Every one of you for being a wonderful attentive audience. Thank you so much. [ applause ] questions for our speaker . Lincoln approached notnothing voters during the 1860 campaign. Did he announce them or try to win them over to the republican . Or how did he fdo that . He said how do you want to welcome those people . I will welcome the nonothings if they will accept in the entirety the republican platform, which does not include exclusion. When lincolns people went out and campaigned and somebody would say, well, what does your boy think about immigration . Lincoln instructed them to tell them that there will be no prejudice at all based on immigration and ethnicity, and theyre more than welcome to vote for the republican ticket, meaning him, but they should not expect the naturalization laws will be increased. They should not expect theres going to be any one group preferable for the other. They should expect there immigrants to fulfill the labor shortage that the civil war created
Into law by lincoln five years earlier and the only one in that original group founded in lincolns home state. Indeed one of the reasons i was drawn to come to illinois last year to take the job as law dean is the prospect that the university of illinois can build upon the legacy of, and become linked with lincoln in the way the university of virginia is associated with Thomas Jefferson. Who to my mind was not as great a president and not as great a person. This brings me to a fourth question, why bob woodward . That might be the easiest one of all. Many people consider the New York Times the countrys newspaper of record. But bob woodward of the rival Washington Post is americas reporter of record. He has been at the post for 45 years and is responsible for two of its Pulitzer Prizes for investigative coverage of water gate and also 9 11. But mr. Woodward is much more than a reporter. He has an inciteful and prolific historian of, among other things, americas president s. In this regar
Meeting. And i had the luxury of time, two fulltime assistants. We looked at all the contemporary coverage of the pardon, got all the memoirs, got the legal memos from the ford library. I kept going back to interview ford. And to try to piece together what happened. I interviewed him in colorado a number of times, where he had a home, and many times at his main home at rancho mirage, california. I remember the last interview asking him, why did you pardon nixon . He said, you keep asking that question. I said, but i dont think youve answered it. And then he said, astonishingly, ok, im going to tell you. And he then said what happened is that al haig, nixons chief of staff, came and offered me a deal. He said, if you guarantee that the president will get a pardon, he will resign and you get the presidency. And ford said, however, i rejected that deal. I knew i was going to become president. Nixon was finished. So theres no way he could work that deal in the way haig described. And passi
America. But they needed assistance to do so. He asked congress to pass a bill, and Congress Responded on july 4th, 1864, with the first, last, and only time america passed a law to encourage immigration. Lincolns act to encourage immigration was a signature piece of legislation that many of you, who i know have been familiar during the civil war celebration, went by without a single moments attention. Lincoln knew that immigrants played a major role in the building of industrial america, and to his dying day he related to the immigrant in a manner that few of his contemporaries would or could. He told an amusing story about being poor and being able to relate to immigrants. Once again he went back to his flat boat voyage. 8 a month he earned, and he owned one pair of buckskin breeches. Now if you know the nature of buckskin when wet and dried in the sun, lyincoln reminisces, it will shrink. And my britches kept shrinking. And wilhile i was growing talle they were growing shorter and a
That hes not accommodated to the idea of who he is, the opposite of lincoln. When gerald ford became president , the next year, one of the things he said, again, contradicting nixon, he said none of our problems today are as severe as those facing lincoln. He quoted one of the things lincoln said in one of fords kind of natural spontaneous statements of humility. He said, oh, lincoln fords in a dispute with congress. He said, well, lincoln said the following. We of the congress in this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. Ford also said, of lincoln, that his compassion, lincolns compassion for others came from an understanding of himself. I think the kind of merging somewhat of the pragmatism and the strategic sense of what the country needs, excellent example of this is gerald ford. I remember it was september 1974. Ford had been president about one month. And he went on television. Some of you may remember this. And gave said he was giving nixon a full pardon for