policy to lincoln's economic philosophy. >> all right. good evening. good evening and welcome to lincoln's cottage. silence your phones. 2015-2016 cottage conversation series was made possible by david bruce smith and james and matthew. we invite youion, to join us downstairs for the book signing. the next conversation will be on march 3. it will discuss the life of frederick douglass. we are pleased to welcome back-year-old holzer -- harold holzer. holzer.me back harold he is the chairman of the foundationentennial and is the co-author of books on the civil war, as well as hundreds of articles and chapters in additional volumes. inreceived the lincoln prize 2005 and was awarded the national humanities medal by george bush. bookceived a prize for his , lincoln and the power of the press. he is an on-air contributor to c-span, the history channel, cbs, nbc, msnbc, and the bbc. nkel challenge the understanding of the civil war. the book traces economic opportunity develop through lincoln's life and how later presidents invoked and carried on the economic legacy of lincoln. his own work has been critical to understanding the republican party's commitment to economic opportunity. he says that holzer reminds us that the devotion to the union rested on the bedrock belief that a free society and activist democratic government could offer free labor the opportunity to climb the social ladder. welcome harold holzer. there are 1000 books written to address the question of why the civil war was fought. one might think that all that could have been said was. that is exactly what you and garfinkel went out to sort out. lincoln'ss is that response to the southern secession was a result of the ms. commitment to pursuing economic opportunity for the widest possible circle of and thising americans drove all of his decisions. you have been studying lincoln for all these years. when did you come to this conclusion and what drew you and garfinkel to work together on the book? isold: the first part of it -- i will do the second part first -- we are not questioning lincoln's of horns to slavery -- abhorrence to slavery or questionin. lincoln loved the union more than anything. what does that mean? is it a contract between states? no. said,e was in trenton, he boy, i read the life of washington and something affected me, not just the fighting, which all boys love, but the ideas behind the revolution, the questioning of the divine right of the king to rule. what lincoln men's is, what the union -- what lincoln meant was what the union of offered. he was trying to create a rationale for resisting rebellion. --, i have always thought and i will say that garfinkel, who has been a friend for 10 had aor more, and i have series of discussions where we discussed government and lincoln. he was a student when he was in college and wrote on economic opportunity for americans. this is what we talked about. he would generously invite me to love. anybody who knows me knows that that is irresistible for me. out of these experiences, we challenged each other on what union and lincoln meant. and, frankly, i think the lunches helped me see the light and crystallize my thinking. that is the anecdotal and philosophical underpinning of how we got to where we are. lincoln's background with the "right to rise" and his commitment to economic opportunity, how did that apply to slavery for him? lincoln espoused the idea of american opportunity and lived it. book, pointed out in the lincoln and the economics of the american dream. he started with people among them who did not have much ambition and was obviously gifted. thatveloped a credo suggested that anyone, with or without gifts, who was hard-working, willing to toil, would or could rise from 20 toiling to working for himself and hire people who go in that trajectory. which we are not totally sure when lincoln was first exposed to it -- he lived in indiana along a dirt highway beings were transported without challenge. there was a famous trip to new heeans when he was 21 and saw enslaved people on the auction block and was haunted by it. others were not. it made a difference that it affected him and it affected him in complex ways, which i will get to, i am sure. although he was never quite there in full "you quality "equality mode." ," he saw that slavery goes against the grain of the and that blacke and white needed the opportunity to earn to their potential. experiencedn economic equality for stop that .id no realize economic equality could not stand alone and was dependent on other factors, like political and civil equality? harold: after a largely unsuccessful or unremarkable term in congress devoted to resisting the mexican war, even though it was over. a good position. ventas trying to pre new slave territories, which would prolong it. termer and was always going to be. he went into private practice. i try to make the point that lincoln's retirement from politics was never 100%. 1854, stephen douglas engineered passage of the kansas nebraska act in congress, which end theght would an crisis by giving people a chance to vote in new territories on whether or not to allow slavery in the areas. the problem was that he was only allowing white people to vote on the state of people of color. what people could move from one territory to another and continue of proving slavery. this allowed lincoln back into politics. dream andrican opportunity was to be preserved, he believed they had to be free for free labor, which he defined as "free white labor." in 20 54, populations 854 was white. it was going to be a place where people got their own land, brought personal industry to bear, there were limited opportunities. sovereignty, as defined by stephen douglas, was the opposite of democratic choice and meant that the possibility of slavery was going to be brought into a pristine territory where america had proved it was democratic. became point, theory politicized and he realized he had to take action. againstyears, he railed the idea of popular sovereignty as his main, almost exclusive, focus and it carried into the intoln-douglas debates and the presidential nomination. other than the civil war and trying to contain slavery, what are some ways that lincoln's economic philosophy impacted his political agenda? if you look at the accomplishments of the lincoln administration during extraordinary times, when he had the most friendly super-majority in the history of american politics -- forget about lbj when he was enacting the great you think about the precursors of red and blue congressincoln had a with no grey states. it was terrible. there were republicans and fairly-acquiescent democrats, in many cases. 's support of supportedn acts that open borders and an open golden to enter theens workforce, a national banking gavea homestead act that ,and to adventurous pioneers the transcontinental railroad, which we would call infrastructure, congress passed. think about how hard it is to get today come because everyone resists government investment in infrastructure. lincoln grew up with the idea dot governments should only for people what people cannot do for themselves, which includes canals, bridges, and railroads. he believed that government ought to do that. when he had the chance and he was focused exclusively on ending the rebellion, he managed to sign the most extraordinary -- maybe not the new deal, but the original deal, "the real deal." host: let's talk about what the confusion, corruption, new economic realities, and assess the u.s. presidents who followed lincoln and invoke him for policy decisions. evaluating the political history history, doesn's it impact your view of the events? harold: a great question. i will get to it. [laughter] i have to lay some groundwork. this is the part that is the most controversial of the book, which i think is unfair. not the book. the criticism. in this book, we did not try to project what lincoln would think in the 21st century, even if we really think we would know what he would do in iowa today as we sit here, rather than just sit here and talk about it. what we did was assess how true subsequent presidents were to the legacy of lincoln. we thought it was fair, because of the extraordinary number of presidents who invoke the lincoln legacy. amendment,the fifth if you do not plead it right away, you have to and to the question. if you invoke lincoln, you are judged on lincolnian standards. we started with grant, who is by historiansed right now. from athe first to go good first-term and he moved towards the gilded age republican love of industry. century, greath and littleincoln recognition and recollection of what lincoln said about american opportunity, that the principal responsibility of preserving and passing on the dream was to make sure that people had an unfettered chance in life and that barriers were removed. philosophy was's darwinian. people with special talents had to be recognized and, if they were recognized and unfettered by regulation, the success would bring the bottom up, rather than the bottom coming up and getting rich, which is the lincoln way. we pointed that out. lincolnian arguments and the darwinian arguments have been going on. we look at all the presidents who invoked lincoln. loved lincolnvelt and had lincoln's hair and a ring. -- in a ring. trust-busting.is woodrow wilson, a complicated case. was he racist? sure. everybody said he was a virginian. he had a home in columbia, south carolina. they did not like the yankees there. they flew the confederate battle flags until a few months ago in 2015. wilson's progressive agenda was extraordinary, child labor laws, state taxes, graduated income tax. it is the other part that he re-segregating the federal bureaucracy, taking away the rights of african american workers who it achieved status. they were all the motive. -- they were all demoted. fdr got it. was the firston to include primaries. 13. a rollicking season. everybody is tired of primaries. york.es in new taft loses in ohio. they all say they are the natural and herod are of the heriter of the lincoln legacy. manchester, he sealed the deal of the endorsement by playing golf with robert lincoln. roosevelt is wearing the ring andgoes out to lincoln-land communes with lincoln in the log cabin area, telling everyone he iter.e natural inher wilson has progressive policies. he presides over the battle of gettysburg, never mention what lednever mentions to the civil war, just talking of reconciliation. he made the lincoln log cabin a national park. olled thelicans outp democrats. fdr loves lincoln. we uncovered a moment where he brings his staff together and says, we have to take over the party. we are the lincoln party now. he made the concerted effort to steal the lincoln legacy. when william jennings bryan talked about lincoln, republican-owned newspapers attacked viciously. withocrat cannot identify lincoln, because they are the party of the white south and 19th century repression. fdr is the guy who turns it around. i'm doing this chronologically. 015-2016.ng to 2 fdr was the first democratic candidate for president to win the african majority of votes and did not do so in 1932, in the midst of the depression. the african-american vote went to herbert hoover. the depression in the south was so powerful and stagnating. pollan-americans defied taxes and means testing and remained loyal. roosevelt defined himself as the opportunity, with eleanor pushing him along. 1940 -- 1939, a play opened up called, "abe lincoln in illinois." fdr like the play and called up the playwright. he said, enough of the plays and pulitzers, come to work for speechwriter. that is where the action is. he did. all of a sudden, the character offdr becomes the character lincoln in a play. i do not want to organize the world against this threat. please don't make me!" it was brilliant. one could say that roosevelt invoked lincoln to face down the fascist threat to the free .orld, like the confederacy rich people would be in a fixed position in aristocracy. i will leave this at roosevelt. did i ever answer the question? host: if fdr comes closest, which he does, who contradicts the vision the most? harold: i will get into trouble. statement of "the business of america is business" reflected a pushback against situations,way totally on -- bad wage banking,s, unregulated the"good old times of 1920's," and america paid a price for that kind of belief that the superrich would encourage everyone to come along , that it would be a top-down prosperity, rather than bottom-up. in the book, we say that reagan, and lowering the top rate of income tax and beginning the tax of lowering the estate clausesting huge estate , diminishing national income and making it easier for the rich. it is controversial, because ronald reagan has achieved mythical proportions in american culture. on economics, he was the reversal of lincoln. he quoted him all the time, as 2 and clinton. after the state of the union, obama quoted, in his final state lincolnnion, twice. and onelliantly over-hopefully. are we more divided now than the civil war? i don't think so. he is still on the lives of american leaders. -- lips of american leaders. in a presidential campaign that is still in formation, as we speak, he has been misquoted more than any other campaign. he is still out there. you cannot say that about any 19th-century figure, with all due respect to ron. "as hamiltoning, said." ng but notat he sa what he said. lincoln is still in the political dynamic, word for word, and that is extraordinary. host: obama invoked lincoln twice. he noted that the growing divide is one of his regrets. he says that he has no doubts that a lincoln or a roosevelt --ld have better-bridged better bridged the divide. roosevelt entered with and sustained a big majority. startednt congresses chipping away at the new deal. he was riding high on his ability to reinvent american policy every few weeks, if it did not work. it was exciting. i think that lincoln had a harder time and i think obama knows that. i think, of all the presidents that i have gone to talk to, no one has had a stronger and closer identification with lincoln than obama. first, for the obvious reason. he was an african-american president. it was made possible. obama announces candidacy on the steps of the state capital where lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. he invoked lincoln in the candidacy and this is a continuation of the unfinished work of lincoln. it led from the inaugural journey -- to the inaugural journey from lincoln to washington. lincoln did parts of it in secret. the memorial before he took the oath of office. do i have time for another obama anecdote? find this story to be the culmination of the association. the lincoln message of equal opportunity was sincere. the president wanted to take the owner of office on lincoln's bible. personama is the first to touch the bible without gloves. it is carefully protected. the library of congress got the will out and the president put his hand on it and take the 2009, the yearin of lincoln's bicentennial -- i should remember! what is extraordinary is that it was not lincoln's bible. somebody did not do the advanced work. somebody said, did you bring the bible? she did not. they had to go downstairs to the supreme court to get a bible. the supreme court was in the u.s. capital. bible.d a different justice would read from the bible to open the court session. this is not the lincoln bible. it is better. thes the bible that roger, man who said that people of color to never be equal, never be citizens, never have any white rights, that is his bible. when obama put his hand out, he literally closed the book for ever. that is the dream -- the book forever. that is the dream. >> the nation has been criticized for being partisan on ideals.otes reflect his i think it is somewhat partisan at the end of the section. principally are not academic historians. we have both had complicated and adventurous lives that, in my politics,ve been in government, i have worked for mario cuomo, i imprisoned andrew with -- i am friends andrew cuomo. garfinkel and his wife are reporters of women in politics and have made that a cause. so, we think we are right. [laughter] we are not always successful, but we think we are right. here,not ever say -- and i criticize the critics, who are -- they say we are projecting lincoln onto the 21st century and that we are saying this is what lincoln would say about global warming. we know what lincoln did about global warming, he came up here. that was global warming. he did not say, "we should stop using fossil fuels." if there are modern figures who say they are continuing the lincoln tradition, they are judged by our standards and, i think that others can try to do their own assessment and they will come up with differing conclusions and we can have another debate. "ha!" to the critics, critic.want to quote a he wrote, if this link and was barrierse would lower to immigrants, raise taxes on the rich, bolster labor unions, and provide subsidies for health care, supporting bernie sanders, if not running to his left. was as time, lincoln moderate. >> andrew is doing the projections. i am not. lincoln was a moderate on race issues, until he was mature. he was a realist on slavery. he had no power, constitutionally, to change the constitution, until he decided that a commander in chief, in a moment of rebellion, could and should do it. i think he was not a moderate. that overstates it. there was a faction of the republican party that was to his left. he was moving slowly to those goals they espoused. what would he be today? i have no clue. i have an instinct, a belief, a hope. anyone who wants to discuss me later which woman -- which candidate he would have supported -- i would be happy to discuss. said, a womanhave running for president to succeed in african president, how could ?ou project that whiteningproject a gap, a sign that we have strayed from lincoln's ideal, but there is a small percentage of people in poverty. vision specific to the united states? it'sis experiment fails, just that democracy ultimately fails. that democracy ultimately fails. what america offers it is hoped the world for all time to come. he believes that, if american democracy fails, kings and dictators would rule around the world and american success would like the world -- light the world. one thing i am sure about today is that he would have continued shore that these kon, not people, -- bec restrict, saying, come join the mosaic. he was a strong believer in immigration during his presidency. he boasted about it. he had the temerity to go before congress -- actually, not before congress -- but imagine him maginary. i imagine narrowly dieds saying, people have and we know they are sacrificing their lives in the cause of replenished we have with irish, german, scandinavian, english, people from all over the western world. immigration was coming from and being opposed bitterly. he created an immigration bureau, signed an immigration act, resisted any efforts to give people a waiting period to vote. that is one area i feel to democratsaying or republicans, if you want to quote lincoln on immigration, look at his policies. the: if you have not seen exhibit on lincoln and immigration, i encourage you to do so. thank you. i will turn it over for questions. [applause] question.t on immigration, at the beginning of his and administration, he tried to convince the african-american community to consider going back to africa. he was a big supporter of that, was he not? harold: that is a fair question. time, from the time he first admired henry clay and his policies, part of the voluntarya was colonization of africa. time,k, for a long lincoln believed that whites would never allow blacks to be part of the expanded society. whether he was worried about the emancipation proclamation and wanted to couch it in terms that whitenot send alarms to a citizenry, that is open to question. lincoln believed in colonization. when african americans took up and for the union and the restoration of the union, there lexiconr a hint in his that people in the union should states.n the united it is a huge issue that should not be shunted aside. onmy second point is, college campuses, like princeton, taking wilson's name off, where does this end? does this concern you as a historian? historythe rewriting of concerns me. izing ofmental bad people also concerns me. certain people have been on a pedestal for generations and it is open for question and re-examination. when i first visited with my wife in st. petersburg, we did not expect any vestiges of the czars. we thought they had all been swept away. it was all there. s, they had not been destroyed, like saddam hussein statues. of relicsreservation and the tearing down of statues others.lini fo it is a serious issue, not just on college campuses, where we remember changing the world and the activism is tempered. e is aw wilson's rol tough one and he had an international agenda for world peace and was a racist, who loved birth of a nation. legacy.a dual forrest in the south, a man who was not only a general, but a slave dealer, a who killed african-americans after they surrendered, i have problems with that. that is as bad as using the confederate battle flag as a symbol of resistance to integration and pretending that it is a symbol of heritage, which it never was. i have not answered the question. it is really complicated. historians are organizing conferences on heritage. if you move a town square to a museum, does it give a different ability to understand what people are lionized and still invoked? it is a really important conversation. >> sorry. ok. my wife and i went to a program with steve roberts and they talked about the primaries. they were talking about, in the republican primary, the republicans are looking for a second choice after trump. i said, this is the strategy and hiscoln took managers went around saying, i know you want lincoln. can he be the second choice? that is the lincoln strategy for the managers. it was all over in a day, not a year. i will tell you the difference. lincoln told his people and his people told each other that the lurk as a second by being loved by everybody. i would argue that there is not a candidate in either party who loved.ng an effort to be >> the establishment is looking for a second choice besides donald trump in ted cruz. -- and ted cruz. harold: lincoln could not have imagined the primary system. he was a convention man, believing in convictions, rather than old-fashioned caucuses. part of me wishes that we still had conventions. it is unbearable the length of time this all takes. >> to what extent would lincoln have supported the welfare state? lincoln adapted with the times. lincoln, the idea of homesteading was new, government investment in canals, roads, bridges, remember, when lincoln was a lawyer, one of the test expansiont government took place under his watch, if a riverboat plows into a bridge, can't you sue the government and the people who build the bridge because it is an unnatural impediment built by the welfare state of the day? the court ruling changed a lot of attitudes and legal precedents about government investment in infrastructure and validated the existence of bridges. it sounds archaic. riverboats,s of watch out where you are going. and it is said in the book, i could find it. , the responsibility of government was to build roads, bridges, and to protect the poor ndigent.i this is a man who did not give to charity. he got lots of requests to. you stretch that to in 1932,mployment rate that extends? ? roads thatthe major i think of during the civil war were turnpikes. a proportion of roads? >> that is back in the news because of the scene in the movie where the guy comes into the office and says, my family yearsd a tollbooth for . i have no idea what the percentage was. the movement towards free access was growing and the civil war probably ended a lot of the archaic tolling system. some of it changed. >> invading armies did not usually pay. >> if they knew where they were going. >> you can make a case that the tolls once of state a continuation. >> i am a huge fan. >> thank you. >> every time i get a book of lincoln, i will always learn something new. you never know! i am reading "lincoln and the press." and a lot of new information. [indiscernible] every time i open a book, i find something. emphasis in the 1864 in his state of the union on the replenishment of population through immigration -- many people probably have not read it that often. read it again and focus on that part of the message in the midst of the current hysteria of immigration was significant for me. sure, there are little tidbits. people are nice enough to call me when they discover things. -- they correct my previous books. i got a call on an article i wrote 12 years ago. it is always good to correct. >> that here. back here. moral casemade a against slavery and you have a case that there is not a moral argument there. it was that slavery would push out free labor and free labor was part of the slogan of the campaign. do you think is the fault of memory that we have forgotten this? or, was lincoln more successful about making a moral argument, rather than the argument about free labor? harold: i think he was good at both arguments. he made the argument to the election of the presidency and it was all about economic opportunity and he went to new rightafter giving his makes might union speech and he said that labor is more important than capital. the working person is more important than the investor and the working person has the opportunity to spread the unfettered and this chance with the welfare state and the opportunity. resistancewas always in the early days because he understood that it was a fringe movement for all of the references to the abolitionists. there was not any voter support and lincoln wanted to be elected and make changes when he was empowered. so, i think the fact that he andsted the moral argument made the moral arguments when he powerfulade them more about accepting the consequences of either inflating human beings the institution denied so many. it was the culmination of so much different thinking on and he saw enslaved people on a riverboat shackled everher and it has haunted since. visiting this house and coming to the house as a computer -- as , those people were the syrian refugees of their day, fleeing in danger to find opportunity, not knowing where they would go and how they would survive. also part of the visits to the house. >> make this easy. >> he created the national academy of science. how does that relate? and aook came out wonderful young person, does person?emember this yes, lincoln signed the national academy of sciences enabling legislation and what did it mean? he wanted investigations into the unimaginable future that could be harnessed by study and research. smithsonian's runs by a ford that has been in place years. when the abolitionist is scheduled to speak, the chairman sure,ly said, i am not unless we consult all the board tobers, and it is hard contact jefferson davis. maybe they cannot get in touch with him anymore, he has a new role. it was an avenue to research and peopleng the research of of science. , iyou want to bring that invite you to take a look. >> thank >> every election cycle remind us how important it is for citizens to be informed. >> c-span is a home for political junkies and a way to track the government as it happens. >> i think is a great way for us to stay informed. >> there are a lot of c-span fans on the hill. my colleagues will say, i saw you on c-span. >> there is so much more that c-span does to make sure people outside the beltway know what is going on inside of it.