williams, chair of the lincoln forum, and welcome to this panel of forum 22, relating to lincoln's enemies. and i'm so pleased to have it distinguished, every time someone says distinguished i want to run to the merlot bar. it's like saying with all due respect in my courtroom. but we do have some great scholars with us this morning. stephen engle, the author of a great book about lincoln, and the nation's governors. jonathan white, author of "midnight in america," and soon to be with us, the book "our little monitor." and of course catherine clinton, no stranger to us, author of "mrs. lincoln, a life," and many other books. and walter stolzier, as well as lincoln's secretary of war edwin stanton, called "stanton," and he told me and i hope i'm not revealing any confidence, he has a glint in his eye for sammen chase. good luck with that. because i'm sure we will hear about secretary of the treasury sammen chase from professor clinton. so let me start with this. john barre, who is one of our lincoln forum members, wrote a great book, but it's a doorstoper. it's huge. called "loathing lincoln." and he says in his introduction that william f. buckley jr. once said that americans shall not remember why lincoln was loved until we come to understand why he was hated. and both emotions were certainly displayed after his assassination on april 14, 1865. even those who, as william peterson said, merril peterson in his great book, even those who commemorated, or tried to memorialize his death with crepe and bunting secretly harbored a wish for his demise. so i think what we have is a thought on when this dislike of lincoln began. and i think -- i think it's true, or it occurred even before he was elected president, and deep and throughout his administration. certainly lincoln's political outlook in contrast to slave holders contributed to this, his reliance on thomas jefferson's declaration of independence which he thought was even superceded and was superior to the constitution, or at least had to be read together. and of course his acts as president clearly, the republicans supported him. anti-war democrats called copperheads despised him, especially since they believed, as did southerners, because he subverted the constitution, especially in a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus across the north. well, that's a general overview, which i think we all get and understand. even if we do not accept this dislike of our 16th president. but what about -- what about particular enemies within his -- within and without his administration? so what i've asked our panelists to do is to give a two- or three-minute overview of what they would like to discuss to get us going, especially with questions among the panelists about what they think is important to know about lincoln's specific enemies. we'll start with stephen engle. >> thanks, frank. well, with regard to the governors that i studied, there are two sort of categories of -- i don't know whether they would be called enemies or perhaps just oppositionists. early in the war john andrew and the radical republicans who were representatives of the various states would probably come to regard lincoln in a frustrating way because the war, as it turns out early on, is a conciliatory war to maintain the border states within the union. and john andrew and israel wash burn in particular become fairly exercised about the slow, slow progression of the war, especially during the fall of 1861. and so these governors begin to find ways to move the administration along to advance the war quickly, in order to end it quickly, to maintain the volunteer spirit that they were struggling with back home. early in the war, i would say that the radical governors were really oppositionists to lincoln's mentality about how to fight the war. and, in fact, andrew and washburn would be among the leading advocates among black troops and would write to salmon -- of course in the fall of 1861, this is a fairly radical idea, but one in which they believed if the union had embraced this early on, it would shorten the war, end the sort of frustrations among the populus, even the overwhelmingly small population, the war would -- as the war progresses they achieved modest victories with confiscation acts and militia acts in 1862 and emancipation in 1863, then you find there's another sort of opposition rank among the conservatives. the people who lead that sort of cadre of enemies would be horatio seymour who's elected in 1862, and who, in fact, would believe that lincoln is moving the war too quickly because he's a sort of tool of the radicals, and it's not until seymour becomes governor in 1863, recognizing that the war has changed very quickly within two years. and so seymour comes to resent lincoln for expanding the war too quickly. and he believes that the culprits here are not necessarily lincoln himself, but he's been moved or prodded by these radical governors, or these radical political leaders to advance the war into establishing the revolutionary nature of confiscation, emancipation. and national conscription and black troops, which as you can imagine for most conservatives was, you know, a radically different war in 1863 than it was in 1861, especially in trying to reach out to the citizenry to mobilize and raise the troops necessary to meet the demands for this rather new war that the governors would be no border state governors elected, no elections in 1862 for those states, but in the states that had large populations to draw from, new york in particular, how would they be -- how would they be able to sell the war to a fairly conservative population that opposed, vehemently, emancipation and conscription and a number of other acts. in the ways in which we see how states and governors react to the progression of the war early on there's a frustration that it's not moving fast enough, and by 1863, there's a frustration that it's moving way too quickly for the rest of the northerners who will share the burden and labor of filling the ranks as these conscription acts move forward into the states. >> okay. jonathan white, you did write a book, a very good book, on abraham lincoln and treason, relating to the merriman case. so i suppose it would be appropriate for you to discuss why this caused so many people to turn against lincoln. >> sure. and i think that steve lays out the sort of grand narrative of the opposition to lincoln during the war very well. i hope you all will forgive me for being inback -- if lincoln was on twitter, who would have trolled him? there's obvious candidates. you would have people like john merriman, ca lent valaningham. steve mentioned andrew on the republican side or seymour on the democratic side as opposition. the millennials have a very good term for this. frenemies. would you accept that? >> yes, absolutely. i'm not on twitter though. >> oh, you should get on there. a frenemy is someone with whom you associate even though you have enmity towards them. so i think that you could see people like andrew or seymour within that camp. but then there's also hundreds of thousands of ordinary democrats in the civilian population, in the army who oppose lincoln for the very same reasons steve was describing. they see his policies on civil liberties and habeas corpus. they see his support for a 13th amendment in 1864. and that pushes them to turn against lincoln. whereas they may have been moderate supporters of the war early on, they see the changing nature of the war, and they begin to see lincoln in a much darker light. so during part of the discussion, that's some of the civilians who opposed lincoln and also some of the soldiers who are often seen as being overwhelmingly supportive of lincoln. in my research i found many soldiers who came to loathe lincoln with graet hatred. >> thank you, jonathan. and catherine clinton, i think it's appropriate for you to discuss the man about whom lincoln said to john hay, his assistant secretary, when he was to relieve general rosekranz, i suppose he will like the blue bottle fly lay his eggs in every rotten spot he can find. >> on the matter of spreading manure everywhere, i do think that sammen chase and his daughter were quite active in washington at the time. but i think looking at this question of the frenemy that lincoln certainly believed in keeping his friends close, his enemies closer, and his big tent philosophy i think is when we can see that really paid off. especially after his untimely death. and i do want to say that on this matter of being invited to talk about lincoln's enemies, what have i ever done to -- some have suggested to me that since i work on mrs. lincoln, maybe that would be a start. but i certainly hope some would read my book and disagree. i was working on lincoln in new york, thanks to harold's kind invitation, and found this back biting snarling among, of course, republicans. therefore, when i was first looking at the enmity between chase and lincoln, i found that it was a deep, intense sense of ambition and self-righteousness in sammen chase that led to his belief that he would, of course, make a better president and he had to assert himself so that lincoln would see that with his every act. and he also challenged lincoln. but it was also, as you study this, you get a deeper appreciation of lincoln, who understood quite well this motivating force with chase. and also, lincoln quite kindly recognized his wife's enmity with chase sprag, who made a marriage to finance her father's financial run for president. and then felt herself very short circuited, and her charms spread around washington were so great that when lincoln finally did accept one of chase's many resignations, the wonderful thing was chase's reaction was great shock. how could lincoln ever live without him? but lincoln had great plans for him. and by cementing his role on the supreme court as doris kerns goodwin reminded us he didn't know what lay ahead, and i know lincoln wasn't pressient enough to predict the exact timing of tommy's death, but he did appoint him to that court later in the year. he did have a place for him in mind to cement lincoln's own legacy. whatever he knew about his ambition, he also knew about his self-tryi self- trying righteousness. he cut lyndon down to size, but contributed later to lincoln's immortality. >> thank you. the thing that has impressed me many years, walter, is the plurality of lincoln's reelection in 1864, 2,200,000 for him, and 1,800,000 against him. he won the electoral votes in all but two states, new jersey, the home of his democratic opponent, george brenton mclel lan, and i think kentucky, the place of his birth. that's a great victory in the midst of war, where elections were allowed to be held to lincoln's credit. but i've often wondered, what's making up this 1.8 million people who voted against him? they certainly weren't friends of lincoln and his administration. >> right. i think to measure the closeness of that election we need to look, and i'm sorry i didn't bring the numbers with me, at lincoln's own hand-written document in which he sort of predicts the electoral vote, th this is kers in october, he thinks he's going to lose new york and pennsylvania, the two most populist states. he's going to win with as narrow a margin as one can imagine. that was a very good prediction actually. when you look at how did he win new york? i mentioned it last night, i think that send benjamin butler to new york city to keep democrats, butler sent a note to stanton saying i think i've done a good job of discouraging the democrats from coming to the polls today. so i think that actually, and jonathan in his great book on that election also talks about this, that actually if it had been what we would talk about today in the third world as a free and fair election, that there might have been even more votes against -- jonathan's nodding here, there might have been even more votes against andrew -- sorry, abraham lincoln in '64. i think we should also at some point get to how to put it, lincoln's enemies south of the mason dixon line, and the attitude of jefferson davis and others towards lincoln. by the end of the war they view him roughly as a pirate, operating outside the laws of war. and i think we should talk about that at some point. >> let me just follow up with walter. >> sure. >> i think what a lot of people don't realize is that in early september of 1864, some new york journalists were very fearful of what might happen in the election of 1864. and they decided to write every governor sort of a private letter to gain their sense of what their state's results might be. would they -- they asked them three questions, do they think lincoln can carry the state, was there a substitute, or would the national union party win? the interesting thing is the response among most governors is that the election is a foregone conclusion, it's too late to pull lincoln out of the race, that would be a national, political calamity, the fallout would make the union look vulnerable. but there were a number of governors, andrew included, who would recommend chase as a possibility. and those who wouldn't even recommend someone said that lincoln was unfit, but, in fact, the -- to pull out of the race would probably lose the credibility of the political process. so there were very real questions about this opposition within the public sector. but for three new york journalists, very high-brow journalists to send a series of letters to every governor to sort of gauge the on the ground sense of would there -- would lincoln carry their states? was, i think, a great indicator of just how close this election was to be. and interestingly enough, those letters go out about the time that sherman is in atlanta, and atlanta falls, which really, if you read the sort of news of the day, i think these responses were influenced to a large degree by what was happening militarily that it wasn't about lincoln, it was about winning the contest, moving the contest forward that they thought they were winning in the field and that to create a political liability would probably backfire, and land the democrats the victory. >> do you think, steve, maybe, if the pomeroy circumstanlar han a different point in time. that the proposition that lincoln was weakening the war effort and the party, that the party leaders were pushing chase, and chase was oh, no, no, yes yes, therefore, it's interesting because we do look at contingency theory, and political contingency theory. it's almost as if chase overplayed his hand. >> i said this yesterday just to follow up. because of the way things turned out we forget just how unbelievably, you know, chaotic, and how much opposition, real opposition there was. so for me the miracle is that these elections were taking place every year, and that this incredible election takes place in this year with overwhelming opposition, bubbling up from a variety places for a variety of reasons. there was a lot to be said of the miracle of this election. >> much of that opposition was not just based on failures on the battlefield, or failure or victory, but the ongoing struggle that we've had since our founding of national security versus civil liberties. so walter, picking up on that, what did edwin stanton do to help the opposition in -- as far as enforcement of the draft, and filling up what many opponents called the bastiles of the north. >> how to put it, as i said last night, stanton underlooped lincoln's supervision, he creates a system of provost marshalls in every congressional district. and they are given a broad authority not just to sort of enlist men for the draft, but to arrest those opposing the draft. and these are energetic men and they take that to heart. and so hundreds of folks are arrested for interfering with the draft. and as frank's question suggests, this is almost -- if a democratic strategist were writing for stanton, whatnot -- what to do in order to help democrats get votes in the fall of '63 and the fall of '64, it would be almost a perfect script. it gives the democrats a great argument, you know, that the constitution, as it was, and a key element is that lincoln and stanton are throwing editors and others into prison for opposing the draft. >> and let's segue, and then we'll get to catherine on specific issues involving the secretary of treasury. but jonathan, what about the law of war and the issues that confronted lincoln and the decisions he made? >> yeah. and, you know, on this issue of military arrest of civilians, mark kneely dish either materially hurt the union war effort or help the confederate war effort. his argument is these are people who would have been arrested anyway. the reality is that the arrest that really got the attention of the american people, and that continue to get our attention today are of the great political leaders, people like clemeant vlaningham, another congressman named henry may who was arrested, these guys get great press headlines. the narrative that lincoln is using necessity to go against the constitution and do whatever he wants to do. from the democratic perspective they argue that this is simply to silence their opposition. he's using the laws of war in a way that he can silence his political opponents. from lincoln's perspective, he's doing what he needs to do to help win the war. and lincoln writes very famously in his corning letter in june of 1863, he says, you know, i could have arrested robert e. lee and other great confederate leaders, he doesn't call them great, but in the beginning of the war in april 1861. if i had done that, you all would have raised the howl of free speech and free press and habeas corpus, and constitutional rights. he suggests that maybe one day people will look back and say he should have arrested more people than he did. now, i don't know quite how persuasive that is, if we would necessarily think that today. >> well, think today. it's called preventative detention. >> there you go. >> and how we would feel about that in our culture. >> yeah. >> and what about -- >> can i ask about the soldiers though, just as a teacher teachingville war, each semester, even in the summer school for those of you who haven't been to san antonio in the summer. we teach the script that furloughing the soldiers going back, when a wider margin for line con. now i've been to the lincoln forum, and i've read recent books that are contradicting the loyal soldier. i wonder if some of the other panelists who've done more research on this might comment. >> so i published a book three years ago called emancipation, the union army and the election of abraham lincoln. in that book i wanted to look at how union soldiers viewed lincoln and emancipation. 80% of the soldiers voted for lincoln in 1864. that shows they supported him and supported emancipation. i wanted to get behind that 80% number and see what it really meant. i found that many soldiers chose not to vote in the election, even though it was really quite easy to vote in that election. you just had to walk down your company street to the polling place in your regiment. you didn't have to go to the next town over like you might have to do if you were a farmer back at home. so why do these men choose not to vote? and what i argue in the book is that there were a lot of democrats in the army who just didn't come around to support emancipation. and they didn't come around to support lincoln's war policies. and they had enlisted in 1861 or '62 because they believed in fighting for the union. but then in 1862 and '63, lincoln's war policy changes. but their views don't necessarily change. and i have chapters in the book on desertions and resignations. i have chapters on soldiers who were court marshalled for opposing emancipation. and then i have a chapter on the election itself, looking at how these soldiers behaved, and how the union high demand behaved and how lincoln treated these soldiers. what i argue is that the lincoln administration and the republicans in high positions in the union army worked diligently to silence these soldiers who opposed emancipation. to get them to not talk with their comrades about their views. in many cases, this gets to walter's point earlier about voter turnout. in a lot of cases these guys chose not to vote in 1864. 20% of the voters who voted voted against lincoln. another 20 or more percent chose not to vote. a lot of them were intimidated or felt like they didn't have a good choice in the election. that he could vote for the democrats who are calling the war a failure. well, they don't want to do that. they can vote for the republicans who are calling for a new 13th amendment. they don't want to do that. so they choose to stay home -- well, stay home in their tent, i suppose. their dog tent. >> or stay home in their tent because, bear in mind, that in the election of 1864 there's still a number of states that require people to vote in person. and my sense is that the rej meants that get to go home are the rej meants that are thought to be likely to vote mainly for lincoln. again, i think this because how to put it, there are enough comments in the democratic newspapers that it can't be merely sort of manufactured -- >> and even private letters. i found letters where the kernel would call the men out and say take a forward step if you're voting for lincoln. and the -- some democrats write in their letters home and say i stepped forward, and i'll vote like a republican -- i tell them i will, you would have to, because i want to go home. so there's all sorts of different sorts of intimidation going on in the field. >> and we know -- and we know this is the first time soldiers were allowed to vote in any election, first time. and you're right, you're right, walter, some states like indiana did not permit soldiers. and it was not a secret ballot either. when you got to the box, even in civil life, you took a ballot that everyone could see what slate you were using to vote. >> just to build off that point. because i love telling this to my students. it just blows their minds how different it was then. in those days the parties printed their own ballots. so you would go to your party operatives to pick up the ballot at the polling place. and each party would use distinctive colors. you might get a red ballot or a yellow ballot, and everybody knows. and not only that, you walk through a crowd of people who are seeing you carrying your ballot. you drop it into the ballot box, which, by the way is glass. from the moment you get the ballot to the moment you deposit it, everyone knows how you're voting. politicians today would kill for that information on voters. >> so catherine, can you say a word about cabinet crises in december 1862, and how lincoln turned it in his favor through brilliant political maneuvering? >> well, let me see if i search my memory bank -- i would like walter to take over. >> sure, i've looked at this both from seward's perspective and stanton. the chief says i'm about to look at it from chase's perspective. after the battle in december of '62, there's a huge outcry. lincoln has to do something. the republican senators are up in arms. the entire republican senate caucus meets. and curiously, you would think that a failure on a battlefield would lead to a call for the resignation of the secretary of war, stanton. but instead, for some reason, the anger is pointed at -- seward who led lincoln to a soft war policy. the title of one of the chapters in my seward book is remove him because that's what the newspaper up in boston has as a headline, remove seward. the republican senators go and tell lincoln in this bizarre couple meetings with him that they want seward's head. and lincoln is reluctant to remove him, coming back to the point of keeping your enemies close. he knows seward is an ambitious guy, and he knows he's doing good work on foreign policy. he doesn't want to get rid of him. and he then sort of engineers that chase as well tenders a resignation. he almost grabs the resignation letter from chase and says this is what i need. he now has got the letters from both seward and chase, lincoln writes a wonderful letter to both of them saying i don't want your resignations. i want you to keep working. and seward graciously, and chase, less graciously, continue working. so it's a great example of lincoln's sort of mast terful dealings with the senators, with his cabinet members. and, you know, how to put it, you could name a lot of the folks in this picture, seward, chase, senators charles sumner who you might say are frenemies. but lincoln is managing to keep all of them marching forward for the union. >> well, he's balancing the egos. each one of them feeling more indispensable than the other. doesn't have family support the way chase does. and chase is out there with his daughter working overtime with sprag to engineer things. and lincoln always aware of the egos involved. i'm struck the way lincoln was charmed by chase. and used that to his advantage. and by showing up at her wedding and saying i'm here to make up for the cussed spareness of the wedding party, because mrs. lincoln refused to go. so she was always one to be aware of dress and presentation. and was, you know, probably not willing to be outdone by a bride. and therefore -- but therefore lincoln really clearly saw this this recognition of chase and his daughter, and making a presidential visit to the wedding and staying for two hours so that there would be -- i just could see the smoke coming out of the white house waiting for him. >> it would have been interesting to have been on a fly on the wall when he got back to the white house and to hear what she had to say to him. >> very true. she did, of course, warn him about a lot of the politicians and she was so right, in so many cases, about people she thought were taking advantage of his very good nature. >> right. >> and he was willing to be taken advantage of because lincoln was for the union. he was for moving forward. he always was for conciliation. i mean, the notion he was a flip-flopper, which came up a lot in recent bicentennial assessments of him is quite offensive. instead we have to see him as someone clearly willing to let his ego go in order to assuage those who found themselves in positions of pettiness. one of the things is i'm always saying well, let's find lincoln being petty. there we will have, i think, a very difficult time because he was so very willing to see and be empathetic. and we of course are looking for empathy in our leaders. but he, i think, was the most empathetic. that's how he managed crisis after crisis, with his particular group. he was willing to put, you know, chase in a position of lasting power, as you would note, chief, to be on the supreme court. >> yes. but it took three resignations to get chase out. >> third time's the charm. >> walter's talking about just the second one. it took a third. and then -- and you're right about the ego, catherine, very right, it takes lincoln to appoint this man chase to keep him in the cabinet as long as he did. then to choose him as the successor of roger tawney, the chief justice of the united states, that takes a great deal of leadership and self-confidence. >> intellectually shifting. the signal was, there wasn't a person in washington that didn't know about chase's humiliation at having his third resignation accepted. and then, you know, to turn around and replace tawney and what he represented intellectual with chase. because of all things he knew his abolitionist hard was really what he was looking for, someone who would be able to be an ally in the upcoming battles. he didn't know that he wouldn't be there to fight with him. but he knew that having him on the court would make a difference. and when you see that he was proposing 13th amendment before the end of the war, with other amendments to come, having a constitutional force on the court was very important, and a leader like him. >> that's true. he knew the civil rights legislation, and the 13th amendment would be in good hands with chase. and he was able to put aside his -- the bickering and appoint him. which is an amazing feat, i think. this cabinet crises, i hate to keep coming back -- that's wrong. i love to keep coming back. i stand corrected. but this was -- this so besmirched lincoln and his view of radical republicans and sammen chase. this is what he says after, and we'll get to the content of what actually happened. if there was any worse health than he had been in for two days he would like to know it. this is lincoln. because what had happened is walter and catherine, that chase was at league and conspiring with lradical republicans to ge rid of seward. he was made a target, i think wrongly. and when radical republicans came to lincoln to complain about seward that he had to go, lincoln was app -- what did he do as the president? he tells the radical republicans come back the next day, come back the next day. so he tells seward about this, and they knew what was going on. they had an idea that chase was in league with some of the radicals in congress. and they convened the next day and lincoln has the whole cabinet there, including chase the perpetrator. >> but not seward. >> but not seward. >> the target. >> as walter said, he offers to leave the cabinet and lincoln wouldn't have it. the radical republicans are there, all the cabinet members including chase, the perpetrator are there, and lincoln confronts them, just like the illinois lawyer he was, and the great politician he was. because the big issue that chase was trying to make the radicals believe in was that lincoln specifically didn't have sufficient cabinet meetings, that their voice was not heard, or opinions asked by the president. and so lincoln went around to each cabinet member and asked them what was the frequency of cabinet meetings? frequent. did you express your views? yes. and he gets to chase, and chase said the same thing. all over for chase. and the radical republicans left with shaking their head. and certainly with less credibility for the secretary of the treasury for pulling this stunt. >> as i've started chase research, one of the senators afterwards asked another, well, how could chase have said that? and the others said, he lied. >> that's exactly right. so -- >> the plots were all behind the scenes and in darkness. i think lincoln well knew that people may whisper in parlors. people may spread these rumors. but the exposure of light, and the record, i mean, he got people on the record, and chase was forced to actually tell the truth in a group. and that, therefore, was a great humiliation because he was a politician who wanted to advance his own cause. and seward i think was someone who he saw as blocking his pathway to '64. and therefore why not maneuver him on the outs? it was a bold move, which lincoln, by shining the light, you know, if you have bacteria, you can kill it with the light. >> exactly right. >> that could be the title of your book, walter, when you do chase. >> now, john, we've been talking about arrests, preventative detention. and there were many, mark neely who scoured the national archives puts the number of u.s. citizens now, citizens that were detained at around 14,000. am i right on that? >> and that's when he stopped counting. >> that's when he stopped counting. and later counts put it closer to 30,000, 28,000, i think, some numbers. and what -- and these are people, because of the suspension of habeas corpus, don't get their detention checked by a magistrate as to their validity, was there probable cause? because of lincoln and congress's nationwide suspension of the writ, the precious writ. so what factor do you think this played in the lincoln administration and those enemies who were opposed to him, the copperheads, or the anti-war democrats? >> it's a great question. i think that's something that actually informs lincoln's enemies not only during the war, but also since the war. you look at the anti-lincoln tradition today and lincoln is depicted as a tyrant because of his arrests. this is the one issue that people really cling to, despite neely's work and other work on the subject showing a lot of these guys would have been arrested anyway, men and women i should point out. for democrats during the civil war they see these arrests as politically motivated. from lincoln's perspective these arrests are being done to try to preserve the union. and the reality is, lincoln didn't want people like clemeant vlaningham and arrested for giving speeches against the lincoln administration. that was not why he wanted the arrests done. but those kind of arrests did happen. and one of the things i love doing with my students is showing them anti-lincoln cartoons from the civil war era. most of my students, if they think about lincoln at all, they think about that marble man in the lincoln memorial at the end of the mall in washington, d.c. they don't think about him as a person, a living, breathing human being. and they certainly don't think about him as someone who could have been hated in his lifetime. they can't, you know, imagine that in august of 1864 he thought he would lose reelection. he's our greatest president. of course he would be reelected. but when you look at these anti-lincoln cartoons that circulated broadly in the north during the war you see the hatred and the vitriol that was directed towards lincoln. a lot of them depict him as a tyrant, they depict him burning the constitution and the declaration of independence, and the fuel for the fire is often habeas corpus, public credit, civil liberty, u.s. constitution and law. and that was the democrats' critique. i'm going to be honest, they had a fair argument to make. the suspension of habeas corpus, that clause of the constitution is in article 1. most americans then and now presume that's a congressional power. article 1 is about the powers of congress. lincoln made the argument that the constitution was silent as to who can do suspension, written in passive voice, and as to where it can be done. the constitution simply says the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it. so he said, well, i have a case of rebellion, public safety requires it, the constitution doesn't say who can do it, therefore i can do it. that's a plausible argument. democrats weren't buying it. roger tawney as chief justice of the united states wasn't buying it. that becomes one of the first big issues that democrats cling to, and it's an issue throughout the war. it's not a winning issue for them. at the end of the day in 1864 when lincoln runs for reelection, the democrats have this as a major part of their platform, and part of state flat forms in elections in '63 and '64. lincoln is reelected. from his view, he had policies that were controversial, the people reelected him and that was their statement of acceptance of what he had done. >> we'll ask other questions. but if you've got questions yourselves, please come up, please come up to the mic. and i'm not sure how many here, john, understand the problem with vlaningham who was running for governor of ohio, had been a former congressman, very outspoken critic of the lincoln administration, the draft, the first draft in american history. and the department commander in ohio was -- and i have to disclose this, i'm sorry to say, was ambrose burnside from rhode island. chief, if you didn't have nathaniel green as george washington's right-hand general, you'd be stuck with ambrose burnside. burnside issues this general order prohibiting anti-administration speech, clearly a first amendment issue. and vlaningham is making all these speeches against the draft. he's encouraging parents and brothers to tell their soldier boys to desert, not answer the call for the draft, and that's what precipitates vlaningham's arrest. he's tried immediately by a military tribunal. he's sentenced to imprisonment for the duration of the war. >> at hard labor. >> and lincoln is embarrassed by this and discusses it with the cabinet, he wishes burnside had not acted precipitously. but yet he felt he had to support his general and the administration. so he banishes vlaningham to the confederacy. they didn't want him either. he gets on a steamer, and winds up in windsor, ontario to campaign against bro, his opponent for the ohio gubernatorial election. this is not the end of it. there's an outrage by many of the country, including, and john mentioned this, just so you'll know, a group in albany, new york headed by erastus corning who peppered lincoln with questions, interrogatories. and lincoln in another way of brilliance writes a letter in response to corning that he expects to be published everywhere. >> and it is. >> and it is. and the republican party reprinted thousands of this corning letter, so-called, where lincoln gives his defense for suspending the writ of habeas corpus and for arresting vlaningham. yes? >> i would say that's generally corpus. >> i thought, okay, if valandingham's speeches were widely reported around the country maybe burnside had a reason to arrest him. i could not find any reporting of valandingham's speeches outside of rural papers in ohio. the blunder of arresting him was even worse because he was not -- at that point he was not yet in a formal campaign for governor and he was not a member of congress. he was just kind of in a political wilderness and he was not getting any national attention. valandingham was trying to win the nomination, and he was not their first choice. he thought if i could become a martyr i could win. normally speeches would be very widely reproduced. burnside sent about a dozen detectives in, some military officers, some civilians, all dressed in civilian clothes to watch valandingham's speeches and write notes and bring them back. that's how we got to the arrest. >> i'm sorry to rhode island -- >> walter, why are you apologizing to me? i'm not ambrose burnside. do i look like -- i don't act like ambrose burnside. i agree with you and lincoln agreed with you too because he was very regretful that this -- that this had happened over this incendiary speech. but, you know, being a lawyer and politician that lincoln was, he turns it. he twists it against valandingham arguing against the draft or enticing people to have their soldier boys desert. he makes this compelling emotional argument that's trenching, that's compelling. >> absolutely. i mean, you know, the corning letter and its wide publicity is one of -- and it is interesting. lincoln in contrast to current presidents, lincoln is not out there every day on twitter or in press releases, et cetera. the corning letter is one of very few lengthy public statements by lincoln during the war. so he knows that this is an important issue and he takes time to respond to it not just in the corning letter, but there's a follow up as well. >> yeah, and he -- >> there's a letter to ohio democrat matthew bircher as well. >> yeah, and he turns it to a political issue as well, why are you democrats opposing the administration, you should be supporting the war efforts. he takes them to task. it is a bit risque. the other long -- and then we'll take some questions. walter, the other long talk that's made public, and people underrate this but it is probably one of the most important state documents of any president in our history, is his special message to congress on july 4, 1861, defending why he did all of these things that he did after the firing on fort sumter including su spend the writ of habeas corpus, appropriating money for arms and ammunitions, declaring a blockade, increasing the size of the regular army and navy without congressional approval on any of them. of course, he said i thought throughout the war that he never violated the constitution. maybe stretched it a little bit, but no violation there. yes, henry? >> in walter's opening remarks you said that jefferson davis and confederate leaders accused lincoln of violating international law and that we should get to that. so i ask that you get to that. the only international law issue that comes to my mind is blockading the southern ports, which the supreme court upheld in the prize cases. so what other issues are there? >> they're all looking at me. two that come to mind immediately. the southerners viewed the enlistment of blacks as the violation of the laws of war because they believed that -- they viewed these people as still slaves and they viewed using slaves to fight a war as a violation of the laws of war. >> the confederates? >> the confederates did. the other way in which the confederates viewed lincoln and stanton as having violated the laws of war was in the so-called dog run raid on richmond, when this failed confederate raid and papers are captured on the person of dahlgren in which he says we're going to take richmond, burn richmond and kill davis and other confederate leaders. these are printed in papers throughout the south, and the southern leaders say, look, it is crossed between legitimate warfare to in essence piracy. lincoln and the other leaders because they attribute it not to just a colonel, but dahlgren is connected in washington. so i think they're right if dahlgren said that he did so after conversations with lincoln and stanton. so they view this as kind of, you know, lincoln has kind of pulled off the gloves, no quarter. i'm agno strstic the confederat had a role in the assassination, but if they did, they did because they believed that lincoln himself had broken the laws of war. >> there's a back story to valandingham too. despite his dissent which was vociferous and often, when lincoln died, one of the greatest mourners was clement valandingham. are we right here, john, on that story, the back story? >> you know, i hadn't heard that, but i know valandingham began to change his views on race in the post-war period and go from being the ardent racist he was to moving away from those views. >> that's true. it is very ironic -- it is very ironic, and before we take jim's question, i can't resist to tell you -- of telling you that valandingham was an excellent trial lawyer and he was a criminal trial lawyer. post-war he's trying someone charged with murder, with homicide, and he has the weapon that's in evidence. and he's playing with it and he's showing the jury, and it proceeds to discharge, killing him. so the end of clement valandingham. jim. >> in all fairness to walter, maybe you do sound like burnside. [ laughter ] >> what, for just telling that back story? >> when i first saw the title of this panel, one of the first names that jumped into my mind was a guy who i thought was one of the most consequential enemies of lincoln, and i haven't heard his name mentioned. you've come close a few times and i thought i would not get up when you mentioned the radical republicans, but benjamin wade in his role as the heart and soul of the joint committee on the conduct of the war was constantly undermining lincoln's role as commander in chief by constantly undermining or attacking all the generals who lost all of those early battles. and as he witnessed the battle of bull run he just came back and created, i guess, the joint committee. i thought he was one of the most destructive, because the most important role lincoln was playing was as commander in chief. >> jim, you're absolutely right. i think the panel would agree, and that's why katherine mentioned the pomeroy circular which was a post bid for the presidency and wade was very instrumental in issuing this publication that was damning to lincoln. anyone want to comment on that, on benjamin wade? >> yeah, wade is one of the last holdouts. in 1864 he and henry winter davis issue this manifesto where they were furious with lincoln for vetoing the davis bill. it is interesting because if andrew johnson had been impeached and convicted he would have become president. >> came within one -- probably one of the most consequential single vote ever cast in american history. >> that's right. i think people had those sort of things in mind. >> thank you very much. yes, please. >> i'm a little reluctant to admit this, but my husband is from rhode island so we have a signed print by ambrose burnside hanging in our house because he was elected two times. >> you're not the only one because, believe it or not, he was very popular in rhode island. >> he became governor twice. >> he became governor and then a united states senator. >> yeah. but my question is i've been reading harold holder's book on lincoln and the press and i'm only about a third of the way through, but one of the things that's absolutely clear is that papers were not -- what's the word? they weren't even -- >> not neutral. >> they weren't impartial. they were really units of the party that they were working for, so there were democratic papers and republican papers. i assume at the time of the war it was the same thing. >> yes. >> so how much did these democratic papers influence the election or try to influence the election? >> good question. someone to answer that? >> i can answer that. >> steven. >> one of the things i did for all of the 23 northern states was to read four or five newspapers from every state, republican or democrat, for every day of the war. it took me a long time. [ laughter ] >> but i'm asked and answered -- >> that's why the book is so long. >> without pictures. but there was vehement democratic press against lincoln and the way the war was going on. these papers were circulated in the camps which i think is often forgotten about the influence of the press and how it was used, especially during 1862 and 1863 that as a copper head movement rises you see that these newspapers were designed -- a lot of the articles and the editorials were designed to influence soldiers in the ranks, especially around election time. so they're very effective instruments and vehicles for, you know, telling people what they needed to believe in the ranks because this is what your citizens believe at home. governors were very aware of this and, you know, in some cases tried to circulate opposition newspapers among the soldiers or not prohibit but restrict the circulation of other newspapers as much as they could. so they're very, very important i think in framing and shaping how people thought about politics, emancipation, you know, what is going on in washington. so very, very influential. >> steve, i think that the republican newspapers were not as complimentary. >> no. >> what i'm saying is one has an idea you will read the democrats and they will be taking lincoln apart. but the republican papers, as i said working on lincoln in new york during the war years i was having my students read republican papers, and they couldn't believe that the editors were in any way party supporters of lincoln. therefore, i think you really do show how vicious the campaign was and how his frenemies were trying to undermine him. the language in the private documents of the republican party in new york was worse than the things i was reading in the south. >> yeah. >> they were. they were quite openly racist and, you know, frightened. the new yorkers -- of course, many of them were connect by power and wealth to southern planters. >> in connecticut, for example, p.d. barnham ran an advertisement in the hartford news that because so many had been locked up he couldn't find acts for the circus. this became a problem. they couldn't put anybody on display who was a secessionist because they were all in jail. governors had to get involved in either supporting or not supporting these military arrests. >> we just have a couple of minutes left. >> just quickly, lincoln needed chase and the cabinet as an anchor for the radicals, as a bridge to the radicals, but chase was a financial and banking incompetent burdened with jacksonian philosophy for which lincoln opposed from the very beginning. when lincoln sent over people to suggest ideas, because the union had no currency, the union was unable to pay its soldiers, it was unable to pay its suppliers. he sent over people to suggest -- with ideas how to solve this problem and create the national banking system, and chase kept saying, "but that's unconstitutional." lincoln said, look, i have the constitution up here, you don't need to worry about that. i think that we ought to look at chase's financial incompetence because the financial people were basically charged with his political chores and taking care of his personal finances. a lot of things need to be looked at if you look at chase. >> thank you, fred. i'm sure walter will look at it in his new biography if i know him. >> and i will look at it in my current book and maybe in my second. >> thank you. next? >> i can't believe we made it this far in the session without mcclelland's name coming up. so -- >> that's the reason, because it is mcclelland. but go ahead, seriously. >> i guess my question is mostly for professor white, but i want to know do we have any record of how he responded -- reacted to losing to lincoln? and then, you know, i wanted to comment to professor engel because you always read about how the soldiers really loved mcclelland. so it just seems like a miracle that lincoln did win reelection and also the war ultimately. >> actually, the last question first, the soldier votes did not -- except in two states did not make a new mayor cal difference in electing lincoln. connecticut and new york i think were the two states where the count of the soldier ballots led the state -- connecticut and new york -- to go for abraham lincoln. that's counting the votes. as far as mcclelland's love of -- i mean the soldiers' love of mcclelland, little mac, and why they didn't stick with him for the vote in the 1864 election, anyone want to comment on that? jonathan? >> yeah. to the other part of the question too about mcclelland's reaction, i think he felt in some part relieved, which is maybe unusual, but he wrote that way. he said the people have voted with their eyes wide open, he wrote that to his wife or to samuel l. barlow. he got out of the country for a while, which maybe was a little overdue. >> and he disagreed with the peace platform of the democratic party so that didn't help either. yes. >> this is for catherine and it has to do with lincoln's demonstrable emotional intelligence which you have been discussing here. if it weren't for mary lincoln, lincoln never would have been president. he would have been the territorial governor of the state i'm from, washington. >> he would have accepted that appointment if she had been willing to go. >> right. we do not underestimate her contribution to his legacy and his presidency. but this is a pointed question having to do with his emotional sophistication. did life with her and their marriage prepare him for samuel chase and the rest of them? >> i think mary always had very strong opinions and her opinions were often not based on the same moral values that her husband had. so he could see quite clearly that coming from the kentucky bluegrass family and being raised among ambassadors and senators and politicians that she had a remarkable memory. i mean she kept grudges from sitting in the illinois balcony counting the votes, watching her husband lose the senatorial election, to when he was appointing his cabinet, writing dictatorship letters back to everyone, "don't you let that norman." you know, she was very, very strong minded. i think that he listened to her but he also was aware that she could, of course, manifest the pettiness which he did not. so in some ways she was a sounding board of what the society and social people might think, but he also clearly knew that she had his best interests at heart and that she was someone who was always advocating on his behalf. many of the things that she advocated in the white house, of course, were for reasons of his health and sanity and keeping him in an emotional straightforward way because he got lost in the war, got lost in grief, got lost in the grief over their sons. so people coming to him making demands for something, that i think she was quite stringent about. and she found the society that she was thrown into as a southern-born woman with confederate kin a great trial. so lincoln's ecumenical kind of position worked well, but it didn't work among the society women in washington. >> very quickly, i neglected to answer the second part of the previous question. >> so man's fine in there. go ahead. >> i would just say a lot of these soldiers still loved mcclelland but they said they didn't like the company he kept, and they worried if he died in office a peace democratic copperhead would rise to the presidency. so that caused a lot of soldiers to either not vote or to vote for lincoln. >> lois. >> with all due respect, being from oregon we think he was our first territorial governor, just not -- >> speak into the microphone, please. >> oh, okay. just to juxtapose yesterday's panel with the friends panel and talking about lincoln's eq, did he perceive his -- or think of his enemies with disdain and hatred like most of us mere mortals do or did he leave that to mary? how did he feel about douglas and chase and those other guys that were against him when he was in the battle? did he hate them? >> i thought he was good at putting letters in drawers. >> right. >> i think that really was a great lesson and a great civil war scholar david donald always told me, write it all out, fold it up, put it in a drawer, do not push send, tod. today we're in a twittering world where i think our annger - and i think lincoln learned revenge is best served cold. >> lois, let me read this quote attributed to lincoln about concerns in missouri which was like a civil war within a civil war. there was a commanding general of the department, general schofield, who took a very strident view of those in disagreement with the administration policies, and they want schofield out, this missouri delegation. he says, "in the time of war blood grows hot and blood is spilled, confidence dies and universal suspicion reigns. each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor lest he be first killed by him. revenge and retaliation follow, but this is not all. every fallow bird comes abroad and every dirty reptile rises up. these add crime to confusion." lincoln refused to dismiss general schofield. but i think this is a view of the contentiousness that he was mired in. this last question, yes, sir. >> when secession people in the armies and the civil service and other places had to choose sides, and it seems to me during the civil war this was done in a very courteous way. people were allowed to make their decision, and if they were, let's say, in pennsylvania at the time they were allowed to go to the south. so it was very gentlemanly. my question now is -- one specific question, robert e. lee made the decision to go with virginia. lincoln knew how important lee was. what would have happened if lincoln had said, you're under house arrest, you just committed treason? so lee would never have gotten to the south. >> wasn't going to happen at that time. anyone want to comment on that? even though lincoln thought lee was a traitor, and he said this often -- >> and he had already offered him the army of the potomac. >> someone want to comment on that. >> wasn't mercy always something that he thought about, reunion, redemption. so when his -- his favorite brother-in-law ben helm was, you know, going to join the confederacy, i think lincoln always had a vision of reunion. i mean he -- first of all, he said there couldn't be a secession, there couldn't be a separation. so by keeping in mind that the union was forever and taking that position you can't dissolve it, i think that was -- that was his position, just like his mercy against soldiers who fell asleep. so in other words each of us comes to saying what we think might have been the reason, but the actual legal interpretation and the political one was, again, perhaps his shrewdness. maybe, walter? >> well, i would also say that at the moment -- you know, we think of the civil war as having been declared with the firing on ft. sumpter. but lincoln didn't go to congress. congress wasn't in session, and ask for a declaration of war. i think lincoln would have been on shaky grounds, even shakier than on some of his earlier arrests in arresting robert e. lee when lee resigned his army commission. i would be hard pressed as a lawyer to say he violated laws at that moment. >> let's close with a comment from each before we hear from our assistant administrator. steven, one sentence, please. >> i'm sorry? >> you have one sentence. >> what is the topic? we're still on enemies? we haven't exhausted that? >> anything to close out this, lincoln's enemies? >> i think we need to think of the american civil war in the context of a whole. it is very difficult to divide politics and military as we think about this war. one of the things i've learned is, you know, the war is just politics by another means. so the nature of how this plays out and this sort of, you know, lincoln's hand is visible in everything, both politically and militarily. so i think of the evolution of how we think -- how we think of the evolution of this war is so important in how we remember it, how it begins, how it evolves and how it ends. and so in trying not to always think about how to divorce politics and military, but how to often think of them together, both at the national, but in my view at the state level because the -- you know, from a grounds-up point of view i think it is very instructive in how we see the relations formed throughout this very difficult conflict. >> thank you, steven. jonathan. >> when i was asked to be on the panel i thought of the wisconsin address lincoln gave at the agricultural fair in 1859. there lincoln says in past times the word "stranger" and "enemy" were quite or almost synonymous. when i think about lincoln and his talk about friendship and enemies, i can't also help but think about the end of the first inaugural address, and for lincoln, also building off catherine's point, he wanted the nation to be a community of friends who wouldn't go to war. it was his goal to avoid being enemies and maintain a national friendship. >> thank you, jonathan. catherine. >> in the idea it is a never-ending war of interpretations i think we need to remember the human scale of the war, and as we all continue to be embattled discussing questions of memorialization, questions of monuments, questions of how we will think about this, i just want everyone to keep in mind what would mr. lincoln think of our current debates and battles. he would want us to hear the other side, to be judicious, and to go forward together and enjoy turkey together at thanksgiving. >> thank you very much. walter. >> i want to echo jonathan with a rough quote. we are not enemies, we must be friends. >> excellent. [ applause ] >> excellent. and let me close i think in the same spirit in which our great panelists have elocuted just now. our friend jim mcpherson who has been here many times asked why does lincoln's image loom so large over our cultural landscape, even today as our panelists and you know? and great authors like barry schwartz and others answered that abraham lincoln is much more than a symbol, more than an idea. abraham lincoln is a living force who has always been a lamp illuminating the ideals of the american people as well as a mirror reflecting their interests. with that we will conclude this. thank you so much for your attentiveness and engagement. two days before president trump delivers his first state of the union speech, watch paths state of the union addresses on sunday at noon eastern on american history tv featuring president ronald reagan in 1982, president george h.w. bush in 1990, president bill clinton in 1994, and president barack obama in 2010. >> racing taxes won't balance the budget. it will encourage more government spending and less private investment. raising taxes will slow economic growth, reduce production and destroy future jobs, making it more difficult for those without jobs to find them and more likely for those who now have jobs to lose them. so i will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the american taxpayers. >> last fall at the education summit the governors and i agreed to look for ways to help make sure that our kids are ready to learn. the very first day they walk into the classroom. i made good on that commitment by proposing a record increase in funds, an extra half a billion dollars for something near and dear to all of us, headstart. >> now, our approach protects the quality of care and people's choices. it builds on what works today in the private sector, to expand employer-based coverage, to guarantee private insurance for every american. i might say employer-based private insurance for every american was proposed 20 years ago by president richard nixon to the united states congress. it was a good idea then and it is a better idea today. >> we cut taxes. we cut taxes for 95% of working families. we cut taxes for small businesses. we cut taxes for first-time home buyers. we cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. we cut taxes for eight million americans paying for college. >> watch sunday starting at noon eastern on american history tv on c-span3. next weekend c-span's cities tour takes you to fayetteville, arkansas, and with the help of our cox communication cable partners we will explore the literary scene and history of fayetteville. watch c-span's cities tour of fayetteville, arkansas, and next sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span three, working with our cable affiliates as we explore america. next on "lectures in history," depaul university professor mark pohlad teaches on abraham lincoln in art and photographs. he describes how images of lincoln might reach audiences such as engravings printed in newspapers might be more widely circulated than a single print or photograph. his class is about 70 minutes. >> do you recognize this? do you recognize this statue? we're all chicagoans. i'm going to shame you a little bit. we should know, it is like maybe the best sculpture of lincoln in linkin park behind the chicago history museum. just like the fact you have free admission to the art institute, you have free admission to chicago history museum. step outside and take a look. it is a fantastic sculpture by

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