol loyal. Salmon chase was incredibl progressive and disloyal as well because he tried to supplant lincoln. And yet lincoln didntold hard feelings. Hes the one who ends up on the Supreme Court after the election. Even after he fires salmon chase and he knows chase tried replace him in 186 he knows all of that but he didnt hold any sense of personal disloyalty. As longe chase was doing a good job, which he was, in, under very difficult circumances. Lincoln didnt care about the ego stuff. The other thing he didnt bring, let gettingway with ideology. You do aice job of showing how when the radical republicans were sort of demanding that he only hire antislavery generals, no, i hire generals who will fight and win battles, and i dont care if its a democrat. I dont care if its even a copperhead. If a radical general like ls say fremont cant do it, im going to fire him. Exactly. Even grant had sai before, i am not a lincoln man in the lincolndouglas debates and so forth. And yet grant was like his favorite general. He got the job done. Same with sherman. Sherman was frankly qte racist and religion. He thought frankly africanamericans are better off as enslaved people. And yet sherman, you know, whatever. He was a wonderful general in georgia, in the carolinas. He wrote a couple amazing notes when he hir him. He says ive heard in ways you want to be a dictator. More accurate, you called her a dictator. On generals who win battles can be dictators. I will risk you win battles and i will risk the dictatorip. And yet he hes poker, saying i want to be a dictator. Right, right. The one he right to grant after vicksburg when he says look, i wasnt sure you cou do this. I didnt reay believe in the strategy. I just want to go on recor as saying i was wrong and you are right. H says i was wrong, i was wrong, sorry. He really didnt let ego g in his way. Lets take one last question and People Like Us always get is question. How would reconstruction have been different . Now we get into counterfactual history. My belief, my belief, and i dont know if you agree with m he certainly wouldve handled it much better than Andrew Johnson did. Much better. I believe he wldve wanted to sport the Freedmens Bureau and suppt the idea of 40 acres and a mule. He was such a belief in free labor. Ihink he wouldnt try to encourage the advance of formally elaved people, their advancement both politically and economically. When push came to shove we have the resurgence of thesehite Supremacist Group i think he would have putis foot down fairly firmly at thatoint. I firmly believe that. Whats your feeling about that, jim . Well, as you say its all counterfactual. I believe the wouldv been a lot less drama when the white house and the president because whatever lincolns racial views, he was not hardcore racist the way Andrew Johnson was. I dont know about the 40 acres and a mule. He never expressed himself in favor of ld distribution. It was a little outde the mainstream of the Republican Party politics. Even tt sherman or anybody talks book and read the order carefully. This is a contingent grant of land. You can actually give the land outright. Right, right but i doubt he wouldve done what johnson did. And yete had signed the homestead act wasnt exactly a giveaway of land but it was almost a giveaway of land to enterprising people wouldone into western territories and now was taken over by let of the railroads and went to help later on, but still yet the concept. Yo are right, probably 40 acres and a muleas probably too much. That was a metaphor for the advancement of former enslaved people. Right. Whether it would have changed very much its hard to say because John Hope Franklin onc wrote in his littleook on [inaudible] justn passing he said come sooner or later the federal government was going to lve the south and control in the south was going to go back to white electoral majorities. Whethe it wouldve turned out all the different in thend is hard to say because eventually he would have been president and maven president from but my disabled unless the same until then with again was drama into impeachment. But whether it wouve changed things at all its hard for me. Ihink the best that could happen is he wouldve sd set a good example. Right. But this resurgence, the ultimate redemption of the southerners and all of that at the dengagement of the federal government and so forth, that wouldve happened and maybe jim crow wouldve been a few years shorter or something, im not sure. Utne give you an alternative scenario. Given his, touch, given his longstanding belief there was majority in the south that was hostile to the slaveholding class, its not hard for me to imagine that the Republican Party wouldve had an easier time within the spread of the building that biracial coalition republicans were trying to build. That may have turned out may have made a difference. Certainly in the longer run back then. Maybe not in the ultimate long run, the early 20th century anand birth of the nation and al thattuff. This has been great, david. We he reached the end of our time, and i want to thank you again for asking me to d that. Thank you, and i hope all the ewers, my book is on amazo by it, its terrific. Congratulations to o this wonderful achievent. Thank you so much, jim. Its been great. Thanks a lot. Good night. Good night. Booktv continues on cspan2, television for serious readers. Good afternoon and good morning, welcome. Im Judy Samuelson and im the