times. she is well known for her work knapsacks and to make weapons and all sorts of machinery for on abraham lincoln. in fact, her book team of rivals the war and obviously middlemen was the inspiration for steven made a way and produced -- spielberg's film "lincoln" in [inaudible] that fell apart in the rain and produced pistols that didn't 2012. dr. goodwin earned her ph.d. work. you could see some of the at harvard, so coming up we're worries that we might have going to reair her " in depth" evened today. but the interesting thing ias te secretary of war, was about to appearance where he discussed her entire body of work and took be censureed, and his whole viewer phone calls. we'll also be showing you career, he felt, would be destroyed forever. lincoln stood u fir of war and f excerpts from her books, but we'll tart with her january 1, ca are at fault, myself and my 1995, appearance on the c-span entire cin something totartponsd series "book notes." she discussed franklin and ad question that war eleanor roosevelt and the home front during world war ii. pres her book, "no ordinary time," centralizedded power,re goods fd won the pulitzer prize for ill love to find such a her. history. here's historian doris kearns that's fascinating. goodwin. c-span: if you could ask either >> guest: in "the new york times"' review of the book says that in team of rivals, and i'm franklin delano roosevelt or just going to read a eleanor roosevelt a couple of sentences, she lightly over her subjects' more questions after all the work you did on this book, what would pragmatic political they be? >> guest: i think with eleanor, maneuverings. why he was unable to be stay indeed, lincoln often resembles home and take cower of him to a wise and strong leader for the say question to hum. ages whose legacy in i know he still loved him, ms. goodwin's words belongs not only to ages to be revered and sung and -- she still loved him. throughout all the time. do you think you skim over -- and i think for him why he >> guest: i don't think so. i do think i came away with a couldn't share himself more very positive feeling toward fully with anyone. he was the most charming, most lincoln. i don'? think i could easily sparkling personality, everybody write about somebody like hitler or stalin as some other great got how warm he was, but historians and live with them underneath there was such reserve in him, and i'd want to day by day. there's no question that he has understand why he couldn't give flaws x the flaws too come out himself more to the people who loved him. in the book, and he was much too patient with general mcclellan c-span: what makes this book different than all the rest? >> guest: i think what i wanted to do was to understand not only earlier on, understandings franklin and eleanor's of equality were not as spacious relationship which has been looked at in many other cases, as one would hope x there's no question that other things -- but to understand the whole just as franklin roosevelt are, extended family that surrounded as much as i loved, revered and them in the white house. and i came to an understanding respected him, his incarceration that these two characters really of japanese-americans was one of both needed other people to meet the untended needs left over as the greatest violations of civil liberties, his failure to bring a result of their troubled moregee refugeesor marriage. the second family quarters of the white house were really like a residential hotel during these years, and there was about seven people living there, that was closed it, every leaders has the part that was fun for me. c-span: if you had to ask a flaws, but in lincoln's case, question of either one of them his strength are far greater about personal relationships that they've had with other than his flaws. people, who would you be most interested in? >> host: overland park, kansas, >> guest: i think the person you're next. that i'm interested in for good afternoon. >> caller: thank you for taking franklin is not simply louis my call. if you were interviing lucy i who -- lucy -- she had an president line up con on c-span -- lincoln on c-span, what would you ask him about his affair with him back in 1918, presidency? and it almost broke up the what about you ask him marriage, but there's another personally, and number three, woman that i think had an even what would he say about how well more central role to play, and people have have viewed his that was his secretary. place in history these many he started working for him when decades later in view of his she was only 20 years old, he modesty? never married, and -- she never >> guest: oh, boy, great questions. i mean, i think what i would ask married, and everybody in him maybe about his presidency washington knew she was really would be to talk to him about husband other wife. what he might have done after when eleanor traveled, she was the war. i mean, the big unknown question the one who took care of of history, had he lived, would roosevelt. if he had a cold, she'd bring reconstruction have been different. him the cough medicine, if he how would h south, how would he assured were grumpy, she'd arrange a that black americans still had the right. everybody up wonders if lincoln poker game. she was the closest person in hadn't been killed as he was, the world to hum. would things have been that's the relationship i'd like to know more about. c-span: you have in the book different. but i think personally if i had this second floor scenario, and an hour with him, i would just we'll get a closer shot here on say the him please tell me only some of these names. of your great stories. i mean, lincoln was so much of a why did you put this in the storyteller, so gifted that that's part of how his rise to book? >> guest: it seemed to me that power took place. what the reader was going to get even as a young lawyer, he would from reading the book was, i with travel around the circuit for two months in the spring and hoped, a sense of what it was two months in the fall, and when like 50 year ago to be in the he went to courthouse to white house. and because each of these rooms courthouse, people would come was occupy by minute who was from miles around to listen to very important to frank lib and hum stand up by a tour place and eleanor -- franklin and eleanor, i wanted everybody to see how close they were, to see that and -- fireplace. they could wander around in the and once he started telling a story, his eyes would sparkle middle of the quarters and talk and his whole life force would to one another. be shown. c-span: what year was this? i would just give anything to have him tell me one sto after >> guest: 1940-1945. c-span: as you can see here on another, and what would he think about the fact that his name has on the one end, you have eleanor stretchedded so far, i think roosevelt's bedroom, and right lincoln would be astonished. across the hall is lorena as much as he wanted to be remembered after he dies and as, hickok. who was that and what was their relationship? this is the second floor of the white house. he wanted to somehow be able to >> guest: a former reporter for the associated press and, in say that he a had made a difference in the lives of the fact, in 1933 she was considered the leading female reporter in people of his generation which he surely did. but what i found, for example, the country. she weighed about 200 pounds, and was able to win end she smoked cigars, and she was really smart. and what happened is she met the book with it, lincoln's life had gone so much further than eleanor during the campaign in even he could have imagined, i 1932, and she fell in love with bet he would have blushed. eleanor. more importantly, she probably it was some years prior to 1908, helped eleanor become the activist first lady that she and this article was written in new york world, and he met with did. it was lorena who calm up with a whole bunch of rude barbarians the idea of eleanor having who hardly knew anything about the west, and thawed asked tolstoy to tell stories -- briefings every week. he was the one who came up with theyed asked. they said, no, you haven't told the idea of a syndicated column that eleanor wrote every day, us about that man who spoke with the voice of thunder, who laughs missing only the day that her like the sunrise. miss died, and really -- husband tell us of abraham lincoln, died. tolstoy was a astonished that and in the course of that, he did fall in love with eleanor. lincoln's name had reached to eleanor, i don't think, fully these barbarians who hardly knew reciprocated it, but they were about america. it's is so far from here that if close enough that he wanted her living nearby, so she lived in we journeyed there, we would be the white house the entire time during the war. old men. and then tolstoy concluded why c-span: also on this second floor schematic is, you have a did they hear about lincoln? room in which harry hopkins tolstoy concluded lived in. and how long did he live in humanitarian as broad as the there and who was he? world, and it was his character >> guest: march true e hopkins that will last. and tolstoy predicted even two had been roosevelt's chief new centuries from now people would deal man, in a sense. know more about lincoln than we during the 1930s he was head know then because it would last forever. i think if lincoln heard that, of the war project. it would make him so happy, but when the war broke out in may of his modesty would say thatan't 1940, hopkins was staying be true. overnight, and roosevelt decided >> guest: you have a sketch in that he wanted him nearby. the book of lincoln's office in the white house. where is that? he needed somebody that he could >> guest: what happened in those talk to first thing in the morn, days is the office, it was in talk to late at night, and he the white house, the office made hopkins husband chief adviser on foreign policy. expect cabinet room were the hopkins went to see churchill same unliked today. there was a big, long table and stalin before roosevelt met whe was a print simple set -- them, was really unprecedented. he makes kissinger look like a pretty simple setting. he had a a desk that i he had mild-mannered guy in terms of the kind of power he had, and he and this table where they'd be was incredible loyal to arrangedded in terms of primacy, roosevelt. c-span: how long did he live in terms of which office was there? most powerful. but the incredible thing about >> guest: from 1940 to the end of '42 when he got married and the white house and his office in those days, a job seeker roosevelt was sad. could race into the white house he stayed there for about six and simply go to lincoln and months with his new wife, but talk to him. she wanted a house of her own. those were the days before civil service, and then there were c-span: you show this -- also where -- sections where >> guest: roosevelt's mother. c-span: and martha. anybody could come. backwoodsmen would snip parts of >> guest: that's a pretty interesting room. first, whenever the mother came, the carpet, and people on he wanted the best bedroom lincoln's staff would say you can't waste talking to these swiss, and that was this -- suite, and that was this room, people, can and he said i need to do it. i need to remember the great the rose suite. popular assemblage from which i've come. i think about that now in terms and then also princess martha of in recent decades the white was an interesting character. held come to washington during house has become so much of a cocoon and so ips lawsuited the war years in exile from norway. her father-in-law was the king partly because of the way it's of nor waw. in fact, her son is currently run and i think the presidents the king of norway now. have lost touch with the people. she was beautiful, long-legged. and i think he had a gay-spurted all the people that have been with them have also lost touch with with ordinary people, and kind of conversation that he lincoln understood the importance of that. he had no problem, if public just enjoyed. eleanor somehow understood that opinion polls were out today, he he needed that kind of would listen to them. companionship. so she would visit on weekends he would hopefully not be and keep him company at the constrained by it, e but he used movies, often again when eleanor was away. to say anything is possible, but when churchill came, no one without it nothing n. a else stayed in the suite. democracy the people's opinion churchill was an incredible matters. so he would try and keep touch, character during this period of time. and he did that. he understood the mood of the he would come and stay for, people just like fdr did, like, three and four weeks at a somehow it's that intuitive, time,, and his habits were so mystical sense that a leader exhausting that nobody else has. >> host: we don't have any more could sleep. recordings that we know of in he would awaken in the morning the white house. we have e-mails and computers, and have wine for breakfast, scotch and soda for lunch, maybe not as many letters. how will historians look at this brandy at night, smoking his cigars until two a.m., and when a hundred or years f now? he would finally leave, the >> guest: i think it's going to be much, much harder to entire white house staff would have to sleep for 72 hours in recapture what people were thinking and feeling. they'll have much more stuff of order to recuperate from churchill's visit. to go through which might, indeed, be paralyzing but they c-span: you had a quote in the won't are have what you get in a book that the relationship between run access martha of diary letter. norway and fdr was romantic? if you're keeping a diary, maybe expwhrg some of the people who you're sometimes thinking of lived in the white house at that history in the 1850s and time suggested that she was his '60s, but mostly you're just girlfriend, that there was a writing your raw emotions, and then you're reading them 150 real flirtation between the two. and i suspect that's what the years later x you really can element of the relationship was. feel what they were feeling at that time. the art of letter writing no it wasn't that somebody he was longer there. working with, it wasn't some they taught each other how to political partner, it wasn't write letters when they were some old friend and companion, young. think of the fact that husbands it was a flirtatious and wives are away from each other so much of the time. relationship. whether it went beyond kissing you go on a trip to europe, and romance, i don't know. you're gone for a year, so it certainly was that. letters are the only forms of c-span: also you show anna saw communication. telegraph is certainly not going stayed at one of those rooms. to do it. they learned how to write letters in a way i'm not even next to her father. sure we know how to write. when my son was in iraq, and i what was that relationship? >> guest: some of the most tried to write him as often as i moving moments of this period of time, because anna had original could, and here i am supposed to lu been her mother's daughter. be a writer. i was finally reduced to telling when anna was a young girl, eleanor had told her or the story of lucy and the fact that her fathered had had this affair him, well, lincoln paroledded a with lucy, and anna add had soldier today. -- pardoned a taken her mother's side. over the years the two had grown soldier. my older son is himself wanting to be a writer, he wrote to his so close that they wrote with brother every single day, a each other letters two or three handwritten note every day. times a week. and, you know, when you bring up but what happened was in the your kids and the two of them middle of the war after eleanor are fighting in the back of the car when they were young, there rejected frank lis' quest to was a sense once i knew that he stay home and be husband wife and his brother had become all again, he asked their daughter that close, that's all that anna to come take missu miss mattered. we'd be gone draw by they'd have each other. >> host: wait til next year came city's place. out -- he had a stroke and could never >> >> guest: in 1997. speak again and because he was so lonely and husband mothered and fitzgerald and the had also died, heed asked ann a kennedys -- that to come and stay in the >> guest: 1987. >> host: and the latest, team of white house. and what happened was in some rifles. next call is santa barbara, ways she became her father's california. go ahead. daughter. >> caller: hi there. she had long legs, she was tall, great show. i just wanted to get goodwin's she loved cocktails, she could opinion on something. gossip at night, all the things in article v of the eleanor never found it easy e to constitution, it says that do anna did, and after a while i there's only two groups of think eleanor began to feel americans who can propose change displaced by her own daughter, so it was a very complicated set is -- country, and one group is of relationships that developed during this time. c-span: where do you live? [inaudible] and right now in the ninth >> guest: concord, massachusetts. right near where it all began. circuit court of appeals there's a federal lawsuit called walker c-span: why there? v. members of congress, and it >> guest: i love the city, and shows that all the applications my husband loved the country. for an article v convention are he'd prefer living in maine, so it seemed to be near enough to registered -- [inaudible] and they're failing to carry out boston that i could have my city their constitutional obligation. life and he could feel he was and i was just wondering what living outside the suburb. you thought of that and if you think it's time for an article c-span: what's your husband do? very convention. >> guest: you know, i don't know >> guest: he's a writer also. what you're talking about, and i'm interested to hear about that. his first job after clerking for i mean, you're absolutely right though, i think the framers justice frankfurter was to decided that since investigate the -- constitutional amendments were [inaudible] such an important process, there so he's having a great time right now. needed to be two possible ways he's being portrayed as a of initiating them. 27-year-old actor on the big one could be the congress or one screen, so it's really been fun. could be the astronaut but mostly he's a writer. conventions, as you say. in almost all to occasions in c-span: where'd you meet him? history, it's been a very >> guest: in harvard. onerous process, but they can be i taught a course on the presidency and taught some so important. american government courses, and the most important pieces of our he came to finish a book. government, the bill of rights and i had an office at this were amendments and even during little kennedy institute, and he had an office right next to lincoln's time he did everything he could to get the congress to moon. pass the 13th constitutional that's how it happened. c-span: you dedicate the book to amendment which would undo slavery and then have it go out three people. to the states, and here even >> guest: probably the most important people in my life, tried -- he even tried to three sons. mobilize that as well. the youngest one, thank god, it is important, if the people still at home in high school. want to bring an amendment i don't want it to end. whether it fails or succeeds, they should be able to do that, i wish they were 4, 6 and 8 and i will look into what you're saying because i don't know again. c-span: how many books is have about that. you written? >> host: how did lincoln view the constitution in. >> guest: three. c-span: what were the other two? >> guest: well, it's interesting, some people saw he >> guest: the first was lyndon had this dual feeling. he reveered the constitution and johnson and the american dream, and that calm out of an the framers. experience i will forever those people who grew up in his treasure of willing been 23, 24 generation, remember, they're years old and working for not that far from the founding. interestingly, when he was a president johnson in the white house and helping hum with his young man he gave a speech with memories. he worried that his generation i still keep thinking johnson is didn't have the same challenges still around. this book on roosevelt is 700 that the towning fathers, that they were -- founding fathers, pages, how can you do that. that they had established this that was the first book, and it was a great experience to try fantastic governance and they were remembered in mountains, and understand that giant of a rivers and streams and he man who i found so sad in his thought there's nothing left for our generation, modest retirement while he was at the ranch that it was almost like he ambitions. he never could have imagined that the anti-slavery movement had nothing left in his life in the '50s would lead to once politics was taken from husband becoming president -- them. his becoming president. and then the we could one was but because he revere ared the called fitzgerald and the constitution so much, that's why kennedys and it was a three it was hard for him. he could not have been an generation history of the abolitionist in the 1850s because many of them said tear kennedy family. i was begin access to rose and up the constitution. if it protects slavery, and it joe kennedy's private papers that had been in the attic does, then we don't care about because my president had the constitution. original hi been with on the he felt if that constitution white house staff with john were to be gone, the whole kennedy. so i think one of the reasons framework that held the country together would be gone. why this book on the roosevelts but he really loved the deck la that ration of ingebs. i think we saw that and its call means so much it's the first time i've had to slog it throw for equality as something that without the advantage of knowing could trump the constitution. the family, so it's been fun. >> host: one of the few photographs during his c-span: is there new information presidency, when was taken? in the book in. >> guest: oh, yes. i think, definitely by choosing >> guest: i can't see it, but is this period of time and focusing this one -- >> host: the battle feel. on the american home front rather than the battle front, >> guest: yes. he went a dozen times to visit for all the thousands of books the oldiers, and what would that have been written about world war ii, there have been happen is aftereach battle was lost, he held come felled. very few that have focused on what happened here at home. he would i ride husband horse in most of those have been essay their ranks, rate them in the books, japanese uncars or ration hospital. somehow it buoyed their spirits examples, women in the and buoyed his in turn. factories, but this is been little evidence of trying to understand roos relate's the amazing thing was these leadership. trips, as if one indicates to in some ways, i think that's his greatest contribution in a earn the soldiers, were so important to the oldiers that when lincoln sense to the war. even more than the strategy of the war itself, how he got our ran again in 1864 against country to produce the weapons for the war. general mcclellan who had been that's what won the war, and to so popular, he said he cared turning around the a peace more about the soldiers' votes economy, an isolationist economy, an economy that was than he did about winning the still in the middle of a second election. depression and making it so if he won the second election productive is a great story. and lost the soldiers' votes, c-span: where'd you find the he'd be def astronauted. white house usher's diaries? expect amazing thing -- devastated. some bond had occurred between >> guest: it was there for all these trips to the front anybody to see. where the soldiers voted 8 out they're in the roosevelt library, and they're on of 0 for lincoln even though they knew it made prolonging the microfiche. what happened is at the end of the draw there'd be a white house usher who would record war. maybe even losing their lives. they had come to trust the cause everything that happened, and trust this man, and that, i roosevelt awakens at7, has a think, was one of his greatest massage at 7:15 is. gratifications. >> host: our conversation with doris kerns goodwin. and then you could use that -- our next call is from for example, he had lunch with massachusetts. henry timson, i could go the >> caller: hi, doris. their door trues to figure out >> guest: hi. what he talked about at lunch or >> caller: a pleasure to talk to you. i've been so excited about eleanor with joe lash, and i hearing you talk, i just ordered knew he had a doorly. your book. in some. >> guest: thank you. withdraw -- diary. it was there for the everybody to see. >> caller: do you have anything they're public, but they hadn't to do with speerl berg's movie been used before. on lincoln? c-span: who was uckes -- ickes? >> guest: i do, indeed. what happened is i first met spielberg in 2000, and he put together a bunch of historians, >> guest: he was called the old and he found out i was working on listen coin, and -- lincoln, curmudgeon at the time. and he said he would like henry morgenthau was one of my someday to make a movie on favorite characters. roosevelt had an annual poker lincoln. is so early on options or rights game, and it would always be to my book before i even finish hell on the day that the congress was going to adjourn it e, and two script writers and whoever was ahead at the were put to work on it. moment the speaker of the house the first one, don logan, who called to adjourn would win. wrote the aviators and the on one particular night morgenthau was way ahead when gladiator, and then he put a second script writer, paul west, the peeker calls, so roosevelt just pretends it's minute who actually has become such a good friend that he spent last else -- i'm sorry, i'm in the thanksgiving and is coming this middle of a poker game until it's to spend with us. i'm not sure when it will be finally roosevelt starts made, hope any sometime soon, but i trust there's no one's running, and he whispered to an aide, oh, you're adjourning now, hands, and liam neeson has been roosevelt wins the guam. chosen to play abraham lincoln. everything is great until the next morning, henry morgenthau >> host: what did lincoln sound like? >> guest: everybody says he had reads that the congress a thin, high-pitched voice which adjourned, and he actually resigned as secretary of the you can't quite imagine, but his voice, they said, could range treasury. but there was a real camaraderie very far. in those days it was outdoor among these cabinet members. venues. they could play poker together somehow it could be heard as well as work together. wherever it was. one reporter who heard him, the c-span: matter of fact, i remember somebody else resigning at one point and fdr who him a by yore ya with speech in 1854 letter and then he writes and wrote about it, he said when he first started out, you're back -- he says i got fluttery? aware of how awkward he looks and yet once he started >> guest: amazing. speaking, he spoke with such conviction if such strength ickes resigned several times. he'd get upset and resign, so inside that suddenly his voice became louder and his whole roosevelt wrote him a very energy was seen in his face. gracious letter saying you can't his face would light up, his resign, i need you, and you're body would move, and he became a absolutely right. when i read your letter, got different person. so there's no question that fluttery all over, i couldn't matching the dazzling words that believe it. he was able to write, his voice they did talk that way, and it was able to deliver them and showed the kind of awe in some ways that they felt for this man that's the most important thing who was till their president. about a speaker. >> host: and you mentioned the c-span: he gratefully replies move that is still in the makes me feel all fluttery. planning stages. to have you write about me as what will it be called? you did is an accolade to my >> guest: oh, i don't know. i suspect lincoln. ing i mean, what else would it spirit. and it goes on. be? i don't know. he'll decide that. [laughter] >> guest: i know. c-span: now, how did you go >> host: seattle, washington, you're next. about this? where did you work? >> caller: yes, this is jim. >> guest: largely at the >> guest: hi, jim. >> caller: i just wanted to roosevelt library, and the follow up on the corporations wonderful thing -- that's in hyde park, new york -- is it made you feel like you were citation earlier in the show e going back in time because the and give you what that citation place, the house where roosevelt is. >> guest: oh, thank you. was born, eleanor's cottage, >> caller: that was in a letter looks exactly as it looked when to colonel william f. el kin, they were there. november 21, 1864, and some of sometimes when you're in the middle of working in a library the surrounding context of that you take a walk around, you can letter, if i might read it, is really feel like you're back 50 years in time. we might congratulate ourselves it was so wonderful. this cruel war is nearing its and then there was these little end. it has cost a vast amount of motels that you stay in right across from the library, and you treasure and blood. do do feel like this is what a by seeing the fear future and scholar's supposed to be doing, crisis approaching that unnerves living right at the place where me and causes me to trumble for your subjects lived themselves. the safety of our -- and as a c-span: where is the library in. result of the war corporations >> guest: for me it was about a have been enthroned and the three and a half hour drive, money power of the country will beautiful drive. the hudson river far below: the endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of house which sit ises only a few people until all wealth is feet from the library is a beautiful house that has a great aggregated in a few hands and lawn that goes down to the the republic is dowed. i feel at this moment more huhson river far below. you're surrounded by beauty anxiety for the safety of my while you're doing this kind of country than ever before even in the midst of war. old-fashioned research. god grant that my suspicions may c-span: you mentioned value prove groundless. kill, what's that? .. >> guest: the cottage that roosevelt had bullet for eleanor. the cottage was 22 rooms, it wasn't small. in the 1920s after his affair with lucy mercer and they decided to stay together, it gave eleanor the freedom the go outside the marriage, and she became involved with a whole whether they have gone into quarrel with themselves, we are group of women who were called upon to appropriate to activists, league of women settle the quorum. voters fighting for child labor i was wondering if you might say a few words on lincoln's laws and there was eleanor relationship with that. roosevelt. frank lip's mother always looked >> what he did say was labor was askance, and thaw weren't the fancy people that he was used to, so eleanor didn't feel prior to capital. his whole theory was the laboring people built up a comfortable bringing her political friends to the big house. c-span: i just want to show the picture of mrs. roosevelt, the business and they created a business that hired other mother, in the middle. laboring people but without the laboring man everything was primary to that. >> guest: and that's the perfect, symbolic picture. he got a townhouse in boston to that's in his famous speech he made so there's no question he be near him. would have a sense he's when franklin and eleanor got obviously in the age before the married, there were two townhouses in -- seeing how band month before you got full-scale capitalists. they just had people beginning uncomfortable eleanor felt about having the big house suggested to build up a certain amount of he would build her her own wealth but it's interesting to wonder what he would think if he cottage. were in a later age and looked it was about a mile and a half back on the. or so from the big house, and it allowed eleanor for the first time in her life to have a home of her own, so she loved the >> how you live with abraham lincoln for so many years? >> so well. i couldn't have gone another ten place. c-span: now, if you're -- years and lost interest in him. somebody who's never been to that part of the country, how i look now at the place i work, far from new york city? >> guest: probably a couple hours from new york city. i know by train it is. c-span: along the hudson river. >> guest: along the hudson river i worked on this in my study in duchess county. upstairs because i need a laptop as my papers around me i can't work at a desk some sitting kind c-span: and in those years, the of like i am now, i've lost the war years, you're writing about here domestically where did focus of what it was like, my franklin delano roos relate and elle far vooz relate spend their husband works in the home, he'd go to his study on one side of time? the house and let go to my and >> guest: hyde park was the most read read before working and i important mace for both of them. he went something like 200 times would have to keep up. to hyde park. to that's the most -- c-span: how would he get there? >> guest: by train. he would often get on the train in washington maybe 10 or 11 at then we would go to our respective studies and we would go to town for lunch every day night, and it would reach hyde just to get out and i would read park by the morning. he loved traveling by train. more of the newspaper at that time. he had his own compartment i'd do errands in the afternoon because of his polio, he didn't and every night we would go to the same restaurant, a group of like fast moving transportation. he hated airplanes, but he could 20 or 30 of us, all have feel grounded. children who are grown and sit eleanor was just the opposite. she liked to travel but plane, around at the bar and become part of each other's lives. but she would go by train as well. c-span: a couple quick points. what year did he die? with lincoln at the core of it, i miss it even now. even during the time of monica lewinsky or elections in all the >> guest: 1945. c-span: and what year did he contract polio e? >> guest: 1921 when he was 37 years old. and i think one of the things i troubles we had in 9/11 i was understood more but doing this commenting on television, i knew book than i ever had before was i could wake up the next morning, was a great treat. how much that paralysis was a >> go to the front section of the sports page. >> i get sports first and my part of his everyday life. husband has the front page and i, like so many people in the then we switch. >> we are going to show our audience your home. country, thought he was left we will be back to continue our lame, but he was a full paraplegic. he couldn't get out of bed discussion. without being helped boo his in depth with doris goodwin. wheelchair by the value a lay to get to the bathroom. he couldn't even really walk. he had thick braces, and if he leanedded on the a arms of strong people, he could appear to be a maneuvering himself forward. one of the most extraordinary moments when i was doing research, i interviewed betsy >> i love of history goes back to the days when i was six years old and my father taught me mysteries are, how to keep score whitney who had been married to roos relate's oldest son -- of baseball games so i could record for him the history of roosevelt's oldesten son, and she asked him once, how do you the afternoon of the dodgers game and at six years old, your father comes home and he listens to you record the history even sleep at night, he described his if it's something that just own method of counting sheep. happened that afternoon, it makes it seem there's something he would imagine he was a young boy again at hyde park and there was a favorite sledding hill tragic about history. which i've seen that led to the i had a great history teacher in i hudson river far below. high school that made up for love. in the presidency as he's falling asleep, he would imagine he was a young boy getting on that sled, and he said he knew working with lyndon johnson as a young girl, somehow the love of every curve of the hill. history melded together. and at the river he would pick i like to wake up early morning it up, run to the top and do out usually around 6:00 a.m., 6:30 over and over again until he a.m. and going to my study and fell awe sleep. i thought, few god, this man is the most powerful man in the read over what i had written the day before, hoping somehow the world, and yet he's imagining and getting sol a lace for night before, it might seem great the next morning it seems thinking that he can run, sled, walk again the very things that were denied him at the height of it's not as good as i thought. his power at 37 years old. then my husband and i have breakfast and we both work, he works in another part of the c-span: we need to get to lucy house because he's as well a mercer rutherford's story down writer. then we go out for lunch and someplace here. then we break until about 1:00 but at one point you talk about when he would go are from washington to hyde park, he until 2:00 and then we do some figured out a way to stop and errands and come back home and see her in new jersey. maybe work a couple hours more. >> guest: that's right. he had an's taut in new there is a restaurant, 20 or 30 jersey -- estate. and he somehow, he loved to figure out maps anyway, he loved people gathered every night and we eat around the bar and it's geography, so he figured out the like a huge family and then we railroad lines and knew if he come home. i may do some reading about some went along a different pattern, he had to convince the secret service it was safe, then he could spend an afternoon with novels or mystery and go to bed lucy. this was not until the last year of his life. i think some people, mousse relatively early i can get up again at 6:00 a.m. >> when you are writing the book, you write as you do your included -- mousse included, that he had known lucy, i know research? >> the first couple of years required research to get oriented in figure out the angle he was with her when he died. but the truth was that he had you will take. in my case, i had to read about kept his pledge to eleanor not to see her again really until the last year of his life. the team of rivals i would be after eleanor had refused to be writing about, almost like an with him, after anna had come individual biography on each of them so that was just pure back into the white house and research and that's fun because after he was diagnosed with your just learning the whole congestive heart failure. and i think in that last year of husband life, i believe he knew that he was dying, and he went to plantation, and i guess it was march or april of '44 to recover, and it was there that time. i remember reading an essay, a he saw lucy mercer essential my great historian saying don't wait too long to write because if you wait too long, he might for the first time, and she had get paralyzed. as soon they had a vague sense of what i wanted to go with the just lost her husband who had book that took ten years, probably year to i started been a very wealthy businessman, writing and would do more came from an old family x. so research and writing and then she was widowed and i believe continue combining them as i went along. when he saw her there what it did was to awe waken in him a one of the great things today memory of what it was like when he was young before the polio. about being able to get books, he had known lucy three years you can get a collection of before husband polio attack and books that may be out of print now before his heart was giving so it turns out there was more way, and he decided that he wanted to see her regularly. c-span: how did he start the about lincoln than almost any other public figure and was original awe fair with her in. lucky enough i going to used >> guest: she had been a social book stores and sales to get an ec tower working for eleanor. when he was assistant secretary entire wall full of lincoln of the navy, eleanor and franklin moved to washington, books and have the right here at my side which was terrific. and eleanor worried about the whole social circle of ini have talkingses because you had to go to chase's diary for the know which a list, b list, so she hired this young woman who came from a blue blood family in private papers so everything was in this room of the book i washington and yet needed money needed and the rest was papers because her father had been an and primary sources i drag the house and probably 50 or so alcoholic. lucy came three or four days a backed up in another room. week and worked for the vooz relates, and somewhere in that period of time between 1914 and 1918 a relationship developed between lucy e and franklin. >> how do you pick the people you write about? c-span: how long was the affair in. >> guest: well, as far as we know it was probably two or since it takes me so long, have three years in that period of to want to live with the people time between '14-'18, but it cam side-by-side. living with franklin roosevelt was a great pleasure because to an a abrupt end when eleanor they were large characters. it took me six years to write came upon a packet of love letters lucy had written to the book portrait longer than world war ii was fought so if franklin. she actually offered franklin a divorce immediately, but i'm convinced it was the last thing he wanted. he never meant for the marriage to be over by his relationship you spend that much time with them if you live with them day by day, you better enjoy their with lucy. she was confident, she was gay, company. i read an essay one time by a great historian last century and she said the reason so many she was easy whereas eleanor was write about lincoln is because still haunted by the insecurities of her own child old where her mothered had told he's so companionable. her she was ugly and her father i truly felt that. this took me twice as long as the civil where took to be was an alcoholic, or and the fought and i joined every day mother-in-law, sarah, was being living with this man. intrusive about the kids, and it was hard for her to develop a his companionship, i craved it full sense of herself. so i think franklin felt attract day by day. this happy, young woman, lucy i have hard time writing about mercer. but when confronted with the thought of losing eleanor, it someone i didn't want to live was the last thing he wanted. with day by day. great historians have written c-span: back in those days, when about hitler or stalin, i don't did people -- what did the think that could be me. public know? dud they know about polio e? if they have flaws, i want to did they know about the braces enjoy their company day by day. on his legs? did they know about lucy mercer? ♪ did they know about princess martha of norway is? >> guest: this is one of the most interesting things, to me, in the world. certain members of the press knew about lucy mercer, they knew there were an unconventional set of relationships in the white house, they certainly knew that roosevelt was a paraplegic, and yet there was a certain kind of sense that a president's private ♪ life is his private life and unless whatever he's doing has an impact on his public activities, i talked to one old reporter who said who are we to judge? it wouldn't be sporting somehow to report on unconventional relationships in the white house. and as far as the paralysis ♪ goes, what assonneddished me is the majority of people thought he was simply lame are, and not a single newsreel ever showed him in his wheelchair, on his braces, being crippled. there was almost like an ♪ unspoken code of honor on the part of the president that the -- of the press that many that the president wasn't going to be seen that way. the book, he began chapter one sometimes reporters would see relating the story, franklin him being carried, and yet they never took a picture. if a young guy tried to do that, an older guy would knock the camera to the ground. roosevelt as president. there was a kind of dignity to remember as a young boy, in hyde park, how he would close his eyes and reflect on that time, the office of the presidency what was he thinking. then that i think is really missing right now on both the side of the press and the >> here he was as president president. roosevelt understood the paralyzed from the waist down importance of holding his unable to walk on his own power private life secure. he would never have thank talket again since polio had taken him in his 30s. his athletic outgoing person in his feelings about lucy mercer. there was a reserve that i suspect was better at that time. c-span: you also talk about, you terms of physical activity so talked about before, mrs. roos before you go to sleep at night, he said he liked to remember the days when he was a young boy relate's daily column -- again and there was a sledding roosevelt's. did she where it herself? hill behind his house and he would go to the top of the hill >> guest: oh, absolutely. in fact, if you read them, you can see the only way it was possible for her to write that and then take his sled and walk column us was really a recording up to the top so somehow, he would remember in his mind going up to the top going down and of what she did. and the only reason the column going back up again and it worked is it wasn't great allowed him to go to sleep but moments or issues, but it was so what a sad thing, he had a warm just as she was, and it was so full of activity because her memory of the time as a boy he schedule was even more extraordinary than his. her daily e life would be three had all these powers he no longer had. times as long as franklin roos relate's. she started working for him which is about 18 years old and she never stopped. she left him the rest of her he traveled to migrant worker camps, went into the mines, she went to visit blacks in the south, she went to ccc camps, life. she became his secretary during the early days, she was with him in the 1920s when he was in and that kind of traveling gave her experiences that she could long strings in florida trying recount in her daily column and just tell people what she was to get his power to walk again while she remained at home and thinking and feeling as she met she stayed with them all through so many americans in the course the presidency and then had a of her travels. stroke during the war and then c-span:ing what would happen if went home to somerville. you took the roosevelt presidency and moved it to it's one of the sad pieces of modern day america? his life because i felt sad he column every day, radio show? couldn't keep up with her when he had a stroke and that's when , you know, hand duh capped -- handicapped, affairs? >> guest: it's really scary to think about if eleanor and franklin had not been allowed that network of friendships in the white house that allowed them to sustain themselves while you want to say is such a great they were going through the guy but you're not being good to her. difficult days of the depression he couldn't bear the hurt of calling her on the phone and and the war, they wouldn't have knowing she couldn't talk back been as strong of leaders as to him but he should have at least talked to her as if she they were. was listening. i'm convinced roosevelt needed >> the sense you get what he needs to be around people. at the white house on the second the relaxation, for example, floor was a constant buzz of that missy e could provide when activity and people and cards eleanor wasn't there, but and social activity, he was very suppose the press was saying, well, who is this woman? what's going on here? at one point missy had been involved with harry hopkins. oh, my god, harry's living there too. can you imagine the press in i outgoing. think if we hadn't had that up >> i think what happened is in part because he couldn't travel a lot inside washington, he kind of space for their private wanted the people around him at every moment and he loved lives, they wouldn't have been listening to stories and telling stories so he made that into an exclusive hotel. replenished at political leaders. now, the principal us is more interesting in some ways. you almost wish roosevelt had churchill comes and spends weeks at a time in a bedroom across, had the courage to go to the public and say to the public i'm his foreign policy advisor, crippled and it's okay, because they loved him so much because of husband courage and his strength. but only at the very end of his never leaves until the work comes to an end. life did he will give a speech princess martha, in exile in america during the war days with sitting down. the family on the weekend and he excused himself and sat down eleanor was there as well. x for some reason that speech made an enormous emotional a former reporter who loved her was staying next to her. impact on the country because they then saw he was conquering kept imagining what kinds of conversations these people must this disability. but at that time nobody thought you could go to your country and have had in the bathrobes at tell them you were paraplegic, night and when i was with linda and johnson, i was wanting to because they wouldn't allow you to be their president. ask where they were all sleeping but i wasn't thinking in those . terms of 25 years old so on a .. radio program in washington, it happened hilly clinton was with me so she called me asking if i would sleep overnight at the white house. two weeks later, she followed up with an invitation to a dinner >> that was thought to help between midnight and 2:00 a.m. people with polio so he created after the dinner, my husband and a rehab center and lots of i went to every room and said patients would be down there and i think somehow his yes she's sleeping where she was contagious confidence helped them get through their own we were sleeping in winston polio. churchill's bedroom. so he liked to spend every thanksgiving with them, a i was sitting in the corner pledge he made. >> did you go to one of those drinking his brandy and smoking places? his cigars, it was so exciting. >> i went to the warm springs, >> why did he marry eleanor? it's a primitive setting. you look at the little white house, which is what they called the house where roosevelt would stay. it's a living room, dining >> i think he loved her. it is to his credit he could have had any woman of the time, room. he is very handsome and wealthy, and there was a bedroom the he was an aristocrat and get, he saw in her something he hadn't seen in most of them. size after small boys' bedroom, she had such a sad childhood. and a guest room where eleanor would stay and you think of her mother died, her mother was lush surroundings for the so beautiful. president of the united states, but he loved the simplicity of it. and it tells you a lot about she didn't have a pretty face so she felt that she wasn't. him to see that. >> the what about camp obella. the head of the boarding school >> that's where his mother was, made her feel she had a commitment to socialize, not society life but the social work off the cape of maine. was different than most women and it was part of eleanor and her age. his early days and the place where he got polio. she started to work in a social house to help people in poverty they didn't go there much longer. they went in the teens and early 20's, but after he got polio, franklin's wife eleanor and he knew he was a young woman interested in politics and the would go there because she poor and the things he cared loved it, but he didn't go back about eventually in his life and i think he chose the best woman for him. >> i'm going to read the letter much. >> and an impact on him as a you found but before i do, child? >> critical impact. describe the relationship between roosevelt daughter. he was not only an only child, >> what happened first of all, but his father was a sickly man when eleanor married about 12 and his mother was a young mother who was told she doesn't years ago, she brought in a have any more children because secretary, lucy. it was a difficult birth. and she put all of her love, and i think she gave him the a beautiful young woman, classy greatest asset a mother could woman and it seems franklin fell give a child, the unconditional for her. love. she is not confident in her because he was so important to marriage, she had her mother-in-law to contend with. her, she never gave him the freedom to stand apart and that she lost a lot of her zest she he hovered over. had as a young working girl so and maybe that gave him a sense franklin seemed to have fallen of confidence. and he had such confident and sparkle like opening the first bottle of champagne to be around him and i think that's a great gift a mother gives a child, but if only she'd known when it separate. i think he would have had an for her and eleanor eventually easier time with intimacy with discovered and found letters he had written to lucy and lucy had other people. >> as you know, when you go to been to him, offering a divorce in 1918 but it was the last thing he wanted so they agreed the hyde park residence, the to get together and stayed together and he promised never two big chairs by the to seek lucy again but he kept the promise for a number of fireplace, one is marked sara, years. eleanor traveled, she was the great eleanor roosevelt. he got very lonely, especially and the other is marked frank the last year of his life when lip. his hail health was failing. no chair for eleanor. he ran into lucy again and >> frankly as you can through a wanted to see her again and have as a tourist, here is sara and franklin. where did eleanor set. her talk to him in the white wherever she could find a house but the only way he could was to have his daughter, anna who was working in the white chair. >> and you look at the dining house when eleanor was away and arrange for the meetings. room, sara is one end as a host and franklin as a host and anna knew that it would be hard eleanor found where she could. if her mother found out but on and the big house at hyde park the other hand, she realized her reflected that sara remained father needed the companionship so she arranged for her to visit the mistress of the house, and the white house. even after she died, a sad lucy happened to be in georgia moment eleanor wants to change when he died so as soon as she it around to make it her house now that her mother-in-law a left, she would ask, tell me dead, and franklin can't bear everything that happened. to make changes to his boyhood it's hard to imagine how she home. >> and there's a map they give absorbed the news and her you at hyde park, the bedroom, husband's death but luckily there were no press, she didn't franklin delano roosevelt's have to be humiliated in front of the country, she just had to bedroom and then his mother's. consume this in herself. >> and sara was always there her daughter anna was the one to when franklin and eleanor was there. >> when you see franklin's, make the visits possible, she it's large and spacious, sara's must have felt she lost her daughter and her husband at the is large and spacious and same time but i was sad when i eleanor has a single bed in heard that. i was delighted to find what must have been what would eventually she was able to forgive anna and the mother and daughter became close once again. have been a dressing room in >> let me read the letter you between. include, this is from lucy. there she didn't have to have a i had not written before for small room, but she was a martyr in a sense and living up many reasons but you're constantly in my thoughts and to tough challenges she was was very loving. used to as a child and i found that very sad. i was following every step of the way. he told me so often and with >> harry hobson died, lucy such a feeling of all the joy mercer 57. >> and eleanor's secretary. >> died at 61. and comfort on the trip. princess martha died at 53? i loved to think of his great pride in you, anna. he told me so often in which it >> yeah. was all you meant. >> lorena hickok 75. >> anna the daughter died at 64 i look to you, you are his child and because you are yourself. i'm devoutly in heartbroken or 60-- sympathy, lucy. well, yeah. >> she was pretty young, too. >> can you imagine what that >> how come? >> well, harry hopkins, just to letter meant to anna? start with him. when he was at the end of the knowing that it hurt her mother, new deal period he was knowing her father who she diagnosed with cancer of the stomach and he had almost his adored talked in such loving terms about her to lucy? entire stomach removed, but somehow, public life and public service gave him an extra lease as i say, luckily what happened was after a while, elinor came on life and when roosevelt made to realize how much franklin went to her and the country. him his foreign policy advisor he was somehow able to get her partner given her a stage. through what most people would have died from. he was so sick during the war, he looked like he was dying, so thin, his body was eaten away. and when roosevelt died and people in all walks of life and i think she was able to reach there was no longer room for back beyond the hurt. him in public life, churchill said he was like a crumbling lighthouse, kept him alive, but they remembered the good years his body was giving way under they had together. the last years of her life, she him. put it out of her mind wheneve to understand what happened to princess martha, i think she, too, had illnesses during her whenever -- out of her public conversations when she talked of 40's and died relatively young her husband, it was only love and respect. it's a wonderful lesson to be able, finally maybe not forget in her 50's and so did lucy. but give it something that's tuberculosis spread and hurt you in the past. something happened to them. >> of frail roosevelt in 1944, and they seemed so much younger why did he run for fourth term? when they died. >> i think he believed even >> the franklin 63 when he though his health was not what died. it was before, and i'm not sure he was fully aware of how sick 1882-1961 for eleanor. she lasted an extra 17 years he was, as an optimist but even though the doctors told him he after fdr's death. had congestive heart failure, i suspect, i beat polio so i could >> the kids. how many kids were there? >> that's not a happy story in beat this but even without his many ways, there were five children. the daughter anna was the oldest and then there were four help, since he was in the middle sons. of the work, he had seen up jimmy, elliott, john, and, until then, he wanted to see it through. somebody who's name-- franklin, jr. and i think what happened is it was hard for the five of them to grow up in the shadow of he wanted to see the war that that giant oak of their parents. and for the four boys, actually the five children had a combination of 18 marriages between them. i think they had a hard time was under his term. >> did he like harry truman? apprenticing themselves to >> he didn't know him very well. becoming people in their own it's a weird thing this man who became so important in our right. they wanted to skip steps and history, there is not a lot of suddenly become important and for fall on his mind. run for senate and governor as we often see happening and they never got their own confidence on their own, it's not an easy part of this whole story. they were incorporating him into >> anna married twice, her the decision-making process second husband jumps out of a especially when he was so ill. as part of that, we were just hotel room in new york city? >> right. >> how come? >> he was a manic depressive and was under sedation for his psychological illness, they had lucky as a country harry truman already separated, but he was was himself and he became such a great president. always troubled. >> our next caller from florida. you can see it even during their marriage, they write each other amazingly romantic >> i'm a fan of yours. i had a question regarding letters, my one and only and my precious, clinging to each other in an almost unnatural lincoln in connection to the presidents you're talking about the fact that in history, way. and after the war, he felt he no longer had the platform of presidents have made decisions the roosevelt presidency and couldn't make his way in the and followed policies that had to be kind of camouflaged in a publishing world anymore, he got so sad he jumped out of a window and killed himself. >> did you interview john way to be accepted by the people and the congress and the can's bottinger, jr.? i talked to all of them. curtis roosevelt her second case, he was fighting a war to child and johnnie, jr. the son. preserve the democratic john died at age 65, the son of experiment but he framed as a fdr. he had two marriages, but died a republican? >> yes, he was the only one who war to preserve the union, something people could get their minds around. became a republican. he actually became a republican pretty early in his life much to the great dismay of the the way he packaged it and other policies to help england before family. >> fdr, jr., died at 74, he could get the rest of the country to follow him into engaging into the war right down married four times. what was he like. >> he had his father's charment to what they say today about and people said when he smiled whether that was a justification you could see fdr and that sparkling personality and he did have some success in politics and very instrumental in john kennedy's campaign in for responding to the 9/11 west virginia because roosevelt attack and a dramatic enough way was a magic name in virginia at the time of the election and to send a message the world saying if you hit as hard and they sent franklin, jr. to campaign for kennedy. >> elliott married five times. drastically as we were, there will be a hard and drastic and what was he like? >> i got a chance to talk to retaliation, i guess that's what him before he died and again it was, our president justified there would be the twinkle in the blue eyes that gave you a memory of franklin roosevelt, in kind of covering up might not but he had had a tough time finding himself. i think the alcoholism in eleanor's family visited itself be the best word but using causes and ideas that people can on he will velliott. relate to to get the policies, which they believe in to be right underway. and he was a mayor, but then he >> thank you. was a mystery writer and >> that's a very thoughtful way of putting it. i guess it depends on the overall purpose, that there eleanor was in, and a detective and he wrote a tell-all that policy is 6000 as to whether or the other kids found disquiet not it really does move with history and create greater peace willing. >> james died at 83, and ran or justice in the world. democrats for nixon? >> and you wonder what eleanor you're right and talking about roosevelt but even in the early or franklin would have thought. days before pearl harbor, who he had four marriages, too. he had some success as a talk about it as a way of congressman in california, but preventing us getting into the never able to hold onto his war. if we could have britain against career or to his family very easily, so it's not been an easy time, as i say, for any of those children. >> would you mind jumping to the end and telling as much as germany and it might make it easier for us not to be in war even though at some level, he you can remember about the last knew we would have to get in that war. was that deceptive? couple of days of if. what he understood was in 1938, is given a speech about dr? >> well, what happened was that after he came back from the conference and after he gave in major speech to the congress in march of 1945, everybody could see that his health was failing, and somehow, when he went to warm springs, georgia, there had been this sense that he would recouperate by going quarantining a dictator and it down there, the beauty, the created an of growing in congress, calling for his impeachment that he would entangle us, he said it's a air, the simplicity of the terrible thing to be the president and democracy, you feel like you're leading a state and decided an extended parade and look over your shoulders and nobody is following you. you realize you have to move step-by-step to educate them to trip to warm springs. where you want them to go. getting america involved in world war ii was essential. if hitler was allowed to succeed indeed it seemed as though-- in the war, western civilization >> and he brought together the would have been destroyed. cousins, and these are the goal is worth it. characters, too, and they kept him company. he didn't have much work. the first week or so it seemed i think his greatest leadership was before pearl harbor because like he might be getting some it meant we were more prepared bounce back and weight back, losing weight tremendously in the last year and then at a certain point he invited lucy when pearl harbor happened. similarly, with lincoln, he had to move step-by-step toward the immune summation proclamation. mercer to stay and she arrived four or five days before he died and stayed in a guest he knew if he had done it six house away from his little years earlier, he would have lost border states. later, he would have lost the white house and brought with moral boost. her a painter friend who want today do a portrait of roosevelt. what happens is he seems to be getting better and takes these ultimately, the question will be little driving trips with lucy, a favorite place he had, the was the work truly the white knob where you could see the valley in georgia from that battle wanted to become a diversion from the war on place and lucy later wrote she'd never forget about the terror? plans he had after the presidency was over and what he hoped to do with the world and idealism what the world would it became a strength and be like after the war was over democracy where the shout of but on a certain morning april 12th, he woke up and people people you better not mess with surprisingly thought he looked us or we will retaliate. history is unclear which way better than for weeks, his color was radiant, and probably was, the embolism that later killed mimm was able to be felt that will turn out but that will in his skin and coloring. be the judge of whether or not the early talking about it in a but nevertheless, he kept different way is justified or not. if the end result is not right, everybody company, and he was a if it hurts the war on terror, i think the wonderful story teller. beginning is more difficult to and he talked to them, and the two spinster cousins are there, in the middle of talking to them noon april 12th he accept. >> we are getting a lot of e-mails. do you think lincoln would have been as revered as he is now had suddenly said i have a terrific he not been assassinated? >> there's probably no question dying at the height of the war headache and he slumped forward and one of the cousins went about to be one and not dealing over to him thinking he dropped with reconstruction and all the messy problems of peace, his cigarette and she realized probably his reputation intact in a way it would have been had he had become unconscious and he had to deal with it. they immediately called for i would rather have him in the country would have been better doctors and help and lucy enough to leave and knew she shouldn't be there, she left off dealing with reconstruction and andrew johnson even if it is reputation was diminished and hour and a half later he because it was complicated and messy to have with the greater never regained consciousness sense of empathy while and called eleanor and told her in the middle of giving a protecting the rights of black americans. speech in washington when she found out. she knew the minute the phone rang that something happened. she could feel. they didn't tell her that he maybe the whole country would be had died. better off today. she called her away from the it be worth it to have some say he wasn't good with reconstruction, he was great with war. >> one of the students says you ddi think it was a wise decision for ach lincoln to choose a southern d dias. and somebody was playing the piano. democrat, andrew johnson? she said i must excuse myself. they told her that he had died and called harry truman and >> i think at the time he thought it was wise because it that's one of the celebrated meant he was binding up his party that would come after the moments in history where truman war. says is there anything i can do he needed to help democrats and republicans together and andrew for you, her first response is, no, but is there anything i can do for you because you're in johnson had been a supporter of trouble now. the war, he had been a good and she had the presence of military of the governor. he didn't know enough about andrew johnson's character and the kind of leader he would mind to ask was it ethical for become. it became somewhat evident on inauguration day, he'd had too her to go to warm springs to much to drink, he hadn't been well it was a incredible speech that everyone was panicked, he see her husband's body. she got to warm spring and asked her cousins there, tell suggested he would not be up to the job. me everything that happened in had he known andrew johnson better, he might not have been the last 24 hours. chosen. and laura, i believe had always loved fdr and probably jealous the convention decided it more than him but at the time, he was of eleanor for she maliciously pleased to have that connection with a southern democrat. decided to tell eleanor that lucy had been there. >> another one of those students and lewis -- says how did that influence she didn't have to tell her and that lucy had been there at the lincoln's presidency? white house the last year and >> in some ways, the sad relationship that developed with that her daughter anna had made his wife influenced the loneliness he felt during the presidency. the arrangements. and i can't imagine eleanor's strong face, and going back on mary was forever altered. she couldn't even be a mother to the famous train ride warm springs to washington, knowing inside the deep hurt she felt. when she got to the white their youngest son who was eight at the time, allowed lincoln toe house, anna was there and all that anna could say as her mother confronted her angrily all anna could say was i loved you both and i felt caught in a cross fire and she was sure their relationship was destroyed forever. she thought she lost her mother. i knew i didn't want to end the book because a death is a natural place to end it, so i decided to follow the story through the fall of 45 after his death and thank god what i personal loss of the war and maybe to protect the even more was able to find as eleanor to the people at large. he talked about the family traveled the country again that circles that were broken. the empathy was a remarkable summer, everywhere she went part of his own temperament, people kept telling her how this loving kid and having a much they loved her husband. people she thought were here people, poor people, taxi drivers, porters, felt their little kid die in the middle of lives were so much better off the war. at the end of the war than the >> another e-mail, you're too start and she had been fighting willing to give credit to your history teachers. him through the war. i am a college history teacher she wanted the war to be a and you should give more credit to your interest and talent and vehicle for social reform on civil rights, daycare in the energy. are you the red haired girl from factory and wanting more than he could provide and she later saw in the summer summer of the spring of 65, talking to myself to go to the entrance museum? '45, that women had the great >> that's exactly where i went to catholic school. i went to public school but mastery from having been part of the work force during the would go there on wednesdays and sundays and got my confirmation war. in 1955. and unions were stronger than >> when was this picture? before and as she heard these tales she began to feel a sense how much the country owed to franklin roosevelt. as she felt that, she was somehow amazingly able to >> this was spring-training. i go there when my boys were little to write an article and forgive him for what had be able to play around. happened. in august of '45 after the bomb i wrote an article one year was dropped she wasible to did $and the warm ended she was about the batting title. able to go to anna, her daughter, and forgive hadar as well, affording a reconciliation that lasted the it turned out to be an rest of their lives. extraordinary story because i got very close to his sister, as a biographers, when i his close to his mother and learned that, knowing this woman had done something i sisters and family. don't know if i could of done, for giving a deep hurt like she is a history buff so after i wrote the article, she came to that. that was wonderful that she did my hometown to see historic sites and i took her around and because the next 17 years we became friends as a result. one day 1986, would have been instead of harboring bitterness the year the red sox almost won the world series, she called me one day and i mentioned they had toward her husband she loved him in some ways more than in life. and incorporated the strength and she had been the idealistic a broken rib and we were afraid one and he was the practical the doctors, we didn't think the someone. he thought about what should be doctor was taking good care. doen and he thought about what we had to get to another doctor could be done. somehow after he died she was partly more like him, a much better politician after his death than before and now she so the sister called and said had to be both of them not just you should go to another doctor. what happened, the mother called and he told her he lost her. herself. it's an amazing end to the she went out minutes later and was killed in a car crash with story. made you realize if you look her mother. four days, he just went home, no from the outside in, and at the one knew when he would come back and in that time, i got a call, media might do today, he would accuse him, and maybe anna he wanted to thank me that because of my call to the sist betrayal of her mother yet none of those labels would be right. sister, he had a chance to tell i'm convinced these people never meant to hurt one another, they were trying to her he loved her right before get through their lives with she died. what started out as this article turned out to be something more the best possible mixture of to both of us that's when they love and affection, and seems to me that the challenge is not to do what's so prevalent today were little. the kid on the left is now in in biographer, to stereo type, his 30s. what i wanted to try to do was to exend it empathy to understand why they needed these relationships and not to judge them harshly because of the other two are 27 and 28. >> our next call is from los their own human needs. >> you have some references to angeles. >> is a comment from florida, it the fact that she went in to does seem he's not a big fan of stand by his body at warm springs, wanted some moments by herself and when she got to the white house she did the same democracy and he's the guy who mapped out the strategy in 1996. thing and ushers kept them out. >> one of the ushers was there when she asked to close the door. he wrote in a memoir as she ... stood by the body she opened the casket one last time so she could say goodbye and he wrote it in a memoir and people in warm springs wrote about the last minutes and everybody kept somewhat after diary during that period of time and knowing how important it would be for relative to lincoln, i think history. >> you also included letter from lucy mercer and anna, these people are currently where did you get that. running our country and coming >> that was in anna's papers at out of the imperial presidency which he was the first to create the library. an executive order and is clung >> had that been published before. >> the son of anna had written to by elements of the far right, about it and the first time i i think there is truth to the had seen at that printed. notion when the congress after swar adjourns by roberts rules of order, there is no lawful way that the president could use afterward, she thought she lost her mother and father, and lucy emergency powers to reconvene. >> they stand for the call. three or four weeks after fdr's >> you are right, what happened after fort sumner, congress was death, she wrote what that meant. here is a man she loved, she can't express openly. not a process right then, those days congress only sat for three she's off on her own. or four months because it was a long time to get there, lincoln she said in the letter i want did have to take executive action and hoped it would be you to know how much your sustained when congress came to being in july 4 of 1861, there father loves you, a generous is no question that war has letter, how many times anna's father talked to lucy about how much he loved his daughter and for a daughter who lost her father so much to hear that continually centralized power in the executive, happened in civil confirmed, i guess, was so war, world war i, world war ii and happened in recent years important that anna's daughter with foreign-policy having such a president the debate that took told me that anna kept that letter in her bedside table for the rest of her life somehow confirmed not only how much her place before they authorize the father loved her, but not feel president to take the actions so guilty about putting her father and lucy together, and showed how wonderful a woman that he did with saddam hussein was so shortened, i remember lucy was. >> did you find yourself robert byrd standing up and saying this is terrible that were not debating the halls of getting emotional? the congress are silent and i >> it took me longer to work on this book than how long the war think the democrats were to blame as well as the republicans, seems to me remembering back on that everybody was worried about the was fought. midterm election, they wanted to and i found myself talking to get this order entered over and them as if they were still afraid of anybody not standing up and looking strong at alive. you feel their presence and september 11, as a result we when bad things happened to went into that authorization to them when one hurts another, you feel it. that's the only way you can do the president without the congress really fully absorbing what the information is they it when you get so absorbed in were getting if we had longer all of this. >> where did you write it? >> mostly at home. time, more intelligence report, i have a study right on the forcing administration to talk second floor of my house, we more to the congress maybe it live on the main street in would not of taken place. concord, so you can walk right >> another e-mail john moore of into the town and i filled the study with pictures of franklin and eleanor, pictures of the texas, from your personal war, rosie the riveter, and expense with working with lyndon johnson can you, on robert pictures of women working in carol's biography on his life and political career. the factory and the ambiance felt like world war ii. i wanted them with me. i love libraries and use them a lot, but this time i wanted the >> i think he is fantastic, he's a good writer as we will ever get in history writing, his books. i went to the used bookstore ability to render to life, for example in the first volume when he talks about electricity coming to rural texas, it is and the whole room was filled magical the way he makes it come alive for the people living there and i think as he keeps going along, he is just with world war ii books. >> how do you write? >> long hand, primitive still. i cannot think on the typewriter, i've never been able to, i write it out in long understood lyndon johnson, johnson may not have liked some of the things that he said about hand. the worst a stage, i copy it him but he would be very proud to know that a man of his stature has spent his life working on them. over so the typist can read the in the afterlife, there will be a panel of all the president and writing. each one will be telling you what i got wrong, the first that's when i edit and a typist person will be lyndon johnson will type it out on a computer and i don't look at it all saying the house was twice as long as a book he wrote about until the first draft was done me, robert carol was three times and finally at the end when i really have to edit the thing as long as anything i've written we put it on my husband's computer and he taught me how in there worth every word. >> franklin roosevelt achieved so much such as social security, to actually edit on the the sec, the federal reserve computer. i can't write on it, but i can open market committee, labors edit. i feel very proud. >> what time of day do you write? >> usually in the start of the morning, my husband and i get act, and employment insurance, the g.i. bill, temporary relief up early. jobs to get people to the great for some reason he gets up at depression, i have always 5:30, gets me up to get believed his best work was his breakfast and sometimes work out. not a mood we are an always in and we work early even sometimes before the kid go to extraordinary leadership during world war ii and my question is how or why was franklin school at 7:00 and work until roosevelt so effective during the middle of the afternoon and world war ii and the country was so unified especially when you then can go play tennis or do compare that to vietnam or the errands. that's the fun thing about a current mess in iraq where was husband in the same line of going so badly. >> i think what roosevelt understood in world war ii, if business and you can take breaks together. >> how long did it take you to write it? >> i would guess of six years, four were research and two it were going to be a long word which he suspected it was then you had to involve as many years were writing. people on the homefront as possible so they would feel connected to the work, in that even while writing you wouldn't regard, he had 12 or 13 million people working in the factories know the answer to it and i'd during the war and another 14 million were drafted in the army during the war and he also have to go back to hyde park, had an exhilarating fire and within weeks of finishing the book. >> your favorite thing in the police and a blood drive and book? >> my favorite thing in the book, eleanor and franklin still loved each other during this period of time. the conventional wisdom was people buying bonds even if it wasn't the most efficient way to after the affair with lucy mers raise money for the war because he wanted them to feel part of the drive, he had an aluminum drive, scrap rubber drive, all in 1918 their marriage had of which was designed to save were going to fight a war become a pure political partnership. i was happy to discover even abroad, everybody should feel connected, i often thought after though they could have hurt september 11, president bush had an incredible opportunity as he each other, i almost wanted to had gone to the country and just push them together because i as roosevelt did, when he said could feel the love between that war happened, he had to them, but very glad to find that out. >> you knew lyndon johnson and become and it made some of the wrote a book on him worked for liberals mad because he decided he had to have a partnership with business if they were gonna build the tanks and the weapons him. in the tanks that were necessary and john kennedy? >> i knew the family, but-- for the war, he gave them great >> jacqueline kennedy? >> yes. contracts in antitrust >> what's the closest you got regulations, they became to roosevelt? important to him even as a >> i never saw franklin on protected labor at the same eleanor personally. time, a president bush had gone the closest their two sons i interviewed before they died inside your tax cut has to and then all the children of become mr. 9/11 use of resources those children who were really that they had provided with very helpful to me. >> of the three books and all the thinking about these emergency situation to make it better in our country we could politicians, who is your favorite? >> well, i think i'll probably always be most grateful to lyndon johnson not for the add a public health system that reasons you might think. was strengthened by biological attacks and would've been good i think watching him in those in his own right of a biological attack, could've been exilic fire or police, could've been last years of his life on his ranch and helping him with his potentially a draft again so more people were felt to be part of this effort instead of having memoirs. a man who had no other resources other than politics. he didn't know how to get through without politics. a small group of people that are he used to have mock meetings in a volunteer army, all of that was possible, such loony the to figure out what to do during after 9/11 and what history will the day. which cows were given medicine and tractors-- and like the white house, no have to suggest, afghanistan seemed to produce and kept that longer bills on the hill, but immunity, was iraq the right battle to fight to keep the community alive, so far that seems to be breaking apart and the branch. with all the wealth of support and he wanted to know how many we might hope that her homefront could've been mobilized in a people were going through the somewhat different way. >> can you describe the relationship between sarah roosevelt, her son and eleanor? lbj library and he wanted more than the kennedy library and get them in, free coffee and >> i would not have wanted sarah donuts. roosevelt of the mother-in-law, a man so sad he couldn't be alone. he would ask me to stay outside she was very important to of his room when you take a franklin, however, she gave him, nap. whatever that confidence is that and when you're 23 years old he had as a young boy and as a you think of most exciting thing in the world would be to president and an older man cam from that mother's undying love, her only child with her husband who was a much older man and she be president of the united states. doted on him, so much so that he didn't balance that with sometimes it was hard for him family, love, sports, because when he was young, he friendship anything else, so it left him so bereft at the end was older than the other people, the impact made me know that he never got along easily with success at that price wouldn't be worth it and not long after that experience of watching him die, i got married and had men of his own age, nonetheless once he got married i don't children and i think one of the think she was ready to let him go, as a result of that she had reasons it takes me so long to write these books. i wanted to be with those kids a very hard time finding a when they're little. i never wanted to be left with relationship with her husband, she moved into a house, she greeted two houses, one for her and one for them and a quarter that went right in between when lyndon johnson with 700 books in my life and nothing else in it. when president carter was eleanor tried to discipline her president he asked me to be children, somehow she would be head of the peace corps and the one that would say no, don't worry, one of her kids did something bad, she then bought something i would have loved. and i remembered the kids and them a card to make him feel better. i think she was a very difficult lyndon johnson and i knew the force in eleanor's life and made kids would grow up quickly and their marriage much work obligated than it would otherwise been even though she nothing can compete with them gave him the fundamental confidence the mother gives the probably. >> where were you born? child. >> how long did she live. >> she died in the 40s, she was pretty old, she was a sturdy >> in rockville center, new york. >> rockefeller center? >> no, rockville center. character and her death and 41 my family originally came from was very hard for him, he wore a black armband for a long period brooklyn and moved out to long island that's why i was a huge of time and he really did love that woman, i gotta give her an warmest credit for that. baseball fan. my real love of history started with baseball. >> senator from california. my father taught me to keep score. i would recreate the brooklyn >> this is a rumor that i've heard, by the way great show. dodger games and i thought thank you very much. without me he would never know what happened. he never told me the scores were in the newspaper the next lincoln and i don't know if it's true, maybe that you found something that might indicate, day and that's probably where i he might've been bisexual or gay and also did eleanor have a started to love history. where did you go to college. >> colby college in maine and relatlesbian relationship. harvard ph.d. >> those two questions do belong together in a certain way, >> what was your thesis. >> two attempts to overturn here's what i came away thinking, as far as lincoln goes, people assume they supreme court decisions, might've been gay and they dirksen on prayer in the written about it recently, one schools and the one man one he slept in the same bed with vote decision and in both cases his friend for three years and the amendments failed. two he wrote letters which ended >> going to write another book? >> sure, what else can i do? with yours forever lincoln, as fact i look into the period of >> my husband and i are going to work on a book together? time, what i discovered men's it may be a disaster. relationship with each other has and i remember president carter intense, and women's were likely intense with one another, said the biggest mistake was sleeping in the same bed was not writing a book with rosalyn. anything unusual, lincoln was on a circuit in illinois. we're going to write a book, like truman, johnson getting he actually would sleep civil rights through congress, sometimes two or three to a bed, each will illustrate a the only person that got his own different power of the bed b was the judge because he t presidency and each one will be told as story, i want each to be a dramatic moment in that his own bed because he weighed 300 pounds. president's lifetime so that a other people i was writing about young person reading it like in for example they had both lost college would get a history of the presidency, but through these great decisions. i'm hoping they'll love history their lives, this is before they as much as we do. became secretary of war in secretary of treasury, here is >> what do your kids think of what stanton's rights, chase and this? >> interesting thing because stanton rights to chase and he we've been home so much of the time while we work, they haven't seen the end results until now as teenagers, they see the book came out and their said ever since our intercourse father in the movie 27 years last summer, no one is in my old. mind more awaking and sweeping, >> dad, you're a stallion i dream of you at night and i want to hold you by the hand and say i love you, no one suggested again, somehow that sense of that he was gay and that chase pride. it's not like a career where they're confronting daily who their parents are. was gay, when he was in the we've been much more quiet and at home. i do television at home. state legislature in older the state senator he became romantically involved in became so people are much more aware romantic without saying ever since i think of those two i because i do local commentary feel woman nisha my feelings about you knowing either one of for our abc affiliate in boston them were gay and in fact the solar colleague eventually tried and do a weekly television show to make a path and almost broke which i've done for 12 years when we go on the streets people will know me from that ubroke up as meg enter marriage. if we look back at the time we so the kid are crazy about have to realize that man had getting stopped all the time. as far as the writing goes, it's the fabulous thing to combine with family life because we're home almost all the time. we haven't got much time, when these attachments, there is no definition of what homosexuality you go up to fdr's home and you met until after 1868, more important they felt free to talk to one another in a way that see the library and the home might seem on today intimate and then the couple of miles days modern world, eleanor wrote letters to a friend in women away, where eleanor roosevelt spent a lot of her time. historians written about the what was your thoughts, what 19th century and i think part kind of a family feeling would that have been, she was there of it, everything was so and him at the other place? >> and the striking thing how structured and chaperoned, men, different they are. the big house of sara and franklin's, so put together, he came more intensely involved, the china matches and gorgeous. i would argue is probably the eleanor's got mixed matched context of the time that is more china and every chair in the living room is a different important than to label them today from our own perspective. size, a fat person, tall person, short person, >> the question has been comfortable in the chairs and answered by thomas and lee in you know how opposite their chicago. >> i cannot believe i forgot te temperment was. already. >> it was the chicago river and >> for some ways they never built in 1860 and torn down and were meant for each other, but thank god for the country the destroyed in 1867. opposites attracted when they're young and enough to >> that is great, that's what's keep them going through the good about the show. long marriage. >> not fair with a minute to >> that's a good question, go, but relationship between number one, what was the deal women friends at valkill, what do you think the relationship with the general for the supreme was? >> i think mostly eleanor was union you seemed helpful to the loved by somebody, lorena hickok and she felt the center of somebody else's lives. sound. he ran against lincoln in in some people claims that maybe she was a lesbian, as this woman was. i don't think that's necessarily so. i amming i think the most important thing that the woman 1964, there were english troops in canada, french troops in loved her and helped her become a better first lady. mexico, was he concerned that the colonial power move back in the truth is nobody knows whether they went beyond hugs and kisses and sometimes people try to appropriate it. and carved the american continent as they had in the and eleanor would be the first person and knew if she was previous screen. he was very concerned, i think considered a lesbian and gave a role model to younger people making people feel better about they viewed the civil war as an herselves that that would have been fine, but i don't think she would have defined herself opportunity to get more land perhaps from america and then that way. they wanted the democratic >> no ordinary time is the experience to fail, they are protecting monarchies in a different form of government, if title, on the home front with it proves that ordinary people could not govern themselves, it franklin and eleanor. was good for them and especially doris kearns, thank you very much. >> you're so welcome. >> you're watching book tv on c-span two and we're taking the wealthy classes in england several hours to show you some and france were the ones who in many way were supporting the south in their struggle against the north, it was very important programs with award winning and is a secretary of state he historian doris kearnes goodwin. she's appeared on c-span and book tv over 60 times. played in keeping the english next from 2015, she sits town people out of the war and keeping the french out of the and talks about her books and work, the workingmen were very takes viewer calls on our in in favor of the northern cause because they were in favor of emancipation but the ruling depth program. >> doris kearns goodwin over power were exactly as you suggest in trying to maneuver into a situation where if the 1,000 books in print on abraham north were to lose and the south was put off, maybe they could pick off mexico and things can be done, as far as your first lincoln. and more than john kennedy and question goes, which i now others combined. forgot what was the first >> i knew it would be one way into him. question, are you still there? and take me so much longer, the >> he is not. >> will come back. last one on franklin and eleanor was six years longer >> this is from ray in west than world war ii, he turned out to be a good companion how do you start the process. >> at first reading and reading, and i wanted to do abe virginia saying if lincoln were to be involved in politics and mary the way i'd done today, which party would he align himself with? >> the interesting thing if you were involved today, he is very franklin and eleanor. loyal politically educable longtime to lead before he became a republican i think you but she couldn't hold the would stay with the republican party, he would try to move it in a progressive fashion, so he public, mary, the way that eleanor did. did care about people and education opportunity and people and i looked at cabinets he was almost married to them more. it was a tense time and they wait for news from the who report and he said battlefield, they go to the front. relax together at night so i thought, these are the guys i'm interested in. when it turned out they had government was there to do with individuals that they could not do so well for themselves, i been his rivals beforehand, i think you have a different philosophy from the conservative finally realized i've got my elements of the republican party but i think you would make the republican party what he story. >> there was a book 60 years believes in rather than switch to some other party. ago on lincoln's war cabinet. >> ththe color was asking about and what's different from that book and this one. >> what he did was not so many general, why did he not run in 1864. >> to go back, what he was and primary sources, he used seco was he a saboteur, now i remember the question, i don't secondary sources. think it's fair to say he was a he had one huge chapter on each consolatory, he did not believe an answer patient should be dull and mine intertwines from the in the war and as a result he beginning to the end. >> you've written a number of was very upset when lincoln books that included primary introduced then answer patient sources you're now dealing with 19th century figures at opposed to 20th century figures. proclamation, he thought it how do you go about the would make the world longer and research process? give more resistance to the south, the trouble with him as a >> i was worried at first, i general which lincoln should've was lucky, even in the seen earlier than he did was he roosevelt time there were people who knew him and the family and with lyndon johnson was great at organizing the troops, the troops loved him and could discipline them any i was automobile to spend hours unknown army to begin with, he at a time talk to go that giant needed to do that and he created of a man. a great engine, he somehow did not have whatever it took to take his troops into war, some how can i go back to a period of time and i can't talk to anyone? but because they wrote diaries people argue that they loved him so much he did not want to take and letters, historians 200 them into battle, some people argued that he was going slow because he wanted the war to come to an end without hurting years from know you won't know the south, whatever it was he as much about us as we were to turned out not to be a very good general, no question in lincoln took too long to ask for know about the characters in resignation, and 1864 in the the 19th century. 5,000 letters they wrote. summer of 1864 looks like the fortunes of the war were very so i love reading those, you feel like you're over their low even though gettysburg had shoulder. >> first of all, you said abraham lincoln, chase, bates, were members of a reckless generation of americans destin today leave behind the 18th century world of their been one and vicksburg have been founders. thousands of miles separate one for the north, lincoln was their birthplaces of virginia, not sure he would win another election because the morale was down in the war was going on too new york, new hampshire, long, so many lives have been virginia and kentucky and lost, people were blaming him that the emancipation proclamation for the democratic nonetheless, social and convention in mcallen would be the perfect person to run economic forces shaped their against him because he had the support in the north of what was paths and marked a number of similarities. called the conservative >> how so? democrats, the copperheads, the people who thought the world was >> what was so interesting, the going on too long in a compromise piece will be a good thing to happen, i think he thought because he been so american experiment in popular with army that he would democracy was new. here is the next generation have the support of the huge coming along, politics is the element that was in the army, as it turned out lincoln when the passion of the people. so it's not surprising that all army which mattered so much to of these characters entered political life. when they would give a talk him and mcclellan handled the tore there would be a debate, election terribly, his letters to the people in the paper were 10,000 people might come and troubled and he then went off people would listen to four-hour talks not what you could imagine today. and made money but the trouble they say that politics back with him was to wrote letters to then is what sports are for us today. so that's what shaped all of them. they all wanted to become lawyers so they could become his wife in the civil war and the letters are so damning to politicians so they could him that now that they have been participate in the public life of our country because that's published i think that hurt his whole reputation forever for history, he talks when he first gets in that god is placed in where the passion was. where he has, he could be a dictator if he wanted to and he >> why didn't one of these become a running mate to abraham lincoln? >> that's an interesting question. once they got there and convention decided it was abraham lincoln then they're looking for balance and says such terrible things about lincoln and he never takes responsibly for any of his probably knew none of these failures during the peninsula campaign when he feels he blamed guys would be willing to accept it out right on stanton to the extent, he wrote a telegram to the white house saying if i lose this battle, it will be your the vice-presidency. the vice-presidenty was in fault and you have sacrificed those days and they would say army, if i could telegraph operator was so stunned at the insubordination of the last line next time around. >> and who is stewart? that he cut it out so lincoln >> he reminded me of churchill, and stan did not see that, became knowledgeable later, lincoln after stan was getting he would drink and smoke and so much wine even the southners would feel good about the pounded by the newspapers after northerners. mcclellan was going everywhere he had been the great saying that the reason he lost then peninsula campaign because he had soldiers he could've sent to him and he gave a huge speech anti-slavery orators. and so many people waited for the news he had been nominated, to union rally bigger than any the champagne was uncorked. inauguration in which he took he was disappointed. the responsibility, he said it's not stanton, i would've sent them if i could and you're not yet when lincoln appointed him to blame stanton and it finally stopped the critique of stanton. just the opposite of lincoln who secretary of state he thought he would control lincoln and in the end they were friend once he realized that lincoln was knowledged and shouldered responsibility for the subordinates, mcclellan was opposite, always blaming who he was, and their somebody else for what he did. friendship was surprising. >> salmon chase. >> chase was different than >> once a month we spend three hours with a distinguished author, this month is stores, steward. he was religious, practice another 45 minutes kamala harris jokes he could never deliver california. >> good morning i'm calling from with ease. he kept a diary from the time california, you're such a he was 20 years old and a wonderful compassion for writing self-righteous kind of character, however, he had been great as an abolitionist, he was an honorable person in the history, any time in the future problems for black equality. he wanted to be president so and about the civil rights. much that even when lincoln made him secretary of the >> i don't know what i'm going to do next, that is a good idea, treasury, he tried to maneuver one of the difficulties as you get so caught up in what you're against him and win the second time around and lincoln bested doing that is hard to imagine leaving lincoln right now but in him. >> edward bates. >> he was from missouri and some way civil rights movements people thought maybe he could would be the logical outbreak, be president because he was conservative and came from a border state. when he was a young man he was interested in politics like the rest of them. he got married to a woman he loved so much he couldn't bear the fact that after lincoln left the presidency, is still needed the civil rights movement in the being aware from her. 1950s, 1960s to complete the and when he was on the way to emancipation and the true beginning a breakdown of segregation and equality for black americans, it might be a congress, why am i missing you, nice sequel, the hard thing, even when i had to move from he wasn't away long because she roosevelt to lincoln and move had 17 children. all of my roosevelt books out of in the 19th century when men my study i felt like somehow i was betraying roosevelt and so i wrote about history they barely mentioned that you had a wife think it'll be a while before i or a family, but you can see in each one of those, chase had a can leave it behind but at some point, i'm sure i'll come up beautiful daughter. he lost three young wives, and with something because i cannot wait to be back with another book again. >> next call little little rock arkansas. are you with us? his daughter was a partner and >> yes i am here, thank you. good afternoon, i wanted to ask she married an older wealthy you to please opine on the man and then died in poverty. modern day that high-tech >> of the 17 children, how many lived to adulthood? computers has eliminated the >> nine lived to adulthood. need of big government socialist >> host:. >> you said you dedicate this and the democrats offered, what could they possibly bring to the book to richard goodwin, he read and edited every single table to assist our free page. enterprise capitalist system. i argued with him. what did you argue about? >> sometime we would argue whether lincoln was doing the right thing. 's a huge lincoln fan and deciding if i would be critical. >> i think with the democrats what are you saying? that's my lincoln. still stand for is the idea that government can aid people in >> no, this is wrong of him and areas where they cannot aid themselves which is what lincoln right of him. stood for so many years ago, it it was fantastic. he's studied lincoln all the time. is no question in my mind that we're both writers, we work at social security is a fundamental right that the democrats are arguing to protect, there is a home, he in one section of the house and i in the other need for free enterprise, it is section and fantastic-- truly free to be there, our system is built upon that but in i'd give pages as i finished some cases that free enterprise does not become free and you them. >> and you debated lincoln have corporations that need to have some sort of stimulus from the government to make sure that they are not undoing the freedom and-- did he inspire you to do this that we stand for and there is or-- >> no, i think i came up with no question that the issue of the idea and once i got into it and he started reading about healthcare and issues of job lincoln as well. creation and poverty that i my husband was a speech writer think the democrats traditionally have talked about, for john kennedy and lincoln-- whether or not they have been able to reach the country today to argue that those of the right lyndon johnson. values that we should be fighting for as a country is the and he was a wordsmith to the question, they have not one in recent elections but the values nation. who came up with the title? >> we want today calling master among men and that's it's about his human relationship, but given he's the great emancipator, that might be a that underwear the democratic party in my argument in my mind worriship word to use the title in the 60s when the civil with master in it. rights movement was there, when medicare was first formed, when aid to education came through in and i knew political genius order to use the government to help people who might know how would be the subtitle, but we to chance to help themselves, when social security was updated were going to call it the great in the civil rights laws were passed in segregation to bring voting rights to black unifier, or colossus. americans, i think all of those we went to the working title, that are countries eventually team of rivals, really what is proud of and that was originally about. >> our conversation for the next three hours on book tv with doris kearnes goodwin. we welcome your phone calls. initiated under democratic authority even the republicans are great republicans came by call 202-737-0001. their side, i look back and some people look on the 60s as a sad. because into so badly with anti-vietnam war and the death of bobby kennedy and martin luther king and in some ways it for pacific, 0002. was a time when people cared about public issues and they and you can e-mail us your were willing to fight for the questions at book tv at public issues and i look back on the era with nostalgia, maybe c-span.org. it's because i was younger, that's probably part of it. in your last conversation with lyndon johnson, you talked >> wanted president johnson about abraham lincoln? >> yeah, interesting he was reading sandburg's biography on lincoln and trying to conjure feel, how did he feel about martin luther king? >> at the beginning there was some tension because martin luther king is a leader, any lincoln to life. president feels he is a leader he was haunted in the last and he is operating outside the system of the government, was pressing the government to move years whether history would more quickly than johnson remember him. i now realize more than i did would've thought he was able to move but the amazing thing that when i was 25 years old, what a privilege it was to have spent so many hours with this aging happened was after the civil lion of a man. rights act of 64 passed indian segregation in the south and martin luther king was obviously he had won so many conquests, m instrumental in creating a movement that created the act, done so much in civil rights, johnson got such enormous pleasure from knowing he had and yet felt in the end as if done something that would stand his career had been destroyed by the war in vietnam. the test of time that he became a real civil rights advocate in so, i had those hours with him and it was an extraordinary experience. i think it's what propelled me to want to understand the inner person behind the public figure that i've tried to bring to all of these books since they be. >> when was this photograph taken? >> this was when i was selected as a white house fellow. 1965, the country has to absorb the civil rights act of 64 and he said this is my moment, it may not continue, i'm going must have been when the women forward so in the state of the union address and 65 he called for voting rights act and martin luther king made that come alive wore the chignon, false hair on by his march from selma to alabama in montgomery and when he was beaten up by the southern the back of the head. people down there in the police and what happened weirdly, i did dance with president johnson when we were selected, but had been a graduate student force, it made the country feel when selected at harvard. a certain sense of wanting to do something to make this right, that's when lyndon johnson like many young people active in the anti-vietnam war called for congress and gave a movement so written an article against johnson which unfortunately came out after being selected as the white house fellow. the theme was how to get rid of johnson in 1968. great speech called the we shall overcome speech, fact and proud i was sure he would kick me out to say my husband worked on that speech and i was a graduate of the program. student at the time and i remember being with my friends feeling it was one of the great moments in history to hear surprise willingly he said bring her here and if i can't win her over. >> and you mentioned the dance, lyndon johnson, what happened then, he in the middle of the and he said do you dance up at speech talked about civil rights is not a black problem, not a white problem, history and state harvard. have come together in one place >> and you said of course they in alabama just as they did in lexington just as they did, then he took up the anthem of the do. bull, he responded i know what civil rights movement and said we shall overcome, it's all goes up there and i bet they about who is been involved in the civil rights movement, he is can't dance like i'm dancing like i am with you. the president, no longer fighting against the civil rights movement but embracing >> he twirled me around and he it, it's a moment in the public had a habit of standing closer to human beings so i felt i was in his chest half the time and when i danced he literally life. >> how did you reach her husband. >> he came to harvard, he came picked me up from the floor going around the room. >> let's get some phone calls, with an office right next to first up, oberland, ohio. mine, he knew about me because good morning. >> oh, good morning, i just he knew i worked for lyndon purchased the book two days ago, i'm into the first 200 johnson, he asked me out to dinner, i must say the first pages of it. night and met him, this was the huge fan of lincoln. man i wanted to marry, took a my question is lincoln's ability to reach out to his while. >> from oakland california. >> go ahead please. political rivals and incorporate them into a larger >> are you with us? scheme. would you comment on the >> i grew up in brooklyn and seeming i am impossibility of went to saint paul's catholic church school rather, the nuns na happening now? also love the reverend, we would >> i think it would be harder how because now we have a all have to pay for them to win permanent campaign. the minute a president is elected they're already the series. thinking of the next term. in lincoln's day most previous >> that is great. >> i have two questions, 2001 presidents just had a term. president bush signed an and today i think they'd worry executive order permanently tailing off from the public all about giving a platform for presidential records going back their rival they would use to reagan, now any request for against them in the following four years. the other thing, these guys documents relating to past were rivals of one another, not just of lincoln so they said presidencies has to be approved by the white house, will this affect the work of historians terrible things. like yourself and secondly, you'll see later in the book. president lincoln was a brilliant president, i believe and stanton and chase half the he wrote most of his own time weren't talking to pose speeches, but did lincoln depend on anyone advisor to the degree master blare, can you imagine that president bush depends on? if we heard tonight the guys in the cabinet saying these things, unless you have a lincoln to hold it together. wish it would possible because what it meant was he had the >> i thickest part is your first question, in recent years and different aspects of the the last 40 years even, there republican party, moderates, has been a tendency to hold back presidential papers more and conservatives, liberals together in the same tent so it more and it seems to be was easier somehow to deal with escalating with each year, i them than it would have been if remember when we were working on they were outside. johnson's memoir a lot of what was going to be used in the >> this morning in the washington post, in the review memoir is awkward be open later to the people until years went by, even the peso taken a while of the book, similar to to be transcribed and put into president bush appointing john the public use, it is true that historians are going to be prescribed and what they do by mccain. >> and giving a platform. you know, it might have been a great thing. if you have people who are going to oppose you, argue, debate you inside your cabinet then maybe your hone your skills and you're able to deal with the country. if you do well with the the tendency of presidents to be country. close enough records, eventually don't worry about the next they will be opened up, but for the time the immediacy of the event and the understanding of election, it will probably come the context might be lessons, will probably make it harder for to you. >> kansas city, missouri you're historians to get the full job. next, go ahead, please. i think in some way, even more thank you very much for taking my call. problematic for people will be i was wondering if there's any that idea and letters as we historical documents about moulin con-- talked about earlier are not how lincoln dealt with the being written and diaries are not being kept in the middle of the white house because people are afraid they might be savagery of the byproduct of subpoenaed at a certain point, you will not have that intimate record that people had a later the civil war with the southerners, contrell raiders time. >> sam and lori smith, e-mailed, did you have any ongoing that did a lot of butchery, did interactions with the first lady and what kind of relationship did you have in putting the book lincoln do anything to try to stop it? how were his feelings about those rivalries? together? >> a very good question and i >> i got to know her in the last years when i was going down to think it's one of the things the ranch because i actually that was hard for lincoln, as stayed at the ranch and i must say she is one of the classiest it should have been. women i've ever known, she loved at some point they decided in that man, she protected him, she the north the only way the north could finally be won. went about her own work in her if indeed the southern capacity own memoir at the time, she to make war were destroyed, welcomed my coming down there to which meant destroying the be him in natomas like i could railroads and destroying the be a camp counselor. crops and cotton in order to keep the south and the war, and i suspect from what we see with lynn done's conversations with people, as much as he knew that and someone who could be at his side every moment, when i was there i like to believe she was free to go shopping or go to was a terrible byproduct of austin or do something because i keep him company. without her i think the stability that she provided, i war, unless the capacity to make war was destroyed, more don't think he ever would've become what he did, she was so different from him, so and more people would die if he didn't do that. empathetic, so compassionate and >> turn to your attention to human being when he would yell another former president what role did you have in working on at somebody, she could ease the vantage point? things over for the person that he might've her and he loved her, there's no question about i was one of a series of people that. >> did you ever get the johnson who helped him on his memoirs and particularly worked on the civil rights chapters and treatment? >> not really, i think maybe relationship with congress, because i saw him do that to which is the best part of lyndon johnson. so i went down to the ranch and other people and it's one thing stayed with him at the ranch, that is not easily able to forgive, i don't think he could sometimes stayed in austin ever yell at somebody in public and never good way and humiliate while i was beginning to teach them, what i used to hear he did at harvard. as i say, it was listen to him to recollect. when he did this in the white he was a great story teller. house, he would feel so bad the next day that a car would arrive i would listen for hours, telling me not just the vantage at the home and they would make point, but stories about his up because i did not mean to yell at you, he would tease me childhood. he was originally going to and call me a lefty and he would write a trilogy, starting with think that i was part of the younger generation that did not his presidency and senate and understand when the vietnam had to be fought, never with means. childhood. an i use today tease his in this, had i known him at the height of his power i'm sure he stories with colorful, half of them weren't true, i loved them never would've talk to me as openly as he did or never nonetheless. >> host: how much of them could would've spent so much time with you believe. me, he would not have had time >> i think that's why he liked but in those last years he was lonely and happy to be there. me i liked to listen to tall >> i would like to ask you a tales. >> i wonder who doris kearns question and then i would like who goes through the memoirs to respond to your answer. vantage point, felt upon the during the 30s the liberty publication to be listed in the preface one of those who aided league which was the leaders of the capital forms in this in book-- >> no, there were far more country they practice finance with an overthrow of the roosevelt administration tried important people working on that memoir than i was. they were doing it full-time. to convince him to be a dictator i was doing it part-time and in this country, the same only worked on two chapters. professions of financing in all that meant was he talked to me and then you put down what germany for the purpose of he said and tried to get it in defeating the communist and the some form. no, i thought that was more communist eventually saved than enough recommendation for capitalism from the fascist they what i had done. absolutely. created. >> quotes from lyndon johnson after he took the office, he i would like your point of view on this and i would also like a response to your answer. said i became president, but >> you are right, things are so for millions of americans i was still illegitimate, a naked man with no presidential covering, a pretender to the throne and confused at the time, we look at communism as a negative force in then there was texas, my home, the world but there is no the home of both the murderer question about that in world war ii, without russia, without the and murderee. >> and johnson always spoke in communist ability to join in the ally caught us after and russia somewhat graphic language. and what it meant to me, and known that the country loved john kennedy so much. and the murder happened in texts and the murderer, and came back and i said, things even with that pressure on him would've been very different and i think fascism would had a much greater chance of existing, he achieved an extraordinary there were fights in europe transition and the next year, between communist and fascist, they were fighting between pricing communist and fascist, i 1965 was one of the great years think the world was in so much better off at least in fascism in american history. was destroyed and then if only so, if he only hadn't gotten communism had stuck to some of into vietnam, i think he would the earlier ideology that was have been known as a great part of marks which had to do with labor just to lincoln i president. the next question from ann talked about much earlier and arbor, michigan. not gotten into the loss of >> is this doris kearnes goodwin? civil liberty and the top-heavy >> it surely it. >> you're my hero. government and did, there was >> well, thank you so much. something ideologically that >> i dropped out of school, they were right about at the professor, and then i went back beginning but it went hurrah with stalin. and i started studying history >> we want to move on to other calls but a quick follow-up? and went back to the community >> what i like to say, the fact college and the more i learned about it the more i really that the russians saved us in warmed up to it. the fascia that we created we me is mou how created hitler and was illini, historians can look at it was building pranks and not something and differ, like the economists you get them in the room and they don't agree. i wanted to ask you about how teacher germany in the early exactly do historians go about 30s. >> thank you for the call, san diego your next. >> thank you c-span for putting gathering evidence? this on, i really appreciate one thing that struck me about president lincoln, this is just this opportunity, i think i a layman's observation, it spent more time trying to get through to you guys then i have seems like he had the ability to look outside of himself and to see how other people saw him trying to get through to a rock concert in my youth. and i always kind of wondered , ms. goodwin, thank you for taking my call, i've been working on a documentary about about that and lastly, what an event that occurred in los angeles, specifically junjune 2, about the charges like steven ambrose, like plagiarism and things like that, i'll hang up, god bless you and thank you. 1967, president johnson had come >> thank you so much. to los angeles to kick off his just to answer your lincoln question, i think you're absolutely right, that his democratic fundraiser for his ability to look at himself from reelection campaign and i've the outside in, it's stretched, been working on this for about i think, from this enormous four years, you're really an inspiration to me in the way confidence he had inside that you speak with a story for himself and a remarkable sense so long and you and buys the of humor, anyone who is funny person. my question to you, do you have and has a sense of humor, and laugh at themselves and that's any event, this is known as a a great quality. sentry plaza protest and known what happens with historians by some as buddy friday, i writing history we go back and happen to be a ten -month-old baby at this event and there was loot at primary sources, using a picture published of me and the letters, the diaries and the free press of what seemed to be police batons coming over my figure out yourself read baby carriage and my mom sending differing conflicting theories. them off. you have to intie -- i know specifically through white house documents that one of these were sent off to the white house because the president's statement was that he did not see the civil unrest occurring outside the sentry intuitively. >> and the last question, plaza hotel. steven ambrose as well, lots of so i was wondering if you have any personal knowledge of this footnotes and sources and sometimes what can happen, as happened to me as well, is that event and/or what is your opinion on the effect of the even though i had given absolute credit to the person from whom i had taken some anti-war movement demonstrations passtages and not put the in johnson's decision not to run correct quote marks in the right place, i had credited her again in march of 68. and once i found out about it, i myself found that she right and i corrected it and moved >> thank you collar, i don't know specifically about that event but there's no question that you are right that the on. and that's part of the anti-war demonstrations were increasing and increasing in complicated process, but it's worth every cent to give a 6067 and 68. i think johnson felt unable to narrative to the reader that go around the country and any can make the people come alive. for you personally, what was the biggest lesson after the freeway. revelation that the fitzgeralds and the kennedys? >> that you acknowledge the error. i acknowledged it at the time not being able to be as free as he was before then, i'm sure that contributed to his feelings if he was going to run again in and corrected it to the 68 and go around the country author's satisfaction. campaigning, it would be very difficult, it was so hard for him to see the signs, hey hey when it came out again, nothing you can do to change the past. everything in the lincoln book, everything is checked and what lbj how many kids did you kill can you do other than that. today, the room had grown in intensity and he knew he lost a >> 100 pages o large part of the american people and that is partly what made him withdraw from the race, he has always said when walter carried against the war as he seemed to saying it was a biblography. >> the reason that's true, stalemate that johnson said he had lost middle america but even would have been, there are so many sources and lyincoln world. when you found new things you want to put in the footnotes before that and 67 as you for the other scholars, sources suggested earlier and 68, he had seen the massive demonstrations they can look at themselves. and he must've known it would impede any chance he had to go so it's in a certain sense, a around the country, he so much the campaign is 64, his energy was phenomenal, he would stay up sharing process and all those notes i think the lincoln until 3:00 a.m. even if there colors would be happy and were three people left in the crowd and he could not get the hopefully 100 years ago, energy back from the crowd because he was not going to be able to go around the country again, the anti-war movement and they'll say i found a source because it's there. >> and in january, 2002, you its strength not only because it talked about your own f produced the primary and bobby kennedy and he did not want to run against bobby kennedy, the very fact that those demonstrations were taking place, hampering him has something to do with him falibility. withdrawn from the race. >> what i do to be fair to the >> frank from illinois says a recent segment left the characters, not to be biased or mean to them and credit every source and everything fully done. you learn about that and make sure you do it right. >> let me ask you about the fitzgeralds and the kennedies, it was delayed two years because of new documents. what were they. >> it turned out that teddy kennedy gave me access to 150 depression that lyndon johnson made ramsey clark as attorney general specifically to get his cartons that had been in the father tom clark to resign his position in the supreme court in order to nominate thurgood attic in hyannis port for over marshall. >> that was an amazing take, when i heard that on meet the 50 years. press, i did not know that before, what you hear is lyndon joe and rose kennedy saved johnson talking to tom enter ramsey clark and he wants to put almost everything, every letter they wrote to one another, ramsey clark on the -- most of check stubs, movie cards, letters from the family and it partly he wants to get tom clark off and put ramsey into the was really a way into the cabinet but most important he wants tom clark off of their so kennedy family that i wouldn't have had without those. it was worth spending another couple years. that book took me 10 years, too, i'm not too fast on these he can point the first black american to the court, he saying things. tom, i would like to get you to >> you write in the book, had attorney general job but i cannot really happen if you fall on the court because it will be a conflict of interest and times been different eunice ramsey says i'm not so sure and johnson says i think it is, next could have been the politician thing you know ramsey is talking in the family. to his father and he decides >> no question. three kid at the top of the family. joe, jr., jack and kathleen. he's going to retire from the court even though he was not and they were considered the that old to give his son a chance, it was one of those ways that lyndon is playing three different people and for a gold golden trio and the retarded is a good goal to put marshall daughter rosemary and eunice. on the court. >> he recorded this in saint lbj some people who go into public eunice took care of the family life if they go in needing the and closest to rosemary, and in some ways she was the leader of applause of thousands, they're never going to work on the younger generation of the successfully in the end because they don't know who they are apart from the crowd. kennedys and often said if she >> it did seem that johnson had would have been a boy she would an and or must hole inside that have been the one to run for need to be filled by the people. office much more outgoing than in its system like ours where jack kennedy, but it wasn't that time and age, but she's everybody goes up and down in done remarkable things with the reputation, even best president special olympics and commitment to mental retardation as a goes through tough errors, if result. that's what's holding you up is >> what did you learn about kathleen who died in the plane going to not sustain you, that crash in 1947? was a difference between the kid >> she was a rubble, she went in my argument he wanted the to europe and fell in love with office and the power for accomplishing something that was duke hardington, the duke of stand the test of time so if the people turned against him or he failed in a certain sense, he devonshire, billty hardington could be driven by the larger and she married him even though goal, johnson when he became he was a protestant. president did have larger goals in mind and i think he became a and married another protestant after he died in the war. she was beautiful, and apart stronger person but up until that time, he seemed to be the from the kennedy more than the person who needed to have that other family members did. support from the people to fill >> in the book, i'm trying to up some need inside that was not quite there. find the quote, and you can >> springfield, illinois probably say it better than i can say, it you wrote how joe, go-ahead. >> hi, thank you for taking my sr. came down on told his family on the death of joe, jr. call. >> i think it was a blow to how are you enabling writing your book on lincoln to stay on joe, sr. never to be destored. your topics when there are so many other interest in little i think he was forever altered tidbits that you didn't find by that. yourself going off on tangents, are you going to be doing a book they thought that joe, jr. was the one to be president of the united states. more handsome if you can imagine that, and all the family's hopes were put on him. when joe, sr. found out he had signing here? >> i am coming february 12 to been killed in a plane crash in springfield to speak at the library, i can't wait to see the new library, i was there the world war ii, i don't think groundbreaking and so i thought that people thought she would the very early stages but i cannot see th wait to see the survive. rose had her faith and knew she finished project. you do get off on tangents and would be with him some day and you get involved with everybody's life and you just have to make sure that you don't let the narrative be destroyed as a result. wasn't so sure and it was like a break that for example he had a daughter would never be restored to the named fanny, when she was 16 she family. what did the kennedy family members tell, but that afternoon. >> what rose said, somebody came to the door to tell them and there was a sense of not wanting to believe it, which must be true, i guess, for anybody who hears about a son or a daughter being killed in the military, but you know the minute that somebody comes in, what they're about to tell you. wanted to be a writer, she and they just, they finally started to keep a diary, her diary is wonderful, as a young girl's diary, she keeps until separated and tried to make the she's 21 years old and then she best of it. dies at 21, she did not think she wanted to get married so she thought you cannot have a career and what happened that as a writer and get married, all represented rose a little bit. of her life forces are poured into the diary and he became so interested in this little girl, a lot of joe, jr.'s friends i became so interested in her mother francis and their important to my story but not as important as those are most going to make them, i would go half a chapter on one of the other and then you finally had and colleagues wrote and told to describe and cutback, how great he was and gave similarly his daughter and she solace. >> next from phoenix. >> through my nervousness, i'll ask two, three questions and hang up and listen. >> don't be nervous. >> we'll take it one at a time. number one you say you try to was such an interesting sad creature who was the most beautiful woman of her age, write the books and every time everybody recording her and she marries a wealthy man to help her father's ambition and i you're accused of things, i found the love letters between her and her husband and he watch you every time you're on. turned out to be an alcoholic and abuse her and i found those letters as well of later in life >> thank you. and all of that was passed part >> and you giving credit to of my book, it's like one paragraph but you do keep involving yourself and other president johnson, everybody people in the key you get to thinks kennedy did all of these things to help the poor and the minorities, but it was actually president johnson, and he decide when to introduce them and when to cut them out. and just say some other day i doesn't get the credit. might write about these people but going back to lincoln, i don't understand you said you tried to write these biographies without biases. or i can talk about them to my friends but if they put their linco full stories in here, the book will not only be 700 pages, but it will be 12000 and no one will be able to pick it up. lincoln tortured the united >> there's a photograph of the scene in your book, he said i states constitution more than heard a number of accounts on what secretary stan said when any other president than the lincoln passed away, one said history of man. habeas corpus, locking up newspaper writers, jailing now he belongs to the angels, 24 people who spoke out against hours it was reported that he said now he belongs to the age him i'm talking people in north agent. not the south. >> that is true, there's four or five different accounts, some i haven't read your book. say he belongs to the agency and did you include that? now he belongs to the agent and did you include the fact that he violated the united states constitution, that he should just as that picture you are showing where a lot of people were there that night, after he have been, i mean, under-- if george bush did that now, was assassinated, they carried you know, people would be him to the peterson house across calling for impeachment. the street in the name of the abraham lincoln want today centralize the united states cabinet came, his friends came, government. personally i think that slavery the secretary came but at the end more people claim that they were there than actually were was did-- i'm a christian, i think it's there. abomination, the worst sin that the country committed against it's one of the moments where everybody wants to be at a big itself, but i believe slavery event in the room could not possibly have kept all those people together, you can quite could have been reconciled imagine whatever was said that night gets reported in the newspaper and it goes through through the north paying the south, but rather than that, and a lot of people don't the agents and not exactly there, the words that we remember as stanton's words is realize it when the ship to now he belongs to the agents which is a wonderful tribute especially given his desired after he died. port sumpter, it wasn't to say >> tucson, arizona, next collar, you can't have slaves, it was go ahead. >> hi my name is ruth calling to say we are going to quintuple the taxes you'll pay from tucson, my first introduction to you was through on cotton and then the shots were fired. the series which may be a great lincoln violated the constitution like no other president ever has, before him or after him and that's, to me, fan of you, i was just wondering, what was your impression of the project and that's one of the most working with mr. byrne. important legacies of his administration. you know, it's terrible when >> he is such a passionate enthusiastic character that he makes all the things that he anybody is killed, but i can does come alive. understand how somebody like what happened, he came to see me because he knew he was going to john wilkes booth, who be making the book with the supposedly was from a good family and a very intelligent dodgers and the red sox big parts of his series on baseball given such underdogs that they man and, you know, had good were in so much passion and drama around them and he knew connections with say, this guy is destroying the constitution. >> thank you, caller. that i had been fans of the >> let me talk to a seerries of brooklyn dodgers originally and the red sox, i had noisy when he came, we talked for maybe an things that he said. what lincoln thought he was hour or an hour and a half and you think you're going to be on preserving and he was there for half a minute or two minutes, i told him everything about old boyfriends that i preserving it wasn't simly the liked and i gave up because they union or emancipating the slaves. he believed if the south was did not like baseball, even allowed to secede, the mentioning one of the boyfriends, all these things are put on the air but it was a experiment of democracy would wonderful experience in the interesting thing, my book on roosevelt and everywhere i went not succeesucceed-- to talk about roosevelt, people secede. would ask me about baseball because they seen his the north from the south, east-- documentary and it was really that it would be undone. there was no question in war that response to people a lot of women coming up to me saying we have a similar relationship with times civil liberties suffer. our father and we love baseball no question when he undid as well, and people would talk habeas corpus he had reason to do that. troops were come to go protect washington. people in maryland were preventing them from getting. about their memories of growing so he need today do something up in the 50s in a similar town to the one that i grew up he thought to get the troops in and that's what prompted me, i never would've written a room there or the whole cause would be lost, nonetheless, that's not an excuse, in war time omemoir it seemed ridiculous because i was not a public figure but i decided to write justice marshall said even in about growing up in love with the dodgers because of his times of the most urgency is documentary and he gave me so when you need to be most much more pleasure than i can possibly imagine to re-create protective of the constitution. that time in my life and the without that civil war, slavery would have continued and more weird thing, anyone who grew up important, people thought until in the 50s in a suburb, there was something most universal about our lives, jumping rope, the 20th century would have continued and it was as you say abomination, if the south would have been allowed to secede everything would would have stood for in the war would have being on the street, having a bicycle with a kickstand and you been undone. lots of people had to die. do not have to have a lock, loving baseball with passion as we did in mccarthy era and what that meant in the early civil war is a mess, war is hell rights era, it turned out that the memoir struck in croydon, not because it was my story but somebody said. it turned out to be a lot of other stories as well and all is i think most historicalions owed to ken burns, never argue that that is a war that would've done it. had to be fought. >> otherwise who was of its field, some guy named charlie abbott. he gone down in history and i >> one writes, just as julius caesar, john wilkes booth believed he would have think the park was built in way assassinating lincoln was not back in 1912, it was one of the smallest and intimate in parks enough. booth knew, his biographer says, it was foiled by marc or that ever existed. >> new york city your next. >> my question is for mrs. goodwin, the contrast between lincoln who had very little formal education, certainly no wealth or privilege lincoln's marc anthony. in his background who wrote >> what i didn't get into, was john wilkes booth had a triple incredibly beautiful speeches and letters and many which have been quoted this afternoon in the current chief executive who comes from a background of assassination, there was a wealth and privilege, private school, yell university in teams and able to write a simple co-conspirator to assassinate the vice-president, he started drinking and never got to the sentence, this seems to be a vice-president's president to get him to. trend in politics today, and i'm the third assassin got to just curious about that. payne. he came in pretending that he >> one of the things that struck me about lincoln's early education compared to today, he had medicine for seward. he made his way up at the top of the stairs. his son was there and he hit him and he had a coma. did not have a lick of education but he was so deep in the things he had a bowie knife and went that he read and as an example the young child he had to scour the countryside for books and everything he could lay his hands on he would read but some of the best literature in our history, he read shakespeare, to seward and slashed his cheek the king james bible, he read poetry, these cadences got into his soul and his heart and off. he had a wire from his cheek. allowed him to become having extreme talent to become a great writer, in some ways i think literature allowed him and his and if he could undo, surroundings because emily president, vice-president, and dickinson said there's nothing like a book and through secretary of state that maybe it would give him to the dying literature he was able to go southern cause. he survived, his son survived shakespeare in england no he never went there in his life he was able to go to spain and and six weeks later francis seward was dead. portugal in the love of books >> she was way ahead of her time. frances steward, very, very because it was self-taught, i think i got into his soul in a smart, pushing seward what way and i compare that with should be done rather than what education today, so broad, i could be done. she was always frail, a lot of these 19th century women had various vapors, one could never have students take so many figure out what they were, but different courses and fragments of one course in another and maybe they don't get as deep a somehow she had this frail feeling for the literature of a constitution and after she few great things as they might tended to her husband and son innocently as lincoln did in the for weeks, they were in old days, plus the fact that he difficult situation, they wrote and edited it was part of a muscle in him that from the started getting better and she wrote in her papers, that she time he was a child developed more and more and what happens never before believed in vicarious suffering, but thought maybe she had taken on their illnesses and that she was going to die. she died inexplicably six weeks today, so many speechwriters on the white house staff, not just later. bush but previously, they are >> political rivals, the latest not doing it themselves in the same way, so they're not getting better because it's not part of from doris kearnes goodwin. their importance. it is important because communicating to the country and being able to give them a sense next call is from virginia. of where you're taking them still remains a central tool for go ahead, please. >> you kind of gave this a president in television cannot take away from the word, the question to mrs. goodwin at the word has to be there and i beginning. my question is how does she come to something fresh in the lincoln biographer. you know, david herbert donald, thought he was on the radio so many other lincoln scholars, every week, it turned out he only gave about 43 staff only how does someone find something fresh? and my next question is, two or three year because he said it would take a whole week there's an african-american, i'm also african-american -- out of his presidency to make wonderful historian who wrote a sure the words were right, that's what we needed our modern book about lincoln, "forced day, not just for president but into the glory." . for our young people. i was wondering, can a >> good morning of every 22nd 1958, a saturday morning, you received a phone call early in particular racial bias or the day, you get off the phone and your father says my pal is gender bias come intone and is gone, what happened. >> by mother had had a dramatic fever as a child in a weakened fresh that a historian, a woman heart and had several heart attacks when i was growing up, historian could bring to somehow i still never thought that she would die, she had died lincoln something that male in her sleep that night, when counterparts could not bring? >> i'd like to think that's you are child, your 15 years o possibly so. ... old, i think the hardest thing is that you cannot imagine right away that it happened, so my sister was there and i had this wonderful little sister who actually came and stayed home with her family, she was a nurse in new york at the time so that >> guest: i mean, that's all i she could help take care of me in many ways became a second needed to hear forever. but i think the only thing that gave me a chance to possibly say mother to me, but in a certain something fresh was that all these guys that i now call my guys, because they kept dire cannilies, they were gossipping about lincoln and about each other, they had insight into lincoln that hadn't always been sense, when you're that age you used in lincoln biographies. don't appreciate the loss as fully as they did later when i had my own children and knew my children will never know my and i think because i cared mother and i would never be able to share my mother with them and they would never know their about their wives and families, grandmother as they never knew my father either, the older you get the more you realize how i tried to make them into full devastating it is to lose a parent at the age come you're so human beings. so out may be that is partly a wrapped up at that time in your life that somehow you think you have to force yourself to have life go on, then your back with woman's perspective. your friends and is later that in the 19th century theyid even think about wives and families. but i think the question about fortune and glory is also an you realize what a document created in my life. >> on a lighter note you talk interesting one because there's about how your sister was embarrassed when your mom was been some comment in recent partnered with the. >> yes, i was a late child in years that lincoln did say some the family, one sister was 15 racist things in the 1850s, and it is true he wasn't sure they could be on juries, could and one was ten when i was bored vote, could ever achieve and they must've thought what are these old parents doing having these kids come along, equality in the united states. it was kind after a brooding think on my mother did get quality to his statements about pregnant. >> you tell your next. this not that he didn't wish this would happen, but he wasn't sure we were ever capable of that. >> my first question why do you and i think what it shows is believe there is animosity there was just a pervasive racism in the country as a whole between lyndon johnson and then, very little belief even among abolitionists that blacks robert kennedy, was that a clinical difference or could be equal to whites. personalities, personal and it's a sad commentary, i problems? in the second, have you think, on where america was, and considered writing a book about even more so it's taken 50 years even -- 150 years even beyond that where we finally broke down president kennedy? thank you. >> i think the animosity between segregation, gave blacks the righto is have racism in this money. lyndon johnson and bobby kennedy mary todd was the belle of was partly personal and partly political, somehow those two men just hated each other, i think springfield, so it would have this was called isaac was been when she was 20, 22 years exacerbated by the fact when old. they all were in the same circle. even lincoln and douglass had johnson was made vice president, been in the same circle. he had been such a powerful majority leader and he felt that i love to think of mary todd when he was a young girl, we we tend to think of her as that older women who lost three of her four children. one died at 3 years old, little willie died in the middle of the he was left out of the loop on civil war, tad died at 18, and all sorts of decisions that kennedy was making, he somehow did not want to blame kennedy, he liked kennedy, jack kennedy and lyndon johnson got along fairly well, katie liked he was eventually put boo an listening to johnson story, but then when he wasn't getting asylum but her oldest son, invited to meetings or decisions, he blamed bobby he robert. but when lincoln first met her when she was dating stephen douglas, she was feisty, well educated. she loved poetry and politics. thought he was keeping them out of the meetings and then when lyndon johnson becomes president after john kennedy had died, bobby felt somehow johnson was there's this wonderful story when lincoln first saw her, he staging his brother, that he become such a different president to civil rights on his watch and somehow echoing came up to her, mary, i would history would be lessened and love to dance with you in the then of course and bobby writes in the senate and potentially worst way. going to run for the presidency and she laughingly said, he against lyndon johnson only makes it work and there was no certainly did. it was rather awkward. life left between those people, >> host: but after they were i don't know it's true my book married, he considered stephen on fitzgerald and kennedy ended douglas to be a little, little giant by the side of my tall with kennedy becoming president and it did not go any further, there were so many wonderful books written about his kentucky husband who towers over presidency that i would have to him just as he does physically. figure out a different way into it if i were going to follow up >> guest: she said that during with. >> palm beach, florida your ne the period of the 1850s when he was going to be not only the next. opponent for the senate race, but in 1860 as well for the >> i have three very quick questions, can you name the presidential race x. he had been current senator that resembles called -- epstein douglas -- the true democrat from the 60s and also was president lincoln, steven douglas was short and had is it true that he was the a huge held and was very, very smart. but i think mary believed in father of the modern day income lincoln early on which is really quite something. tax and mostly for defense of historians have been unkind to our country not really social her in a lot of ways, but she preference and the last one is, was his partner. do you think lincoln and martin she had faith in him. i don't think he needed her to luther king would be proud of give him ambition as some people have suggest. black americans since the civil he had all the ambition in the world because ever since he was rights movement ended with the young, he wanted to accomplish law and everything because it something so so worthy that his seems to me that there really story would be told after he died. that would have carried through, squandering and still fighting i think. for civil rights instead of >> host: did he have dealings taking opportunities that have with steven douglas when he been given to them. became president in. >> guest: yes, after he became >> i think the hardest thing for civil rights leaders is after president, steven douglas, and once the war h started, the fight for segregation was douglas was close to dying at one and after the voting rights that point, but he offered husband complete services to lincoln which meant that he, a former democrat or democrat at act was put into place, to argue the time, was saying this is not about education and poverty, it a time for partisanship, i'm is so much more scattered and harder to have a focus and i think that is part of the reason with you. and it's the last time the two men saw each other. why we have not seen the same >> host: what was he suffering from? kind of dramatic leadership that >> guest: he had had, we've seen in the 1960s, i presumably, difficulties with suspect at the times they've made that much harder, we have alcoholism during his life, and not seen great leaders anywhere his body, i think, was just ravaged by the finish pressures he put it through. i'm not sure if he was an for the last few years, so it's probably not fair to blame the black leaders anymore than alcoholic, but he did ravage his leaders in general, when i think about looking about who embodies body. during that time very few candidates actually stumped on their own, but douglass had gone the values, democrats or republicans, the most important all over the country in 1860 thing i think lincoln had was extraordinary empathy that was able to see both sides of an trying to win that election, and i think just husband body wore issue, he gravely great speech down -- his body wore down. when he was a young man to a >> host: how did you go about putting all of this together? society in which he argues, they're never going to change people who are drinking or who you refer to books and later in sell the drink by denouncing the program show your library, them and using anathema, and he but the process of writing this. >> guest: you know, i once read an essay by barbara tuchman who said it's important when you're writing, especially if you're doing a lot of research and it's going to take a long period of time, not to get paralyzed by doing too much research before you with start writing because otherwise -- if i'd gone on for five or six years and hadn't called for trent to understand, he said the best way to a person's heart is to understand written a word, i might have them and not to shun them, men will retreat within themselves, i think what we need is not somewhat unchangeable who is a been, oh, no, what am i i going activist, somebody who can to do? understand where both sides are coming from and the problem now it took probably a couple years that i would write about these is that her sister makes so much rivals, i also was working on less likely, the primary report people with the most extreme position on either side, television loves people who are that little memoir in growing up counterpoint and can say what with with the dodgers, so it was a great come by nation. anyway, once i figured out i had the storyline, i knew i wanted to start it in may of 1860 on the day that the four rivals were waiting to hear the news that they had been nominated for the republican party. they feel and the other person on the other side, i look at so i actually wrote that chapter people like john mccain and i think he's a person who's trying years and years ago just so i to understand where the democrats are even though he's a had a beginning, and then i knew republican, we need democrats you can understand where the i was cycling back to their republicans are because were never going to get anywhere with this denunciation breathes did earlier lives. so i made sure to do all my research on their childhood, not enter denunciation, that's young adulthood and earlier where politics are today, lives so i could write that lincoln would be very sad. >> good afternoon to salem section. morgan, your next. each time i got to a chapter, i >> door side the great pleasure of listening to you speak at the university. >> i remember being there. >> was a wonderful experience, would maybe spend a month or so my question is about mary lincoln and how she was treated working additionally on it and by those colleagues and then write that chapter, and supporters of lincoln after he that's why it stretched out to ten years. was assassinated, also if you >> host: one viewer in madison, wisconsin, has this question for came across in your research, any information about an abram doris kerns goodwin. wakeman who is an ancestor of >> caller: i'm judy moore from madison, wisconsin, and my question for doris is do you mine who reportedly was a close friend of mary lincoln great remember any specific teachers thank you very much. that taught you to love the >> definitely, he was a new stories of history, and could you tell us us about them? yorker and he supported mary a little bit after inking died helping her to always worry >> guest: absolutely can. i had some wonderful teachers in high school. there was a woman named ms. austin, i went to school in long island are, new york x she won an award for the best about it she had enough money to exist and she wrote lots of friendly letters, you should look for them in the merry collection because you will find your ancestor in a interesting character. history teacher in the state. at the sad thing for mary, when she became first lat lady, there wao franklin roosevelt, he had loved him, and when she talked about place for her to find a footing, with southerners distracted her his death, she dried. because she was married to when she -- she cried. abraham lincoln, the northerners she was a dignified, wonderful woman x. then when i went to colby college in maine, i had disrupted her because she had four confederate brothers, stepbrothers in the confederate this incredible teacher who just army, westerners and easterners somehow was so involved in rather thought she was crude because she was a westerner, she political theory, in government, in politics that, again, he made tried to redecorate the white house and make it a symbol of you people even that plato was the union as a one contribution to his presidency, but at the alive when we were learning about plato. so is i think there's no time when the soldiers did not have enough money for blankets question that what history as lincoln said it seemed like the wrong thing to spend money teachers when they are good c re you're not reading about people in the white house, her reputation during his presidency who are dead and wrong gone was really hurt a lot, when he and -- long gone, you're reading about people who had passions, died there was not the same who had learnings, who had wealth of support to help her, it seemed unfair and away, they problems, who had loves, you know, who had lives. and if you feel their life again gave grant a house, they were providing pensions for other just as you feel the people living in your own life, i they people and they did not for a long . . . they had to fight to come alive. and i was lucky enough to have get mary any kind of a pension, those two great teachers. >> host: in writing wait til i think it was in part because next year, what did you learn she had such bad press during about yourself? his presidency. and then she felt that they owed >> guest: because my parents it to her "after words" in the died when i was young, my mother last year she was so worried when i was 15 and my father when about money and unwisely i was still in my 20s, it was as if somehow they were not alive in my life in quite the same way except all the stories that i had told to my children. and to be able to share their lives with the people who would spending it, she may have had some manic-depressive mess, read the book meant so much more there's one point she bought 300 pair of gloves that her son fearing he needed to protect her to me. put her into an asylum, she was i thought i would simply e be able to get out pretty soon proving that she was not mentally ill but then went to writing a book about baseball live in springfield and had a very sad ending to what somehow, but i think the more i should've been a happier life. >> there was a ball that took realized when i remembered the place shortly before willie fact that few father in some passed away, why did lincoln's ways was the first teacher i ever had because he taught me hostess and why was it how to keep score when he was only 6 years old so when he went significant in your book. to work, i could record the >> mary was tried to figure out a new social function that would be dramatic for the white house, most of the white house receptions were open to anybody, game. i now realize in excruciatingly they would be rather crude detail he counted every single affairs at the backwoods bins were coming in with a double. >> side-by-side, so she had an play, makes you think there's invitation-only ball and it something magic about history. became the hottest card in and, in fact, i'm convinced now washington and it was very and i don't think i knew it until i wrote the memoir that i exciting event, she planed it for weeks and weeks, right before the event, her sons, both of them i got very sick and she learned the narrative art. first i would blurt out the dodgers won or the dodgers lost. so i learned you had to tell a story from beginning to middle, to end. >> host: one of the photographs, thought she should cancel the a young doris kearns, your ball but lincoln decided that the doctor had said they were recovering, it would be all right that the ball could still sister charlotte, and you look a be held so they held it during lot like your mom. the night of the ball which should've been her triumph, everybody said it was a great >> guest: i'd like to think so. innovation, she kept going upstairs to see william and ted it's so hard, social it's so mas and when willie died not long thereafter, she felt in a certain sense that it was her now from the time that she al a. pride and her desire to do these things in the white house that she had had rheumatic fever as a child, and she was not really able to leave our house very much and had the arteries, her somehow it offended god and doctor said, of a 70-year-old ended up with willie dying, the ball was always a terrible when she was only 30 years old. memory even though as her moment of triumph as the first lady. >> hello doris, i'm very glad to but every night she would read hear you, your wonderful speaker to me as long as i could stay awake x. the only thing i loved and i would like to ask you two that much was listening to questions, have you ever thought stories about her girlhood. i somehow became obsessed with of recording some of the interesting stories of history the idea that if i could keep her talking about the days that and because are so adopted describing them in the second she was young and healthy, that question i have, do you think somehow this aging process we were witnessing would be stopped in us tracks. the war on iraq is actually a so i would constantly say, mom, squeamish and a larger conflict tell me a story about you when between islam and christianity you were my age not realizing q- which might eventually end in a war. >> as far as recording the peculiar that was until i had my story, there is a wonderful own three sons. thing i think about history, never once have they asked me. >> host: she helped me feel the whether i'm a part of it or not, it's a great thing to allow rhythm of the language, the people's voices and they are now pleasure of well-chosen words. he modulated her voice to reflect different characters, and you also said that her voice was softer than yours. >> guest: right, right. well, i have a very loud voice. doing it more and more with living politicians and living people and even during world war she used to tease me, you could ii for example oral histories were done of women who went to work in the factories, the hear me wherever i was. stories they told, you could never get them later in their in [laughter] i was never very shy or never very quiet with. >> host: how did you get the nickname bubbles? >> guest: my father liked to think that i was enthusiastic their own voices in the oral histories get transcribed, i about things, and i would sort think the general idea of of get excited whenever we were transcribing stories is could go for history, remember hearing those factory workers talk, the going someplace or excited to go women would say when they came home after world war ii and they suddenly saw their wives who had to a a ball game, so he thought been working independently it was a bubbly thing. it was kind of embarrassing when writing a check, what you drink, you never written a check before, they said they felt like he would write me letters at they had become oak trees when they were gone and their camp. husbands cannot deal with it [laughter] >> host: you brought along a when they got home, so many stories that make up the best part of history are between people saying them, i'm very photograph. where was it? >> guest: rockwell center. the homes were to close to one another with this tiny patch of much in favor of oral history rather i do it or not, i think lawn so that my best friend had there are questions as far as your second idea goes that we a window right next to mine across this narrow driveway. are in something large right now we could talk to each other at night when we were supposed to between not just our country but be ace sleep -- between democracy and islam and >> host: was your bedroom on the second floor? >> guest: it was, indeed. we got to just hope that it does [laughter] not become a larger war, there in those days in new york in the is nothing more frightening as 1850s -- in the 850s -- there has been in history when the war becomes a religious war [laughter] in the 1950s, i'm not that old, there were giant, dodger and yankee fans all together. i across the street were giant fans, baseball was abiding passion, and it was shared by and there's overtones where there's no sense of compromise possible, we could be in for a very long and very bad time, we just gotta hope that it does not everybody on the walk. escalate into something like that, there's elements of it already but hopefully we can >> host: michael francis al wish avoid that. >> our last question comes from your first book and it's a shows kearns. viewer who is on the c-span book >> guest: is that a great name? i tell you, that man i loved so tv bus from illinois. much. he grew up in brooklyn, his >> my name is eric walsh and i father was a fireman. he had a little brother who was live in illinois, i want to say 6 years old when he was 10, i'm a huge fan of c-span book tv sister was 2. in particular, secondly thanks he was left with his little for the opportunity to ask this sister and his father eventually question from doris. killed himself, and his little sister when she was 16 years old died in the dentist chair from in the research that you've done on many presidents that you've some faulty anesthesia. examined, what you been able to you would think that would create a man who didn't have a identify any fatal flaw in any life force in him and had a sad of the presidencies and are particularly interested in that of lyndon johnson, i really mentality or a melancholy enjoyed your book lyndon johnson and the american dream. spirit. he was the most optimistic, outgoing, he gave affirmative light to all of us. >> host: you write a lot about your first holy communion in the book. was that a defining moment? >> guest: well, it certainly was >> the fatal flaw, it's probably not just confined to lyndon because two things have johnson, when things get tough for president, what seems to happen they hunker down with the happened. one right before my holy people who support their point of view, when the vietnam war began to be difficult in the country stop supporting it, communion, roy campanella, the rather than reaching out for dodger catcher, came to my town. opponents and rather than reaching out for the congressmen i was so excited. and senators who might have given him a different perspective on what to do in the however, it was announced that he was going to speak in a war, there is a natural tendency protestant church. when you're brought up as a to surround himself with the people who agreed with him, that catholic, you think if you go only means that you are yourself deeper into a hole, i think has relevance for us today, when into a protestant church, you'll things are difficult, the time be struck dead. he said, don't worry about it, has been there to reach out to he's speaking in the parish hall, we're sitting in chairs, people who disagree, who can debate and argue with you so you and i was worried that i had can see other points of view and maybe get out of the hole that somehow traded the high of my one is in. everlasting soul for this night >> what to pray to the most in with roy campanella. putting together a team of so when i went to my first rivals. conning negatives, the priest >> the most superficial thing said don't worry, you weren't in surprised me but it's probably not superficial, having seen the sad eyes that lincoln had, a religious service. but then unfortunately he said, and what else, my child. having known about his temperament, i had no idea how and then i had to acknowledge dynamic a personality he had, that i wished harm to others; i'm sure the lincoln scholars have studied them the whole li namely, i wished various new york yankee players would break arms and ankles, and the priest said the me how often do you make these wishes, and i had to life, but for me he ended up say every night. being much more vital, much more alive, even teased he seems sexy then he said, look, i love the and one of the pictures, there is a picture of him before the terrible beard it displeases dodgers, you don't have to wish little girl and there's a sense harm on others to make them win. in which he has a rugged face, some day they will win fairly on page 200, there is disheveled and squarely, do you you said? oh, yes. -- do you understand. hair, maybe i like it because my husband has disheveled hair and no way to forget that first communion. >> host: 1949 and 1957 included big hair like lincoln's, but you look at that and that's not the image we have a we think of him in the marble monument and as i the dodgers, the yankees and the read further, i realized he was giants, one of them competing for the world series, and then the giants and dodgers left in a the one sustaining everybody's short period of time. spirits, he could start with a funny story that he could relax >> guest: i tell you, it was people by telling a joke and such a blow to those of us who these jokes were so funny and loved baseball. amusing, then something to do with what was going on, there every year we'd argue who's the best center fielder, who's the best first baseman, walter was a live force in him that i had not suspected, i knew i o'malley took them away became like a tyrant in our community. i didn't follow baseball for many years until i finally moved to harvard college and went to fenway park and became an you admired him but i did not know i would feel such affection for are rational red sox fan. him. >> published by simon, the latest team of rivals, the political genius of abraham lincoln, by the way a complete >> host: next call from san list of all of her works available at booktv.org, thank diego. go ahead, please. >> caller: i was wondererringing about this theory that's just come out in another book that you. lincoln was a depressive. >> what great fun, thank you. i just find that very hard to >> please come back again. >> i would love to. believe as someone who's had >> your watching book tv on c-span2, television for serious readers, every saturday evening some experience in my family this summer were taken opportunity to show you several hours of program, summer with depression. there's just not the energy, i archives with a well-known don't think, to overcome it the author, tonight is with way this theory says that historian doris kearns goodwin, lincoln did. and i wondered what your her books include a look at president lincoln's cabinet, the political life of lyndon johnson findings on that and what you and her own memoir that focuses think about lincoln having been a depressive. >> guest: you know, i came away with a somewhat different feeling. i think he was born with a melancholy e temperament. on her love of baseball. coming up next from the 2013 miami book fair, she discusses in fact, a great friend of mine her book on the relationships between theodore roosevelt and has written a wonderful book william howard taft. studying children from 0-20 to show that you can tell early on which one of the two those >> thank you for that great introduction. and welcome everyone to this children are. life can change things, great book. obviously, for them, but he now in its 30th year, let's understood well his sorrows and hear it for ed bardo in melancholy, and he had a remarkable sense of humor. when he told a story, he could mitchell. do that. he knew to go for conversation [applause] >> doris kearns goodwin is so when he was lonely, even in the presidency, he would go to a play toet his mind out of what wonderful to have you here, welcome to miami and this is our he was doing x. there's really only two significant depressive premier annual cultural event, episodes in his life. it is great to have you here and the first one after his great you have both written books love, ann rutledge, died. an understandable depression. any one of us would have been in about presidents were part of it. the second when three things the threat of the era, it was really started by theodore roosevelt, he was known as teddy came together and he seemed to feel like his life's course was not going forward. he'd broken his engagement with and how did he start the mary todd, he had lost his best progressive era and what propelled him to act, what were friend who was leaving town, and his successes that are with us his political career seemed to be going down. and so he did fall into a today? depression so deep that people worried that he might be suicidal. they took scissors and knives away if him. >> i may indeed call him teddy even though he did not like to but he told his friend at that be called teddy but i think you lost that battle with history, time, you know, he said i would teddy roosevelt came into power just as soon die, but i haven't at a time when the aspects of the industrial age had not been dealt with since the civil war, done anything to be remembered by. and i believe that powered him through all the failures in his life, and i totally agree with you he had terrific energy. there was no workmen's he sustained the people during compensation, women and children the worst days of the civil war, were exploited in the factories, huge monopolies were eating up more than his cabinet guys. small businesses, the gap he was the one who kept them going. so i think being a melancholy between the rich and the poor had grown wider, sounded familiar to situations today, the digital revolution may have temperament is different from a similar kind of economic having chronic depression. >> host: an e-mail from long change and even though he was a beach, california, wondering conservative when he started in a certain sense and certainly a considering your close republican when he started, he association with president lyndon johnson and with the release of his white house tapes, how do you ultimately view his political acumen as compared to that of abraham lincoln? >> guest: i think there was a lot of similarities in their ability to make people come realized that the republican party would not be able to around to their point of view, continue as a major force in the but johnson, of course, had a majority force and lesson begin to deal with these problems of the industrial age, even as governor he tried to introduce reform legislation, angering the much more hands-on policy with political bosses who were tided the congress. for example, in 1964 when he was to the old order, they decided they dumped them into the vice trying to get the civil rights presidency where he would have act through the congress, the no power and that would be the tapes show him talking to end and mckinley is assassinated dirksen, the republican minority and he becomes president. it's not that he did it on his own, he understood the only way leader. he knows he needs him to break the fill hi buster, and so at that he could move this reluctant congress to take the first he's promising him legislation that was necessary was to mobilize the country to everything. you had the feeling every part push them from the outside in, of illinois would be filled with that's why he defined the word public projects, but essentially what he said, 99 years from now bully pulpit of the president's power to educate immorally move the country forward. but he needed help and he had the naacp will be flying your ban or and, in fact, 203 years from now -- 200 years will know only two names. so in other words, he knew how help from the press at that time to persuade people to come to with the most remarkable set of relationships with the press and they were progressives and have his side, and those tapes are their own agenda as did the fantastic. social groups churches, it was you know, there's a very funny an uprising from the country at story when i was some years ago large to know that something had to happen but he was at the home at a conference with the former ceo of pensacola -- pepsi cola, for his name will forever be identified. i taught a seminar 40 years ago and i always wanted to live with he said i have a story you don't know. he told me when nixon first got him and finally after all these into the presidency, he asked other characters, i got a chance to be with the most colorful kendall to got to the ranch to exacerbating, extraordinary talk about a private matter. figure, sometimes i wonder what johnson said how i am supposed to remember what happened 20, 30 i'm doing spending my life with years ago, the only chapters dead presidents but i wouldn't change it for anything in the world. that are any good where i had [laughter] this tape machine in the oval >> were going to get to you but let's continue in chronological office, so he said those tapes order, then pat came into the picture and you decided to include him as well, how did come alive. lyndon johnson contributes to they become close, there were richard nixon's downfall. 400 letters between them, how i love that story from kendall. did they become close and how did the rift happen. >> i did not know that much >> host: you write about after about taft but i need to follow he left the presidency, lyndon johnson said how is it possible the progressive movement up to the time where his guy beats that all these people could be these so ungrateful to me after i have given them so much. >> guest: i think what hurt him the most is he knew how much he had done for civil rights, he knew how much he had done for poor people, for education, and yet in those last months and years of his presidency his public opinion polls had gone down, and it seemed like people had forgotten all the great things he'd accomplished. i like to believe that before he died he'd begun to sense some of that, but i don't think he did, sadly. if he'd only lived a little longer, historians are putting him higher and higher up in the public opinion knowing those great achievements, medicare, the civil rights a act, the voting rights act probably would not have happened without his great skill with the congress. >> host: but he only lived four years after he left the presidency. did his depression begin on january 20th, 1969? >> guest: i believe it did. here was a man who was so intensely involved in public lives and politics, he couldn't live without it. down at the ranch he liked to replicate, but no longer would there be meetings in the mornings for which bills would go to which committee on the hill. it was which i cow were going to get or which tractors were going to which fieldment you felt as though that will to live. he had the most fantastic wife and loving her and those kids kept him going, but without that i think he would have, sadly, just been happy enough to go away. >> host: lady bird johnson said -- [inaudible] >> guest: oh, wow, i don't know that statement. that's a great statement. she was the most remarkable woman. it wasn't easy to be with lyndon johnson, but she kept her dignity, and she once said i could have lived a stockbroker and -- married a stockbroker, but lynn done has shown me the world, and i'm very grateful for that. whenever he'd be going off on something or saying something crazy like so and so is a member of the communist party, she could just put her hand on his knee and say, now, lyndon, you don't really mean that, and all the tension would ease out of him. he had spent such a long time talking to me about his earlier life, and he died, and i had all this tough. and i wanted to be able to share it. to that balm my first book -- became my first book. i majored in constitutional law, irobably wouldn't have become a presidential historian had it not been for the privilege of working with him. >> host: there's a story that he crawled into bed with you. [laughter] >> guest: here's what happened. he would wake up in the mornings, and in that loneliness he wanted to talk. the he couldn't bear being alone. even when he took a nap, he wanted to have somebody sitting outside the room so that if he coughed, he would know you were there. he would come into my room, and he would bring the covers up to his cheek or his chip and talk to me. -- his chin. it was, as i say, a wonderful way to hear about the past, to see a person's ability to be an actual human being as well as the president of the united states. and he was a very powerful president. >> host: i'd like to share with the audience a speech that he delivered x there are two photographs from the book vantage point, his address in the oval office and the headline in the chicago tribune. it's march 31, 1968, and it's just under two minutes. we'll roll that, come back and get the story behind his decision not to seek another term. >> i have concluded that i should not permit the president to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. with mesh's sons in the fields far away, that america's future under challenge right here at home with our hope expect world's hope for peace in the balance every day. i do not believe that i should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office. the presidency of your country. accordingly, i shall not seek and i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. but let men everywhere know, however, that a strong and a confident and a vigilant america stands ready tonight to seek an honorable peace and stands ready tonight to defend an honored cause whatever the price, whatever the burden, whatever the sacrifice that duty may require. thank you for listening. good night and god bless all of you. >> host: doris kerns goodwin, in your book you say there was an air of you forwhat in the capitol the next day. even johnson seemed pleased. and then you tell the story about johnson's visit with president truman two months later and commenting on truman's decision, ability to make a decision and then stick with it, not to look back. >> guest: yeah. i think to go to the truman thing, what johnson so honored about truman is when he had to drop the atomic bomb, that he made that decision on the basis of the best facts that were at his disposal. maybe he might have done differently, but he never looked back whereas leadership done johnson in those months and months before he left the presidency would wake up every night and wonder about did the bombs drop in the right place, have i done the right thing. he was tortured by that. and i think what happened that led up to this withdraw was he began to feel the only way the war would come to an end would be if he took himself out of the political process. if he i tried to negotiate a peace, people would say he was just doing it for his next election, and at that point presidents are thinking about history more than they are about winning another term. at the same time, he felt he was paralyzed. people were not able to deal with the congress in the way he was before, and he had a grandmother who had a stroke, and when he was a little kid, he was just terrify to watch her because she couldn't move. and he began to have a dream in those weeks before he withdrew that he, too, had had a stroke and was lying in the red boom just where woodrow wilson lie, and he could hear them outside dividing up his power which symbolically was happening in those last month. and he used to have to walk up from the dream and go see woodrow wilson's picture on the wall to remind him that wilson was wilson, he did not have a stroke and he was alive, but i think he felt if he took himself out of it, maybe he could do better for the country x maybe the cup would remember him better. >> guest: what was that like for you in. >> guest: i had not originally started to work for hum. i was put into the labor department after that article i wrote about him and worked for a wonderful man. and after johnson gave this speech and then after martin luther king was killed a few months later, johnson was going to make a major speech to the country on civil right just as he had after the selma demonstration. so my boss and i, i was so excited he was going to maybe turn civil rights into a positive way after martin luther king's death. we had a function at the white house, and johnson came up to me and he only would say something to me, well, you ask me a question as if he knew our path. and he teased me and said you're always criticizing me, aren't you? the next day he said i want her to come over here and work for me for the rest of her white house scholarship. i had no idea what i'd do, but he rightly said you've got to take this chance, you've got to know him. so i went to the white house, worked for those last months of my white house fellowship and stayed on until january '69 when he left. and mostly i just talked to him -- listened, not talked. >> host: springfield, massachusetts, you're next for doris kerns goodwin. >> caller: wonderful program. thanks for c-span. couple things. growing up as a red sox fan, i've had some pretty interesting confessions -- [laughter] especially in 1978 as a young man. >> guest: i know what you mean. [laughter] >> caller: the reason i was calling was actually about leadership done johnson. about the -- lyndon johnson. he used the cia to look into martin luther king's private life? i always wondered what a contradiction that was because he was so, you know, ahead on civil rights. what exactly was the thinking behind that or was there any, or was it just, i guess, j. edgar hoover was a big part of this? >> guest: i think you're wright. i mean -- you're right. j. edgar hoover was a force unto his own right. that doesn't mean that the president didn't have a responsibility to rein him in, but that was hoover's specialty, to look into the private lives of these speakers in case some dirt could be found so that they could be discredited if he didn't like what they were doing. and for people like hoover, the civil rights movement was a threat partly because it might have meant lots of people gathering together and there could be violence, but also maybe because they didn't like the substance of it. so even through kennedy and through johnson there was this tendency to look into martin luther king just in case they might need something x. you're absolutely right, for somebody who believes in civil rights and advanced it so much, the idea that that kind of civil liberty being violated is a tenable thing. >> host: since you brought up the red sox, can you explain this photograph? >> guest: oh, this is a great photograph. okay. this has a little bit of a story to it. the guy on the, the guy on the crutches one of my sons, michael, who's my middle son, and the person in the center is i my youngest son, joey. joey had just come back from iraq at this point. he graduated from harvard college in june of '01 in history and literature and ended up instead of going on to graduate school after september 11, ended up joining the army instead for what will be a four year commitment with the first armored division. and as soon as he finished basic training, he was sent to iraq where he was a platoon leader in a sector of baghdad for a year. and after the first armored division left and went back to germany, their home base, he came home to have his acl operated on. that's why he's on crutches, because he had torn his knee, and the red sox found out that he had won a bronze tar for valor, so they invited him to throw out the first ball. he said he was more nervous that night than when an rpg went over his head. and all week long his guy friends are calling up, investment bankers, and they were able to buy tickets on ebay, they all come back to watch him, and they're like, joey, don't embarrass him. i said, joey, you're on crutches, you just won the bronze star. they're going to have up in that you were in iraq. he said, mom or, you don't understand. he somehow managed to hit the plate. he's as irrational as i am. even in iraq he'd staying up all night to listen to the red sox games. >> host: how did you feel when they finally won the series? >> guest: it was astonishing. believe it or not, i can wake up in the morning and still remember what it felt like. as a baseball fan my whole life, i've only had two world series; the dodgers in 1955 and the red sox in 2004. and maybe it's even better that way because it's more intense although sometimes i wish my father had been born in the bronx instead of brooklyn. nonetheless, there was something about that first world series to share with my mother and my father and then the second one to share with my three sons. we were able to talk to joey in iraq, our son michael in vermont, or our son richard in california, and that's what's so incredible able baseball, it does allow you to go through the generations. sometimes when iit with my boys at fenway park -- we have season tickets, and i love it. i can sit this with them and sometimes close my eyes and imagine that i'm a young girl once more with my father by my side with roe camp campanella dn there or jackie robinson. somehow when i see my sons sitting where my father once sat, it's almost like an unvisible loyalty and love. they never saw my father, their grandfather, but through all the stories i have told, they've come to know his heart and soul. baseball does that and that's, i think, why i love out so much. >> host: how do you think history will view the war in iraq? >> guest: i think what's going to be very hard for the war in iraq to be viewed in a positive way whether or not there was a rationale for going in thering, each for getting the weapons of mass destruction which clearly was not the rationale, but if there was a larger goal to create a stronghold of democracy in the middle east. history-to determine whether that was a good thing. if you don't tell the people what your purpose is, i think it's very hard for people to sustain support for the war. it's interesting, even lincoln questioned the rationale for the mexican-american war saying that president polk had ins gated it for its own purposes. that war was very successful, we got a lot of territory, but there's questions about how we started it. more importantly, even if one says the rationale was correct at some level, then obviously the fact that we hadn't prepared in well enough number, i mean, when my son first got there, for example, right after his mission was accomplished and he had a peaceful reconstruction. he was so excited, he had an iraqi translator, he was going into homes, within days the security broke down, the looting had taken place, no more translator, no more iraqi homes and instead of a peaceful mission, he had checkpoint duty, weapons searches and, lastly, he had to take his platoon the out as a target so the insurgents would shoot them so they could kill the the insurgents in turn. but he never second guessed going into the army. what a great decision it was. here's a kid, harvard college, he's seen kids in a world he never would have seen. he became their leader, so he's a better man. i sometimes think we've lost something by not having the draft because i think it makes men out of these young boy -- and women -- and it makes everybody participate in the war. i feel so sad when i see those individual people's names in the newspapers now if know that the families don't have that same sense they did in world war ii that everybody knew somebody overseas. and i think we're going to have to rethink that if we're going to have these missions abroad. >> host: next call comes to us from california. finish go ahead, please. >> caller: yes. first, i are have a comment and then two questions. the comment is if people haven't read it already, no ordinary times is an excellent book. >> guest: thank you very much. >> caller: i really highly recommend it to everybody. all right, two questions. jot these down. the first question is -- and i haven't gotten your book yet, but i plan on doing so -- did you cover the massacre at fort -- [inaudible] and president lincoln's response to it. expect second question, how do you think president lincoln would view the real possibility of a black woman becoming president of the united states in 2008? >> guest: well, i can try and answer both questions. i did cover the massacre to some extent. what was so important about this was after this massacre took place, this was a massacre of black soldiers, there was a call for retaliation so that we would somehow in the north begin to massacre southern soldiers or southern people in return for that. and lincoln was very hesitant about that at first because he didn't believe it was right to somehow retaliate against some individuals who may not have been part of the massacre, but finally he did issue a retalia story order and just hoped that it wouldn't have to be used which, indeed, was pitch what happened. and i think as far as what lincoln would think about a black woman president, he would be delighted. as long as she showered the values -- the most important thing he thought about the government that was a democracy like ours was it somehow cleared away the artificial weight that rested on people that prevented them from rising to the level of their own talent. he saw himself in a way as an example of what was so extraordinary about america. he was able to push his way up to the top, but i think you he d see in modern society that there are whole groups of people that cannot push their way up to the top and would want with to have somebody whose value was to help them go new that process so they whatever talent they had and hard work, be able to get to the level of their a ability. >> host: next call, frontally enough, comes from springfield, illinois. >> caller: greetings from lincoln's springfield -- >> guest: yes, indeed. >> caller: -- on the 145th anniversary e of his election. >> guest: oh, wow, i hadn't thought about that. >> caller: doris, i have a brief statement and two questions. there is a stained glass picture of lincoln reaching out to his friend, arch bishop john hughes, in a roman catholic cathedral six blocks to the south of the old state capitol. now, is there any evidence lincoln and the archbishop -- >> how interesting. in fact during the civil war, went over to england and did some yeoman work for the administration by being over there. it was actually very funny, went seward was running earlier for the senate, his boss had also been a friend of the archbishop and had a picture of hughes in his house and a whole bunch of nativists. at that time there were a lot of people that were anti-catholic, and he needed them, so he told them archbishop hughes was simply like george washington in robes or something but what you're saying about the higher law is it's true, what s eward said in a famous speech, and what he was really saying is there's a higher law even in the constitution that would guide us toward anti-slavery. a lot of people were frightened by that thought. but there's a question of whether or not he was church and state, he would be kind of comfortable today in some ways with what's going on because even as a young governor in new york state, he worried that the catholics weren't getting enough education, that they were living in poverty. he talked about public aid to these catholic schools, something that is very much in controversy, but it hurt him at the time because the nativists wanted nothing to do with helping catholics. >> host: where was the wigwam in chicago? >> guest: oh, i don't know. [laughter] it's not there now, i mean, i probably knew when i wrote this book or when i finished it, but it doesn't exist in chicago anymore, and it was constructed exactly for the convention. and they say it was called the wigwam because the great chiefs met there, and it was part of what allowed chicago to get the convention,s because they promised that they would build a structure precisely for it. what's amazing is when the committee, the republican national committee met to figure out where they should hold the convention, se orward wants it in new york, -- in order to win that nomination foe senate in 1855. trumble's supporters, he was a former democrat, were not willing to go with lincoln. not because they didn't like him, but because he was a whig. so they held out, and lincoln was worried that if neither one of them won, then the third candidate who might win was more to-southern, to-slavery -- pro-shave true. his friends couldn't figure out how in the world can you do that. mary was so upset that she hardly spoke to her again in her life. lincoln went to his victory party shook his hand x. as a result of not making an enemy out of a man like trumble, he becomes a great supporter in 1858 and again in 1860, and norman judd is a key figure in his winning the election in 1860. if you somehow don't treat the people that hurt you in the past with end enemity, they will aid you later on. of. >> host: steven douglas is the democratic nominee, john breckenridge is a southern candidate. you also have the know-nothings which held a convention nominating john bell of tennessee and everett edwards of massachusetts. >> guest: that's correct. the democratic party was really split in three. you have douglas as the predominant democratic candidate but then these other two union parties, more conservative and different aspects. that's one of the reasons why lincoln was able to win the election. because of the split. >> host: what was the final vote count, do you remember? >> guest: it was enough at the very end what lincoln was afraid of was new york with its electoral votes went for douglas. there were a lot of irish-catholics in the city, a lot of conservative merchants in the cities who wanted to keep trading with the south, didn't want slavery to be such an issue, and they did yeoman work in new york even though he was told, he said until i hear new york's totals because if he he's lost new york, it would have been thrown to the house of representatives. >> host: you write in this book the assassination threats aswhyo abraham lincoln? this cakier capture. >> guest: what was is he was told in philadelphia that when the train passed through baltimore where there were a lot of she e is sessionists that there might be a mob attack on the train, and they thought he better go inn the dead of night, so he did do that. he did not wear a scottish cloak like this cartoon portrays, but somehow the word got around that he had dressed up in thishúkk disguise, come into wasngton under the dead of night, and it look like here's the president-elect coming to washington x he can't even come. he wishede had actually taken the risk and gone through