Um, i think all the different stages matter. From my knowledge of children, you make one impact before they are six or ten or whatever and then when they are adolescent they seem to forget everything. And later on, you are surprised as they seem to remember some. But i think they did the best they could as parents. I think they were strong parents. Some of them turned out and some didnt. So much had to do with luck and the era. [ applause ] thank you so much for coming. Wednesday night, booktv features books about exploring america. First is astoria and then all america and then citizen explorer the namesake of colorados pikes peapeak on the next washington journal, a conversation on prison reform. General mills announced they were reversing plans to make consumers to forfeit their right to suing the company. Later as part of the spotlight on magazine series, brian miller talks about his article on trends in the gambling industry. And an update on the Supreme Court and take your calls. You can join the converation on facebook and twitter. Washington journal each morning at 7 a. M. And now a look at lincoln and his boys. This is an hour. [ applause ] thank you for braving his weather. But as i understand it, last week might have been worse so i probably picked the right week to be here. I might have been delivering this from the airport if we had done this last week. I want to begin the story a little after the civil war on june 13th, 1905. It was less than three weeks before this death that john hay awoke on a boat ship as it steamed from liverpool back to new york. He was a noted poet, historian, former newspaper editor and railroad executive. And he was the secretary of state under two president s. At this point, he was well into his 60s and one of the most powerful men in the world but his bright spirit was alive. His last entry said i dreamed i was at the whitehouse and went to report a problem but the president was lincoln. He gave me two orders to obey. I wasnt surprised by lincoln in the whitehouse but the dream was melancholy. The book i just published through viking is the story of two prairie boys who met in 1851 and forged a friendship. Springfield, illinois in 1860 is where they were found. It offered a front row seat to one of the most biggest upheavals in history. As private secretary they became closer to anyone in the lincoln family. They performed the roles and functions of a modern chief of staff, pres secretary, political direct and president ial body man. Today you would have to spend 20 years moving up the ladder and they did all of them in one. Above all, they did what one report called guarding the last door that opens to the commander and chief. That was noah brooks, one of the many washington insiders who covted their jobs and resented their influence and thought they were too big for their breeches. A fault that seems to be blamed on nature or pillars. It is Little Wonder historians consult their writings frequently because they were sparkling letter writers and provide an eyewitness account of the presidency. We rely on them to help us document that period. It is their life work after lincoln that is the unwritten story. And the lincoln family cholosedo papers to the family and opened them on the 27th anniversary of ted lincolns death. They undertook a mission to create an enduring reputation for their slain leader. And an extensive biography in the century magazine which at the time was the leading circulation in america. That effort was one of the single successful exercises of historical revisionism in history. Writing against southern currents of the time, they created the northern interpretation of the war but it was their portrayal of lincoln which every writer had to stake out a position. They invented the lincoln we know today. The sage farmer, the military j jen genius, a master of a cabinet, the Lincoln Memorial lincoln. These are in every sense the intention or the imagination that was left by these two. Lincoln was all of these things. In some measure there can be no doubt. But it is easy to forget and we do how successful they were in elevating his place in the national memory. While lincoln prided himself on the deep connection to the people, which was a phrase he used often, he never succeeded in translating that popularity with the public in a similar sense of regard among the nations political scheme. The motion bond that lincoln served with soldiers and his family and his stunning elections never inspired an equivalent level of esteem among the many that guarded the history. To many of the men he remained in death as described in life. Good and decent but ill fitted to the responsibilities of a wartime presidency. Leading into the election cycle, many leaders would have agreed with a senator who said this administration has been a disgrace from the beginning with anyone who brought it into power. Lincoln was blamed for four years of military stalemate and set backs and the political blunders that cost the Republican Party in the 1862 off elections. Those were his friends. Democrats regarded him as a tyrant. A man who introduced the draft and taxes to fight the war. Man who freed the slaves and wanted to fight a war to free the slaves. Even after his martyrdom people turn up the nose still. A family of the famous massachusetts family who served in the Lincoln Administration as well and a republican congressman, in 1872 adams delivered a memorial death after the death of William Steward who served under lincoln. He portrayed him as the glue that kept the government together. Reflecting common wisdom among the classes of the day he said i must afirm without hestation that in the history of the government nothing nothing has been made similar to appointing someone so inappropriate for the task as lincoln. And he said only by good grace and luck did lincoln process the wisdom to appoint the quote unquote mastermind of the government and master of the uni union. Naturally this engaged lincolns family and those who served with him and he issued a stinging rebutte. Charles adams was hardly alone. The newspaper editor horrice greerly said he was a leader who tried to end the war early on the battlefield or through negotiation. Lincoln loyalist rolled their eyes but the problem was horrice wrote a lot of books and sold a lot of opinions. The two first met in 1851 in a school in pittsfield, illinois. Hay was a physician son and nickoli was dirt poor. He was an orphaned by the age of 16. Like lincoln, he was an auto dictat that could count his months of formal schooling on two hands. He rose up from being a printers d d devil meaning he did all of office work to becoming a newspaper man and a year or two after that he bought the paper and became the editor in his early 20s. The whole country was afire with the debate over slavery and its prospective spread in the western territory. He became an increasingly antislavery writer. He was appointed in the illinois legislator after the new Republican Party won control of both houses. He sold the newspaper. And i think that there goal would be familiar to any parent of any generation. There was a Family Council that was called. His older brothers and sisters. Basically had to figure out how to get john hay and job and move out of the house. Again, some things change and some things dont. They struck a compromise with their budding poet son to continue his literary interest in enterprises but would have to study for the law with his uncle milton back in the day. Study their clerk under an existing law firm. The deal was that he would move to springfield and study at his uncles law firm which happens to be held in the same building and in an adjacent sweet to the law firm of Abraham Lincoln. Its in this way that he came to know Abraham Lincoln and reacquainted and self with his old friend john nikolai around 1859. Does not to say that he immediately got interested in politics. Predictably the longheld little allure for him. He rejected blackstones commentaries and spent the first couple of weeks it was supposed to be studying the law researching and writing a history of the jazz would order. They were not impressed. In the wake of his lecture Close Friends suggested that he might make a career of the pulpit trying to figure out a way to justify the fact that he had not progressed and is legal study. I dont think i would do for methodist preacher. I would not sue for the baptist because i dislike water and would fail as an episcopalian. His uncle was not particularly in new and used until the big go back to his legal studies. John wrote to his College Girlfriend, they would spoil first class pre just make a third class lawyer of me. I alternate between weeks of sickness and months of my normal condition of chronic worthlessness. How hot it will end does not seem difficult to say. The only question is one of time ill read the law and john doe and richard row as choir showplace the area forms that i have built upon my dreams. Not the first person to have to get a law degree you had no interest in practicing law. While he spent this time not reading a lot lincoln technical ion as his campaign a shortly after winning the republican nomination is in chicago. During the postelection interlude he appointed nikolai to become as private secretary when he indicated that he would take him to washington to become his press secretary, and it was during this time he became somewhat influential. Scores, if not hundreds of politicians from around the country came to confer and also labored alone answering upwards of 100 to 150 letters a day that were coming into the president elect, many with sensitive political content. You became the gatekeeper. When the male and visitors became unmanageable he began assisting his old friend. There are all working out. They were working out of the Governors Office that the state house in springfield, the governor of illinois graciously offered the president elect use of his offices in time left for washington. It was at this point that he officially offered the post of secretary the princely sum of 200 a year, almost three times what he had been earning. Not long after this was struck feed said that he thought it might be good to bring him to washington to which she replied, we cannot take all of illinois down with us to washington. Now, his demeanor and temperament, they could not have been more different. Two young men in their early 20s. He could have written it is said dennison, said come. Once for three days. There were completely unknown to people in political circles, although in illinois there were very well known. There were suddenly taking up residence in the second floor of the white house, control all access, and affect his chiefs of staff. Generals and the army, u. S. Senators have to clear it with them and theyre able to dictate orders, effectively cosigner sign for him feel commissions, send them off. In time they became known as, you know, the people who understood what his will was. There were young. And so they were, of course, aware of power and influence. There were different in terms of demeanor. Nikolai was short tempered and a little caustic. He cut a brooding figure to people who saw that as sought the president s time. Another assistant secretary, a way to remark that he was decidedly sherman in his manner of telling people what he thought of them. People who dont like him because they cannot use insidious hour and crusty but its a grand good thing that he is. I just imagined that he is from emanuel. On the other hand, a cultivated a softer image. He was commander words of his contemporaries, a young man with a Peach Blossom face yet deep enough, bubbling over with brilliant speech. He was a wouldbe poet and he was even well into his tenure as white house staffer, skeptical of politics and politicians and took the job because he was happy to do anything but steady law with his uncle. He told his College Girlfriend sometime shortly before lincoln was nominated that insanity has not yet changed its format for me from run the politics. I will occupy myself very pleasantly into early hating both sides and abusing the particular company of the company and happen to be an. When the company is divided i will say with murky shell a plague on both your houses. This position of dignified neutrality i expect to hold for quite some time unless lincoln is nominated in chicago. That said, pay like his new status did pretty much from the day he arrived there who. Anybody who has never met a young housesenate our white house staffer would recognize a certain quality. Days after he moved into the white house when he dashed a letter of to his old College Girlfriend and providence. He did so on executive mansions stationery and said, if you do choose to write me back will get your letter addressed hobson care of the president washington d. C. So at Willards Hotel where he and nikolai would take their data every evening for the most part this unless they dined with the president they enjoyed the knowing glances and stairs of the of the speakers, wire pullers, artists, poets, clerks, the publicist, mail contractors, railway directors, and all of the politicians said. He was there in 1859. Basically all of the folks who admired hawthorne, but he enjoyed being the object of their blairs. One of his classmates happened across the john hay at the Willard Hotel where he was leaning casually against the cigar stand taking in the scene. When he was asked how to enjoy himself in congratulating him on his appointment he replied with a knowing smile, yes. Since that was john a. John george nikolai was only slightly less insufferable. Around the same time he informed his fiancee that in my position i necessarily hear something new almost every day that would certainly be of infinite interest to someone and sometimes to another. But its my duty to say nothing, so i wont. If you have to impress your fiancee with your job at the white house then i think youre probably still a little green. To one supplicant who saw just a few minutes of lincolns time, nikolai replied, the president s task here is not childs play. Its not hard to understand why many people view them as being a little too big for the bridges, but as the war progressed the secretary has lost something of their youth and grew to become trusted and close aides to the president. Midway through the war he was commissioned with an official detailed. At the same time nicolai effectively became lincolns defacto political director and chief of staff. He used them in different ways at different times. The usually, i would say for the most part, about a third of the year there were in washington together. At other times one are the other was a way. Lincoln center a on various missions, florida to try to reconstruct the state unsuccessfully, sentence in Niagara Falls auto oversee the illfated negotiations. You get a sense of how important it became. Nikolai was really his political handler. The sentence to be his eyes and ears to make sure he was renominated and actually as well to oversee that messy business of replacing Hannibal Hamlin with Andrew Johnsons. He also counted on nikolai to become to go to new york and sort out a mass of patronage appointments, the political boss of new york, the key to reelection because new york would not have gone for lincoln without him. He trusted neck latigo handle this. The relationship between the boys and lincoln was pretty incident. Frequently sent out for weeks at a time on these kinds of sensitive political and military missions but careful to make sure that one was always at the white house, they kept in close contact with each other and exchanged frequent humorous observations about the first couple, the cabinet, leading military figures. In private they referred to lincoln as the tycoon or the ancient. Their relationship with Mary Todd Lincoln was a little less affectionate. They dubbed her the hellcat. By their own estimation hay and nikolai were the daily and nightly witnesses of the incidents, anxieties, fears, and hopes which pervaded the executive mansion and the national capital. The president gave his secretaries the utmost confidence. When so far as to claim that lincolns son as affectionately as he did his own sons. So that is the relationship these two men enjoyed. I would add it needs no adding, but he was at his bedside when he died. When informed of the assassination attempt that so close their work to him. And so moving back to where we began by the 1870s with his fathers reputation increasingly in shambles Robert Todd Lincoln knew repair his fathers legacy. There were particularly troubled by the nhl is taking hold. It was not just that they were bothered, they were concerned that in popular literature and journalism the war was being recast as a brothers squabble over abstract political principles to rather than a moral struggle over slavery and freedom which is very much what they viewed the war as. Having come out of the Republican Party having, of age during the era of the Republican Party, kansas, john brown, the civil war, they could not help but to the slavery at the center of the conflict. They saw magazines and newspapers taking to a celebration a military valor arguing in effect that bravery rather than morality was the chief quality to be commemorated this bothered him very much. The authors pointedly emphasized that there were silly and moral and political issues that divided the nation before and in many respects after the war, and they viewed that conflict as having been caused by what they said was the uprising of National Conscience against the secular wrong that could never be blotted out. Of course that was slavery. Though they made very little effort to mask their bias, they did set out when Robert Todd Lincoln empowered them to do it to write a history of lincoln was grounded in evidence. It was roughly around 1875 the robber told them he would give them exclusive access and then began actually working on this project. By then nikolai had been appointed grand marshal of the u. S. Supreme court and lived in washington and work of the capital. Hey have served a term as assistant secretary of state which was the number two position at the state department and was no, he was about to do that but was finishing up his tenure as a top editor at the new york tribune, ironically under orsk really. He made little effort to mask their bias when they began writing but did set out to write this history in a professional way grounded in evidence. In the early days of the project nikolai spent several months interviewing dozens of individuals who had known lincoln in illinois and washington. The transcripts of these discussions are still in the library of congress and are fascinating to read and certainly informed they came to cast a skeptical eye on these reported memories of old men and women who were remembering things after the fact and in many times doing so inaccurately. If an anecdote could not be confirmed from contextual evidence ultimately decided there would discarded which is a methodology that historians today who look at president s dont apply. We rely a lot on the kind of post facto memories of people. They did not think that it was particularly useful to do so or did not think that it was reliable. For instance, when chapters of their work were serialized charles, newspaperman who served as assistant secretary of war publicly challenged their assertion that john hay had accompanied the president to the War Department telegraph office that evening to receive the 1864 president ial election return. Janis said flatly that they were lying. Says he kept a pretty good diary during the civil war years and said that dana is insisting now was not there in the face of my diary the set i was. He said, you see this sort of the headed contradictions. Writing to the former Vice President he observed that people grew self aggrandizing overtime as their memories increasingly betrayed them. You know, its impossible for any old illinois and to talk for five minutes without letting you understand that he made lincoln already was. Ultimately the secretaries stop conducting interviews altogether because it places us in the dilemma of either being compelled to report a lot of worthless fiction or giving great offense to our friends but declining to do so, and its worth contextualizing this. In the 1860s and 70s some of the most popular biographical information about lincoln was emanating from former friends of his hair had been law partners and a trusted aide in the white house and sometimes, you know, a lawyer on the circuit with him. Herndon had herndon was offended by the kind of apotheosis that lincoln underwent after his death and one to remind people that lincoln was a human being, man. So he spent three or four years scourings kentucky, indiana, Southern Illinois for people who had known lincoln in his youth and as a young man. All of this was great, and most of what we know about his life before he got to springfield or certainly before you became a state legislator we know from his interviews. Unfortunately he used a lot of this in ways that baffled the lincoln family and irritated them stop. The lectures and the articles and all to lay the biography that he with some others including on published clams that lincoln its impossible to list all the claims. He was not the son of Thomas Lincoln but the son of another man, that he was, you know, a socalled illegitimate child and his mother had also been born illegitimately. He claimed that lincoln had never loved Mary Todd Lincoln. The love of his life had been a young woman named ann rutledge to die when lincoln was off in springfield or actually the old state capital for his first term in the legislature and that he never got over the loss. He claimed that lincoln had syphilis. It was not clear why this was helpful or helping to set, you know he tried to make him a very earthy figure. The family was absolutely furious. They elected these interviews and thought, there is no possible way that people could remember with any precision somebody whom they had no expectation whatever rise that far. One of his informants said something really telling. Look, you know, im sorry. I wish i could remember more. When i knew him it was just for a year in her early 20s, and i had no idea you would be president , so i did not think term member. So they relied instead on a vast body of lincolns papers and any kind of primary sources they could get there hands on. They scoured the country by posting advertisements, looking at, you know, circulars in used bookstores, talking to old friends, increasingly people were finding as their parents died diaries, letters, manuscripts and attics, boxes under beds, and they collected all of this and added to the lincoln archive. The oversized study soon came to accommodate one of the largest private collections of civil war documentation and scholarship in the country. Later when he lived in washington between 1879 and 81 when he served as assistant secretary of state and again after 1885 onward he and nikolai would walk between each others houses and homes to swap materials. At this point he had married a wealthy woman and built a mansion, he and his good friend henry adams built sidebyside mansions in washington. If you know the hotel, thats on the site where the two mansions actually stood, but it is not the actual mansion. By 1885 they had written some 500,000 words of their biography but were scarcely through the first year of the civil war. He grew increasingly concerned by the scope of the undertaking and fell what he needed was to bring the prospects to a close. Roswell smith and gilder, publisher and editor of the nations most prominent and widest circulation magazine at that point provided that motivation. We want your life of lincoln. We must have it. If you say so we will give you all the profit. Since i have a contract. There were offered unprecedented terms, 50,000 for the serial rights as well as royalties on sales of the fulton volume set to be issued following the magazine run. You have to imagine as well in 1,885. The long awaited serialization began in 1886 command almost from the start it was extremely controversial. By virtue of their exhaustive treatment of lincolns political career they managed to steer into the National Consciousness episodes that have largely been unknown to the public and themes and arguments that would influence lincoln scholars and civil war historians for generations. Among the many contributions they made were revolutions that William Seward have drafted a closing lines of lincolns first inaugural but that the president elect had edited those lines and turn them into the work of genius that we know and gas. They explained to us or were the first to report George Mcclellans assurance that he would do it all when lincoln gave him command of the union army as well as the army of the potomac. The first to reveal the against great distress early in the war when washington d. C. Was cut off from the north and the president was keeping an anxious vigil for the troops and said, why dont they come. The biographers also offered unprecedented light into lincolns Decision Making on emancipation and the list and a black soldiers and get an insiders view of this interaction with the union army high command. Above all what they did was create a master narrative that continues to command serious scrutiny more than a century after its introduction. Populating his cabinet with former opponents for the republican president ial nomination lincoln demonstrated his discernment and magnanimity in choosing men who he did not know. You recognize them as governors, senators, and statesman while they get looked upon him as a simple frontier lawyer and rival to whom chance had transformed the honor that they felt do to themselves. Effectively, the priest is a popular argument that lincoln formed the socalled team of rivals and insisted that the strong personalities and talents who constituted his inner circle did not always appreciate what they called the stronger well and more delicate tax that inspired and guided the mall. I should add that when you think about the argument historians are always rediscovering things that people wrote. There is nothing wrong with that. If you want a terrific iteration of that argument you will find her book far more engaging and entertaining. It was hay in the collider developed this thesis first. They gave prominent place to the elephant in the room as well which was slavery. Few white americans were interested in discussing that topic by 1885. In his discussion section of politics, he stated that it is now universally understood if not conceded that the rebellion of 1861 was begun for the sole purpose of defending and preserving the seceding states institution of african slavery and making them the nucleus in a gray slave empire. This is common sense to us now, but in the context of the 1880s it was a somewhat controversial assertion. Breaking their own rule against believing the memories of old man a gave credence to the claims of lincolns cousin who recalled a journey that they had taken when hired to escort a barge of goods down the Mississippi River in 1831 and it was then that is many years claim that lincoln first saw african slaves chained, maltreated, with disgorged. In his heart he bled, said nothing much. I can say knowing that that was on this trip he first formed his opinion of slavery. That story largely comes from nikolai. Now, as an antebellum politician lincoln was not an abolitionist or radical, but he did only a firm that africanamericans are human beings and entitled to all the natural rights of human beings. The secretary fall of that moral and intellectual even entering the war they had actually not been as liberal. That was something he gave to them posthumously and something that they came to believe in pretty strongly. One of the things you gain a sense of when you read there diaries and letters against their history was that they often missed the significance of events that they had witnessed and participated in in real time they were actors in stirring times, though i hardly realized. In november 1863 the secretaries that the companys lincoln to gettysburg, pennsylvania, where he delivered the memorial address dedicating a soldier cemetery, they did not remember much of it because they had been out drinking and were severely hung over the next morning. They had done so partly because this was a political event and it was their job to go out drinking with the many governors, politicians, congressman, newspaper editors who had converged their commander goal was to work the crowd and work the political crowd in advance of the following years president ial nomination. Nevertheless the did not remember much because they have been severely hanover. In their book they dedicated 13 pages. Clearly they had come after the facts to understand that had been a tremendously important moment. Although in their diaries it is pretty clear that they did not recognize the significance. Part of the project year was also to take down lincolns biggest detractors, the biggest of them would have been george mcclellan. Of course he cast himself as the year of the war. At lincoln licenced have the war would have been over sooner. By contrast their broken up as an inept general. And man who rarely estimated the force immediately opposed him as less than doubled. They disclose the famous story about lincolns call. They refuse to come downstairs and see the president. And it is close to the public that on the eve of the battle a Union Private had discovered general these battle plans and had given them to mcclellan. And mcclellan not only knew of the division of his enemies army buddy knew where its trains, rearguard, and cavalry were and where their detached commands would join the main body. Nevertheless he failed to use this intelligence. The lincoln had been introduced to the nation was a deft political operator exerting control daily and hourly over the vast machinery and command. He effectively cut the sense that they introduced to the country the Abraham Lincoln who we all know today. A story individual. Numbered over ten, and they basically sought to establish clintons ever lasting greatness. Yet they would continue to the and to insist on is fundamental humanity. In lincolns case as in that of all heroic personages to occupy a great place in history a certain element of the legend with regis fan. But lincoln was a man and not a god. In the decades after the death they left behind at the system remain embedded in historical consciousness. Theyre rendering of lincoln is basically null Lincoln Memorial lincoln, a man end up with on common humanity but was fundamentally flesh and blood. They could barely have claimed to know him better than any other man of their time, so its Little Wonder then left to rendering. It would not be until 1947 that any others dollar was able to touch, look at, or consult the papers. And so essentially because of Robert Todd Lincoln screed they enjoyed the Playing Field long after they died. As to what happened, nikolai gave the better part of this latter life to lincoln, first as a close adviser and then as keeper of the fine. Shortly before he died he wrote to a former staff member and said, i dont let any unsatisfied ambitions or any. He died that year shortly after president mckinley was assassinated in september. They lived until 1905 and went on to achieve considerable wealth and success. The morning after he dreamed of Abraham Lincoln on that ship back from liverpool shortly before his death he wrote another diary entry in what she said, i say to myself that i should not rebel at the thought of my life ending at this time. I have lived to be old, something never expected. As head many blessings, success beyond all the dreams of my boyhood. I know that death is the common law and what is universal ought not to begin the misfortune. Yet instead of confronting it with dignity and philosophy i clang instinctively to life and the things of life as eagerly as if i had not had my chance at happiness and gained nearly all the great prizes. These were to really extraordinary figures. In many ways when we think about the business of president ial legacy making, president obama just recently appointed a Small Committee of Staff Members to begin building a president ial library and research center. President bush just opened his. The live only miles from one of the great president ial Research Centers reaffirming and shoring up his legacy. We have always president s have always managed there histories and legacies, and those who died early, then relied on their families and aides to do so. When i think of hay and nikolai and their relationship, i think of their relationship and the partnership between Jacqueline Kennedy onassis and Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorensen and teddy wait for Eleanor Roosevelt relationships with the number of people who helped to define Franklin Roosevelts legacy. My hope for this book will help us to remember as we remember him today and a very real efforts that went into that and a price. Thank you. I would love to take some questions if there are any. [applause] what is your opinion of daniel epsteins book the lankans man which covers some of the same material that you have talked about . Secondly, what do you think about the recent biography . I like them both very much. Epstein is really a literary man , a poet, scholar of literature. I think he was trying to do a different project. It draws and other characters. Were looking at different questions using the same people, but its a beautiful read. The biography is magnificent. If you are interested in how comprehensive i should not say this. If youre interested in a comprehensive biography dont buy my book, but you want to read both. John did a number of other things that i dont cover. Not only was he a president ial aide and later a great diplomat which is something nile the cover and pass into the lens of his relationship to lincoln and civil war, he was on noted poet. He finally did become a poet. He stopped writing this wretched victorian verse and actually became famous for writing in the vernacular of his native illinois. He actually pioneered the practice of writing prose and poetry in that kind of native, Southern Illinois, missouri vernacular. Mark twain later credited John Hayes Pike county ballots for having been the inspiration for the voice of some of his characters, for instance huckleberry finn. So he has this marvelous, you know, relationships with henry adams and as part of the circle of washington and literary insiders. So he has a tremendous life outside of Lincoln Mendes covered beautifully. So i really do admire his book. So yes . You said that they had determined that this would be fact based, not just anecdotal. Still what extent is there writing used at that time and still used today for research . Six. Extensively. He was a beautiful rider, but mostly a kind of short story writer and essayist. I would not say that their prose style was particularly gripping. In large sections they basically just letters. If you look at the ten volumes, i would estimate offhand that three or four volumes is just direct quotation. They had notes on the side of the book the sort of side of the stores instead of foot notes. There was listed. That was basically until 1947 how most people were able to access. They had to do it through them. In the 1890s it published a collective work of lincoln. They basically put out what they claim more of his personal writings which did not include the vast collection of incoming mail and memoranda that went to lincoln went to work enormously valuable. No one got to see those until 1947. Because they carry the collected works and because they decided which pieces of his riding or in part by including them in that book they effectively became the curators of what other historians would consult. So in the decades after their wrote this people who look to lankan tended to look at his early life because thats where you could scour up additional resources. Ida tarbell in the early 1900s working with the magazine went on a hunt for early Lincoln Memorial. They thought this was hilarious. There editor said, look at this. A female editors got to try and research lincoln as if she could possibly do this. She turned up all kinds of written materials to marley speeches, letters, things that had been long lost to history. This is where scholars up until the 1940s were able to break new ground. The documents for all shut off other than what they had written and copy in their book or their collective volumes serve. Going through the volumes, and experience. Very tedious. Were there any pieces that you could identify . Thats a good question. I enjoyed their letters and diaries far more than the actual biographies. But i will say that where they broke their own rule and relied on their memory it got exciting. The chapters that deal with the nominating convention in 1860 are tremendously exciting because nikolai was in the room. All of the descriptions of this moment when the second ballot tickers and lincoln suddenly pulls ahead and in the third ballot when he surges ahead and win this and everything goes quiet and he describes the silence that befalls the wigwam in chicago. You could hear the reporters pencils scratching on the paper and describes what it was like. He does it from the third person. He describes how you could hear the telegraph off raiders operators cooking and results. That is tremendously exciting. You can feel the moment and erotically is when they break with their own convention when he describes personal recollections are when they use his personal recollections of conversations he had. Those are really fascinating, and if you match up his diary against the when eroded his diary is written pretty free form. Its all a lot of it was basically just rough notes. The kind of violated there rule, but thats where it gets exciting. They could not really help themselves. The special feel the order initiated, what is their achievements of that and the volumes that they had . And what is your field of lincolns position . And were he not assassinated what is your assumption that from that the trail because as you say his legacy was not seen as a great humanitarian or savior of blacks at that time, but he has become that. What is your feel . They frame that in the larger context of lincolns war policies. They followed the logic through and through. Because they had to describe they took care to follow the logic to say that although his growing concern about slavery resulted in his advocacy of the 13th amendment, has war policy had been to use emancipation and in the tools of emancipation and all the subsequent implications in order to bring the south to its knees. And so these orders were perfectly constitutional, that he had the right as it is field generals text appropriate property, to liberate slaves were they saw them and where they actually took land. They framed it in a very constitutional fashion. The same time other pieces of the book but even 30 years later there were aware that people still, one of the raps against lincoln was he was a simple country lawyer who had vastly overplayed war powers that did not exist because he did not understand them. There were careful to make sure to explain that he was a master liar, a politician, military leader understood the expense of war powers. For what youre basically asking when his reconstruction policy would have been had he lived which is the big if. I think it is purely speculation it is fair to say that it would not have looked like what Andrew Johnson policies look like. We laugh, but at one point that was the old historiography, assuming that somehow Andrew Johnson was carrying out what Abraham Lincoln would have done and the radical republicans to the republicans got in the way of that. I think it would be fair to say that lincoln extemporized, he sort of made stuff up on the fly as he had to do under the circumstances and is clear that is gross was decelerating in the days before he died. He had a conversation about allowing some africanamericans to vote, once or educated in landowning choice. Its pretty easy to imagine that he would have evolved in a way that would have fallen somewhere between the radical and moderate factions. There were very safe in their homes. It was a terrible thing. They swapped them off. When nikolai was working as the grand marshal of the Supreme Court he had an office in the capital. So they decided that there would keep the bulk of them there. The theory was that houses burned down frequently, but they figure the capitol was made out of marble. They had a close scare with that. Before they came into possession of Robert Todd Lincoln captain and has offices in chicago. That did not work out so well during the great chicago fire when the only barely got them out before his office in the entire block burn down. After nikolai died haig took possession of all the papers. And after he got his family turned them over Robert Todd Lincoln. For about ten years the lincoln family was desperately trying to find one of the last to the new there were five copies of the gettysburg address. There were missing one and could not find it and had no idea where was. His daughter helped the family tried to look for them. Sometime around 1914 his daughter alice sheepishly told robert the she had found it because apparently her father had kept this a morales. I think she probably intended to return at some point but could not bear to put it with the rest of the collection which is sort of funny in the context and you remember that he did not remember when it was a liver. [inaudible question] what makes you focus on the secretaries of lincoln . People have written a great but some white house staff. A fine book called camelot scored which looks at the kennedy staff. I think this is at a time that always fascinated me, but the last in the world needs is another book on lincoln. I felt that this was a piece that would allow me a look at the development of lincolns historical legacy but at the same time be attentive to the Important Role that Staff Members play in politics. Was more interested in that legacy. Having also worked in politics i found these to to be recognizable and attractive. In all of their importance, arrogance, impetuousness kamal of it. Totally recognizable. It was fun to live through their eyes and sort of see it through their eyes. Also, they were very, very witty the fun to read. You really do get a picture of the lincoln winehouse. There the only people who can give you that portrait, and they wrote about it in real time. She did not like the fact of their lives in the white house. That having been said they fiercely protective gear after the fact and particularly against all the attacks and innuendo. They were very conscious and their responsibility to try the help fix that even as he had a difficult relationship. The day ever address the idea of a lost cause, the legitimacy this is about the time that it comes in the being. The way in which the war was be remembered. It was one piece of it, but they were equally offended for battlefield relations. This was about the time you start to get the blue and gray reunions, the century magazine also did a very Popular Series called batters and leaders. And when that famous Oliver Wendell holmes , they thought this was ridiculous. He was an abolitionist he had almost got and killed while trying to escort i dont know whether it was when Bill Phillips world lloyd garrison. They thought that the way in which is the 80 logical elements of the war were being stripped away and the service of National Union was a bad thing. They were accused by their editors a practicing aggressive modernism. A was sort of say, we have to watch it and tone it down, but then his own chapters would be ludicrously in northern in their perspective. I think that is what they were concerned with, and its fair to say that while they were successful in rewriting the way we imagine lincoln, the recasting of the civil war against that revisionism did not hold up for long. It would not actually become their interpretation would not come back until the modern civilrights era fists. We probably have time for one more. [inaudible question] they actually had not intended to stay. There were burnt out, exhausted. And so lincoln shortly before he died appointed them to be diplomatic posts. He appointed nikolai to be the consul general in paris and appointed eight to another diplomatic post also in paris. And they readily jumped at the chance. They were exhausted, did not want to do another term. The time they could not have foreseen what evidence would occur. They also wanted to go see something of the world. Nikolai had a longsuffering fiancee whom he wrote faithfully every day and to was still back in