[laughter] chris thank you for being here. The book is congressman lincoln the making of americas greatest president. What do i mean by greatest president . I mean most significant. At the end of the day, it was Abraham Lincoln to engage the south any civil war in order to preserve the union. It is Abraham Lincoln that result the slavery issue that had vexed the statesman back to the founding. And this story, why congressman lincoln . There are 16,000 books written about Abraham Lincoln. If you go to fords theatre in washington dc, which is the final scene of the extraordinary story, you will see half that number piled to the ceiling. Abouten i say books Abraham Lincoln, i do not mean about mary todd or the civil war , i mean about him. Books about his time in congress, one of three political jobs he ever had. The only other job he had in the federal government, besides president. There have only been three of them written and this is the third. The last one was written before i was born. This is the missing piece of the puzzle in the lincoln story. I think we are all very familiar with his hardscrabble upbringing. We know about his career in the illinois legislature. We know about his career in the court houses of illinois, handling of a variety of cases as a frontier lawyer. We are very familiar with the lincoln story as president. Right . The author of the emancipation proclamation, the guy that wrote the gettysburg address. Sixteenth president of the United States. The president who led the union during americas greatest moral and political crisis. And also during americas most tragic war. So this is the missing piece of the lincoln puzzle. The first thing that i want to talk about is the ambition of Abraham Lincoln. You know, we like to associate ambition with a negative thing. Someone who wants to go into politics, to be associated with campaigns in politics, we think about it as a negative thing today. So as a result, we try to think of him as being above the muck and the dirty campaigning, the negative campaigns, everything that we dislike about our modern political system. The truth is, we cannot make those criticisms without leveling them at Abraham Lincoln. Called,t chapter is the most ambitious man in the world. It is a quote about Abraham Lincoln from his law partner, william herndon. Abraham lincoln, from the earliest time in his life, his family members would attest he was hungry to be somebody. Once he got in trouble, she said behaving like that, the what do you expect to be when you grow up . He told his sister, president of the United States. He said, there was never a time in my life where i do not believe i would be president of the United States. He worked hard to make something of himself and to make his life one that would be remembered. One that we would talk about today. His ambition, where does that take him . He served in the Illinois House of representatives. In 1843, he makes his first bid for congress. He writes a friend of his, he says, if you hear anybody say that mr. Lincoln does not wish to go to congress, i wish you to tell them they are very much mistaken. The truth is, i would like to go very much. Lincoln has two major obstacles in his way. One of them is a gentleman named his. D baker, a friend of one of his sons is named after baker. Another one is john hardin. They have similar qualifications to lincoln. They are all about the same age. They are all three lawyers. And members of the illinois legislature. Or former members. They all have similar qualifications. So lincoln, his first hurdle he has to get over is the county convention. His home county and the home county of edward baker, they will nominate delegates to districtwide congressional meeting where the nominees are going to be chosen. Illinois is heavily democratic at this time. If you are an ambitious person district wasthis your only hope to move up. You are not going to be elected governor or chosen for the u. S. Senate where legislature. If you are an upwardly mobile whig, this was your shot. So lincoln have to outmaneuver baker at the convention. Unfortunately, does not go as planned. He throws in the towel around noon and one newspaper recorded if he had just hung in until nightfall his supporters would have shown up later in the day and maybe oddnumbered supporters for bigger. As it stands, lincoln ends up as a pledge delegate for the districtwide convention, pledged to baker. He said it was similar to being the guy that gets cut out of a relationship, gets his girlfriend stolen from him and many have to stand up in the wedding. So baker is defeated by hardin. Now you have hardin that is younger than him, and hes going to be there as long as he wants. Lincoln can see the dream of going to congress disappearing very quickly. Abraham lincoln comes up with an idea. I do not think there is a way to know how close it would be between baker and hardin. He offers a resolution and says, we congratulate hardin on his victory and we recommend baker as a nominee in two years. Before hardin is even sworn in, he has a resolution of this hanging over his head. And he announces he will not serve a second form term. Turn andrdin gets a baker gets a turn, who gets a turn after that . Abraham lincoln. So now he has to wait until 1846. Slogan turnabout is , fair play. He is not going to try to take shots hardin. They agree on the issues. Everybody in politics knows that sometimes when you are in a political primary, the toughest in their between those own party. He stays away from that, lincoln stays away from negative campaigning. He says turnabout is fair play. ,it works. Hardin decides not to run again. Lincoln in 1846 is the unanimous choice in illinois. And he has to go up against a democrat, the guy was named peter cartwright. He is a preacher, not like any you have seen before. He is a guy that has had his tent revivals interrupted by people who he later assaulted. He was a tough guy. There is a story about him getting put up in a swank New York Hotel and he got lost. So he used a hatchet to blaze a trail on the walls so he would know how to get back to his room. This is who lincoln has to go up against. [laughter] chris and the lincoln is actually very successful. He has the biggest majority in the district, bigger than bakers majority and hardins majority, now he has a gear and a year and a half until he is sworn in. He rides the circuit and he continues to go to court. He continues to try these cases and handle cases. Tend to the affairs of his family. The last case that he handles before he heads to washington is a slave case. Think about this. It will be incredibly important when we see how Abraham Lincoln, where he is at after he leaves congress. So malcolm was a slave owner from kentucky chasing a slave of his in the illinois court, trying to bring him back to kentucky. And lincoln his entire life, he is exposed to slavery, he is born in kentucky and he spent some of his earliest years in kentucky. He grows up in a county where there are 750 people and 1000 slaves. And he grows up near the cumberland road. He could see people shackled, on their way to wherever they were going. He saw it up close. It was something lincoln was familiar with. And lincoln goes down to new orleans as a riverboat captain, and he sees the biggest slave market in north america in new orleans and he sees the brutality of slavery and he believes it is wrong, but he also recognizes that there are laws in place and he believes this gentleman has a case, said he represented mr. Madsen. You would never see Something Like this from lincoln after he leaves congress. We will talk about what happened, soon. December of 1847, Abraham Lincoln is a member of the 30th congress. What is so fascinating, one of the most interesting things is who is there with him. So the most famous member of the 30th congress is John Quincy Adams, the former president. The only former president that served in the peoples house. I think it is fascinating because this is the link between lincoln and the founding fathers. A short time they had to spend with one another, this is the link between lincoln and the founding fathers. You can imagine what kind of conversations they could have had. Lincoln was so fascinated with washington. He was fascinated with the founding generation who got behind the declaration of independence and put together the constitution, who started the new government, so you can imagine what kind of questions he had for John Quincy Adams. John quincy adams shortly into his tenure dies on the house floor, probably right in front of Abraham Lincoln. And i start the book, the prologue, talking about that. I think it is a good analogy. You have this generation, lincolns generation. The one thats going to fight a civil war. They are the first generation that does not have the benefit of the council of the founding generation. All these people with all this experience running the american government, compromising on very serious issues, they were gone and they were left to settle the questions on their own. Lincoln serves not only with John Quincy Adams, but also with a man named alexander stevens. Stevens will go on to serve as the Vice President of the confederacy. If anybody how many people have seen the Lincoln Movie . Yes, its an excellent movie. When lincoln is in negotiations at the end and he is speaking with commissioners from the confederacy, one of them is actually stevens who was lincolns best friend in the house of representatives, as close as two people could be. They were both whigs. And as we will talk about later, they both did a president ial campaign together. Lincoln served with a jefferson davis, who was in the u. S. Senate. And he became the president of the confederacy in america. Lincolns second Vice President , the man who replaced him, andrew johnson. He was a member of the house with Abraham Lincoln. So many of these people that would later become critical in the civil war would become important to lincoln and his rise to the presidency, they were there in the 30th congress with him. It is fascinating to watch him interact with these people before any of them could imagine what role they would play later in history. So what are the major issues when he goes to congress . Nothing is bigger than the mexicanamerican war. They were trying to figure out , what is the endgame in mexico . This is something we could never imagine being in a prolonged war without ideas of how we are going to wrap it up. [laughter] chris that was something that lincoln and his colleagues had to confront. Lincoln was very content to let the matter lay until a result. President james polk said he would treat silence as acquiescence and support for the war. And lincoln could not be silent anymore. So his first major address as a member of congress, he gives something that would be known as the spot resolution speech. After his speech, people thought that that was it for Abraham Lincoln. We have the principle of rotation, these people that served one term a piece and people are already talking about Abraham Lincoln running for reelection. As soon as he gets there. But after the spot resolution speech, no one is talking about Abraham Lincoln being in congress anymore. Pretty clear that he is not going to run again. But why do they call it the spot resolution speech . Every part of his resolution, if about the spot where blood was first shed in the mexicanamerican war, president polk said that american blood has been shed upon american soil. So you can picture this country lawyer, now he has a courtroom that is the marbled house of representatives. Which is a statuary hall for those of you that have been to the capital. This was the Meeting Place when lincoln was a member of congress. And you can see a plaque where his desk was on the house floor. He gave the speech from that spot, talking about where the mexican war began. And it was a really disputed territory, was it american territory or mexican territory . Illinois has been a gun ho state for the war. A preacher was praying for the end of the war and he had to stop showing up because they threatened to lynch him. They thought it was negative comments on the war. You can imagine how it was received when Abraham Lincoln makes this a speech. A lot of things come out of the american mexican war, it would send them on a collision course for what followed. One of the things that came out of this was Zachary Taylor. Zachary taylor is a very Unlikely Hero in america. He was somebody that had never voted. He was a rare career military man in a time when the American MilitaryStanding Army was never very big. He made his career there. But he wins battle after battle. And at the top of the list was the battle of blue vista. After his battle of buena vista. After this, they wanted to take the rigler troops and send them with a general scott and make an Amphibious Landing the largest , one in American History up to that point. And leave taylor in the heart of mexico with a reduced force. A decision is made, they will go and destroy taylors army. So Zachary Taylor ends up winning the battle, 41. In the process, john hardin, the former congressman, the one that tussled with Abraham Lincoln in 1846 congressional race, he died. ,t is one of those incidents writing about history i am so fascinated by the seemingly small things that conspired to make great things happen on the world stage and in this case if , john hardin had lived, if you he had come back to illinois as a hero of the war, i think there was little chance Abraham Lincoln would have emerged as the head of the new Republican Party. Or i think there is very little chance that he couldve been the nominee for senate, twice from the Republican Party. But we will never know because he dies in the final minutes of the battle of buena vista. Zachary taylor gets talked about as a potential president ial candidate. Lincoln, along with alexander stevens, the future Vice President of the confederacy, they are among the first seven supporters of Zachary Taylor and the house of representatives. So why the reluctance to embrace this war hero . A guy that could be the ticket to victory . Simple, we do not know anything about where he stands. The party is against slavery and Zachary Taylor owns slaves, hes one of the biggest slave owners in the country. He is opposed to the mexicanamerican war, Zachary Taylor loved it. He led the war. You can imagine there is reluctance to embrace this guy. Lincoln, remember this guy we placed on a pedestal, he said we have tried running on principle long enough, let us try winning. [laughter] and so lincoln and the others, they call themselves the young indians. So they try to round up support for Zachary Taylor. There is another alternative. Henry clay is making his final bid for the presidency. Henry clay, former speaker of the house, former secretary of state and the founder of the whig party. The guy who embodied their ideals. In fact, Abraham Lincoln said that he was a man for whom i have fought for my entire adult life. Well, lincoln knows that clay cannot win. And while lincoln doesnt claim to have any special knowledge about what Zachary Taylor believes, he knows that that taylor can win. The choice is not between having a perfect whig party and Zachary Taylor, but the choice between having a democrat they know disagrees with them and a whig party member who they know agrees with them. And so if nothing else, they will help to build up the whig party. The whigs in the 1840s won their first president ial race. And of course, William Henry henderson dies after 40 days. And they had not given it a lot of thought to who his Vice President would be. He is basically a democrat, john tyler, who is kicked out of the party. And they are not able to win a president ial race since, so in their existence they have had the presidency for only about 30 days. They are eager for a winner. And while this person is closer to our beliefs, this person can win, so it was something that the Political Parties were still struggling with even in the 1840s. So what were the other issues . Well, shortly before the commencement of the mexicanamerican war, polk wins the presidency on this manifest destiny, they are destined to go to the pacific and the country is destined to grow and one of the things he says he will do is adjust the border with oregon. Oregon at this point is being administered jointly with the United Kingdom and poklk backside of the treaty. Remember the famous slogan . Line of latitude that they were going to stick to, but it never came close. It went into british columbia, almost alaska. So we have a brandNew Territory of oregon. Anytime the u. S. Acquires territory, they have a problem. Keys that keeps the union together is the missouri compromise at t