director of the civil war institute. i'm very pleased to welcome good friend harrell holzer to cwi. [ applause ] harold is the jonathan f. fan on the director of hunter college's roosevelt house public policy institute. you don't have an acronym for that, do you, like cwi. it doesn't doesn't work, does it? before coming to the roosevelt house he previously served an senior vice president for public affairs at the metropolitan museum of art. for the previous ten years he cochaired the u.s. abraham lincoln bicentennial collision appointed by president clinton and i should ade president bush awarded harold the national humanities medal in 2008. harold has authored or co-authored or edited 52 books. that's what you're up to now. i know you think i've read 52 books in my life. his latest mayor book is "lincoln and the pow are of the press were the war for public opinion". it has won the lincoln prize as we know sponsored by gettysburg college. just this week i saw it was announced that harold has been awarded the empire state archives and history award. this is harold's significant contributions to the profession and he joins a list of recipients, including ken burns and james mcfearson. this event is going to be held on september 6 and at the cooper union in american history tv on new york city. are you going to speak for -- [ applause ] sorry. i was going to ask you. are you going to talk about your career? get two and a half hours in like lincoln did? >> i'm really worried because cooper union holds 950 people. there will be buses to take this group out. but lincoln couldn't fill the hall. what am i going to do? >> and you're also -- who is going to help you fill the hall. >> stephen lang, been there in times. he's going to be my interlocker fresh out of making avatar 2 and 3. >> what is your favorite stephen lang performance. putting you on the spot. >> i mean as many approximate as i have with the interpretation, it's script interpretation, i think "gods and generals" is my favorite. >> i'm surprised. >> why? >> what about "death of a salesman". >> i didn't see it. >> request dustin hoffman. >> oh, the tv show. i thought we were just doing film. "a few good men" he played the nicholson partnicholson. >> harold and i have had some e-mail correspondence about this evening, not that he needed the questions before hand but we have a framework. so we are back and forth. the last e-mail i received from harold, at the very end you wrote nothing taboo i don't think. >> right. >> so i checked with legal counsel here at gettysburg college and that gives me just enough to knock down the door and i can ask anything i want. >> i'll check with hunter college before it airs on c-span. >> let's go to queens, queens to new york, where you're from, and tell us a little bit about your very important assignment that you received was it in 3rd grade? 4th grade? 5th grade. tell the audience >> i feel very honored and gr e grateful to you. honored to be here. was here when you introduced the seri series, i was in the audience when jim mcfearson was in the chair. i was very moving to be occupying that symbolic space, which gives me a little time to think about my childhood in queens. so i went to sort of a progressive elementary school in that it was occupying a michael school as we would call it, a rather sophisticated library for a kids' school. and our teacher came in one day with a hat full of folded up pieces of paper, each of which contained the name of a famous person, all male as i figured out when everyone stood online. i stood online to pick the name that changed my life. our assignment was choose a name, go up to the middle school library, get a book from i think 973.1 we had open stacks that were biography. nobody will know what that means is in three weeks or years. so i picked lincoln. my best friend, who was my best friend because his father owned a delicatessen, a good friend to have, picked going kis chan and he became a rock and roll promoter. so these accidents can have insidious or enormously positively consequential impact. so i went up to the library and i picked richard nelson currents the lincoln nobody knows as my book. i read it. i don't remember what i wroed. it was two sides of a piece of loose leaf paper. but at that moment the thing that converged was it was the moment of the civil war centennial. and kids, particularly boys, particularly white male people, kids were enthralled by this battle, battle recreations. i still remember -- speaking about the unresolved issues that we've heard about at our conference, i remember when president kennedy did something that most people have forgotten. he learned, in the days that he took over the civil war sin tenl o sin tenl observation that the initial event in charleston was going to be coordinated at a segregated hotel. and one member of the commission was african-american. she was told you won't be staying here. we'll find you a hotel somewhere else in washington. and kennedy put a stop to it. made everybody go to a naval base nearby. that was the start and then i got out of queens. >> you left queens -- where did you do your intern. >> queens. queens college. but i spent a lot of time in the city. >> so at queens did you continue history major, i assume? >> i was not a history major. aim not going to say who the professor was but there was a mayor reconstruction scholar at queens college, part of the city of university at new york, and i went to him -- there are moments that are positive and moments that are negative and can be fatal in terms of sustaining or building interest or destroying it. and i had a long talk with him about my interest and he was very negative. and so i simply turned my attention to the great issue of emancipation and whether it was dictated by foreign policy more than a sense of racial injustice or military strategy and i did that as my senior essay for my english class. and i aced it. but i stayed away from the history department, american history. >> did you ever see him again when you were a professional. >> no. >> too bad. >> he faded into deserved obscur obscuredty. no. he did fine. he just wasn't a mentor. didn't want to be a mentor. >> okay. you graduate and it's into the world of politics? >> fist newspapers. i did not want to go to graduate school and i didn't. i got a fabulous offer to be a cub reporter on a weekly newspaper in manhattan called "the manhattan tribune" published by an african-american and a white publisher. the head of the congress of racial equality. and a peace corps veteran. and the idea was to cover the west side of manhattan. that's the center of liberal ferment in new york state and the country, really. and harlem. and we covered both areas. and our slogan was black and white and read all over. member the old joke about what's black and white and read all over? newspapers? that was our slogan. it with us sort of a false narrative as we've been hearing because it wasn't read by anybody in particular. but it was a great gig. it failed miserably. i got my girlfriend, fiancee, future wife to work with me on it and we were overwhelmed. he met all of these famous editors. they quit, another one was fired and we looked around and we were the only two working on the paper. so we put it out for an extra to years, just the two of us. and i got up to $115 a week and the publisher said -- he actually had been a reporter on a newspaper in new york city where his wife was the inquiring photographer. does anybody remember inquiring photographers? she was the inquirer photographer and the daughter of the owner of the newspaper which made her an interesting person. >> so the two left standing. >> we were the last and we're still standing. >> i wanted to talk about your partner in crime, of sorts, edi edith, right? she's a very big part of your work. and in fact the acknowledgments of lincoln, it's a lovely -- i love the tribute. you two are side by side in the library of congress. >> that's a new phenomenon. since edith retired, at the age of 41, i'm making that up. that's the age we give. she's able to spend a lot of time on the road with me doing research and it was been none. easy. easier. >> people are interested in the process of researching and going into the archives. how does it work? you guys sit down there? >> we make a plan of what year or month we're going to cover. we've spent a lot of time in the library of congress. until recently -- i haven't asked in the last year. i'm one of the few people that get access to the original lincoln papers. they don't like to let people look at the lincoln papers because they're on microfilm. they're online. guess what. i hate to break this to people who are totally dependent onion line resources. they're not all. it's not all there. the endorsements, the things that lincoln clipped out, the things that people sent him are not included in the transcribed or photographed versions. so we've found a lot of great things. the last year and a half, interrupted a few times, has been in quest of dan yule chester french, which was my current project. the sculpture of the lincoln memorial, trying to breathe some life into this professional buttoned up artist. you'll see the result in about a year and a few months, i hope. >> so let's turn to some of your early scholarship. your portal into the field, looking at prints, paintings, sculpture. and jill, did you mind? there she is. there we go. and as that's coming on the screen, which i hope it will soon, i should just mention that some of the early work you did you did it with some coauthored. we have one of them here. >> right. >> gabor and harold did two books "the confederate images" as well as "the lincoln image". >> two and a half. we did a book called "changing the lincoln image" since we're going to be revised we might as well revise the book ours. and then we did "the con confederate image" and we spent a lot of time in gettysburg with gabor and liz. liz is also here. and both of them were introduced to the public with exhibitions of graphic arts here at gettysburg college. so there was a show of lincoln prints that gabor organized and a confederate image in a terrible heat wave where the air conditioning went out in the art museum. and our third collaborator was not too happy to see, i guess, the ripple effect of the humidity of the pictures that he loaned to the exhibition nap's one of my memories. we had a great collaboration. can i tell you one quick story before we do serious stuff? >> no, please. >> this was the day before e-mails. really the days before computers. our third author mark neely worked for the lincoln museum and he had an assistant who had a computer. we actually had a computer but gabor and i didn't have computers. we had typewriters. and i lived in new york. mark lived in fort wayne, indiana and gabor in gettysburg. we had few personal meetings. we spent most of our time editing or work on the phone. and they were marathon sessions. in one of the most famous sessions we started on sunday morning going on two chapters. 9:00, 10:00, 11:00, noon, we worked through lunch and i'm arguing with mark and mark is arguing with me. and suddenly we hear a little boy's voice saying hello? who is on this phone? gabor had put the phone down four hours before and his son, who is now a tony winning set designer, had wanted to make a phone call and he found these two clowns on the phone arguing. and then gabor got on the phone pretending that nothing had happened. that was one of our adventures. >> well, you know, what the three of you did was something people weren't thinking about in terms of legitimate evidence. always with literary documents. you turn to visual evidence or culture. and again i think we're all interested in how you interrogate that kind of evidence. and so we have a very famous painting that is in the confederate image book. >> it was oun of ur choices. >> by william washington, a painting that -- >> william deheartburn. i love his middle name. >> very nice. this painting was in the confederate capital in 1864. there were long lines -- >> people gave of their poverty genero generously. i think that's the line. >> it was. >> allegedly. >> if you throw confederate currency in 1864, that's not much of a donation. you can maybe buy a cube of sugar. >> the thing that set us off on the commercial nature of some of these tributes -- i mean, this is an expression of, you know, the manifestation of lost cause theology almost. the matron of the plantation, ms. willa by newton. i worked with a man by the name of willaby newton. when this book came out he said, thank you for honoring my grandmoth grandmother. i had no idea. any way, she's assuring people that the old order will be sustained even in turmoil. that she will maintain the homestead, the plantation with the help of grateful and eternally loyal slaves. and that also the other reassuring message was that a gallant southern confederate military officer killed far from home would receive a loving burial and that's the idea that the colonel is being buried here. so it was an act of passion by the artist. but why gabor, mark and i wondered was the print version of it which many more people saw than ever saw the painting which is in the museum of the confederacy under john kos ki's tutelage or guardianship. why was it published in new york. and therein offered a not pleasant but clue about the nature of civil war memory. that in many ways it was commercialized. that white publishers could not wait for this war to be over so they could reenter a market that had been denied to them. and they were without fear offing witho of being accused of disloyalty, willing to mass produce images like that. it became a household item in southern homes for generations in a print made in new york city. we can talking about the loyalty of new york city but that's another issue. >> what i'm interested in -- and in your baook with gabor and mak neely, you do a good job of revealing what that painting meant to individuals at the time. but what i'm curious about and what the three of you somewhat avoided, how did these paintings, these illustrations, they're agents unto themselves. meaning they shape and direct people's behavior. it's not a reflection of but it has -- >> we argued in all of our books that they shape reputations more than reflect them. >> so tell us how something like this -- and we're going to united states as a transition to talk about some other confederate monuments and their place within the confederate landscape today. this painting, what is the message that is bringing white southerners together to act politically for the confederate cause. how do you look at something like that and make that translation to on the ground political action? >> i think what's unique about this image -- and one of the reasons it endured for as long as it did -- and we found evidence in the research that we did in richmond that reproductions of this image decorated the homes of scv people, udc people, descendants through the '70s and '08s, 1970s and 80s when we were investigating it. it's a bit of an anomaly for that reason. a nonaggressive image. it's not an image of robert e. lee at war. it's not an upsetting image of robert e. lee surrendering. it's not jefferson davis in hoop skirts to be shure. it's a why matron successfully holding things together and acting as if thissian key invasion and incursion and threat to their quote way of life unquote is not as sanctified as what you see here. it may be out there, it may be raging beyond those hills but this woman is anyone to assume the realm of a clergy man. >> but the heavens are parted and of course it is cleblessingt just her but this sacred act of this man giving his life for the confederate cause. with cannot overlook the slaves on the margins here. the audience may have difficulty seeing them. >> on the margins and doing assumably grateful to be christianized. they're happily digging the grave of this officer who died in the effort to keep them subje subjugated. >> this idea, which again you've stressed have been overlooked, not taken seriously. you certainly have done that. let's take a look at this and your thoughts. this is the lee monument in new orleans. i'm sure all of you are familiar, the fact that this monument -- i don't know if they're doing be ra gar ads wel. i'm curious about your take. >> i don't think this is an easy one. >> it's not. >> this issue. and i've been trying to like think back to take a little more global view of this. so i live in a city in which a very famous statue of king george iii was taken down in november of one year and its bronze melted into ammunition to fight the british during the revolution. it wasn't a great statue from the engravings that we've seen. but i'm also a person who worked for 23 years for an art museum. and we lived through the destruction of the buddhas by the taliban and more recently the destruction of the monuments at mosul by isis. so art is not always supposed to please everyone. it's supposed to be disturbing. it's supposed to be provocative. it's supposed to signal and manifest public opinion at a moment when such things are sub so died and terribly expensive. i'm not sure the right thing to do is to remove them. on the other hand, the monument in new orleans that celebrated the destruction of an integrated government by violence seems so ill-conceived that it deserved to be taken down years before. and i make the point -- if it's really great art, whatever the subject, do we really want to render it to 0 blifian. i think we're going took looking at that in a few years in the fan district in richmond. you've got awfully good sculpture there and authur ash, remedial work of art is the least effective work of art in my opinion. where do you draw the line. it's tough. here's one that's a really unsettling one in a way. so in the 1870s, the african-american communities around the country contributed money to build a monument to lincoln as an emancipator. thomas ball did the sculpture. it's in a park in washington. i was unveiled by ulysses s. grant and dedicated by frederic doug louse in 1876, the 11th anniversary of lincoln's death and probably one of the greatest speeches ever given about abraham lincoln. the most brilliant summary of lincoln's vision and his limitations that anyone has ever rendered. but douglas also said build high his statues. this is a statue of lincoln lifting a half naked person of color with chains broken around him. and is it a rising slave or is it a kneeling slave and that's something that the african afternoon community grapples with. this is in the symbolic shadow of frederic douglas's home. there are many demands floating about to do something with that piece. when lincoln was inaugurated and talk about the sin of slavery was second inauguration, he looked at a statue of george washington in the plaza of the u.s. capital for both of his nauk rations. even that was taken away. people thought it lose crows was washington was bare chested. they called him georgie in the batti bath. you can still see it. these things do change. i don't like destruction particularly. i like contest. gary gallagher and joan wall took edith and me to see a monument in santa fe, a white victory over a native american tribe. and it sits in a plaza where american indian merchants come and sale their wares. and it has a phrase on it, this is the place where the noble white settlers defeated the savage indians. so the community's response was to take out the word sanvage. they just scratched it out. context means a lot. there's a way to contextualize works of art that people may find disturbing. >> this is really more than works of art. it's about people understanding the interkekd connectedness of past. that is the context in which the monument was created. why is it that when we remove that, how do we get people to understand the great arc of progress. how do they understand that from slavery through the war to segregation to civil rights, when we start removing these pieces. and again let me be clear, i can understand why somebody would be deeply offended by the monument of robert e. lee. as i have said before, i don't think that's reason enough to remove these from the commemorative landscape. in the end i worry that we'll reach a point where no one is going to know this was a war for union and a war that led to emancipation but against what. why not instead of remove that, put way sides, way sides that speak to the era of jim crowe, show, again, like i said before, the connections. it's called, you know, remixing the past. and i feel as historians, we're -- i'm not sure anyone would listen to us anyways, right? but we're -- these pieces are slipping away from us. and they're slipping away without a real serious conversation about what the long term impact it's going to have for how people his tore size the past. that's deeply troubling to me as a historian. just because someone is offended, i respect it, understand why they want that removed from their community. but there's a bigger issue here i think. >> that's why i thought context churlization might be an answer. that is a caption, a label, a plaque doesn't have the same emotional power as a monument on high. and pedestals say a lot about where you are raising a hero, quote unquote, to be. but i'm not just not an iconic class by nature. the metropolitan museum is filled with these gargoyles, spectacular collection of french gargoyles. and i once asked me director how we came upon -- we didn't say where did m.e.t. get these things. he chopped off the heads of notre dame and dumped them into the sand and they were recovered later and sold as junk to museums that wanted them. december kra toirry in a way. i take the art point, the historical point. i don't think we should erase the past. i think we should contextualize it. even lennon did not take down the statues of the czars in sfchlt petersburg, although he threatened to. >> shift gears roughly. >> good. this is a tough discussion. but we -- it would -- i think we're going to be engaged in this discussion for a long time. >> i hope so. >> we haven't even spoken about a more obvious choice for dehero rye zags. >> and again, a real contrast between forest and r.e. lee. let's talk about your work as a public intel leg churl. one of the things that stands out, your writing is accessible. you've always been a public speaker who is engaging but you also push people to think. one realm that you entered into as a public interleg churl is your role with the movie "lincoln." . tell us how you got involved in the process and i would like to know your final thoughts of the movie. >> it was a very happy accidents, my association with them, with the movie. doris kerns goodwin on whose book the movie was in part based organized a meeting of lincoln historians with steven spielberg and tony kushner, the play wright of "angels in america" who had been assigned the screenplay. we were to meet and have a script conference. i thought we were going to hollywood. it turned out we were going 20 blocks south of my office. it wasn't as exciting for me as it was more others to meet on central park south. any way, gabor was there. we had a wonderful meeting. and tony kushner was fascinating to watch because she takes out an ink well and uses an old fashioned fountain pin that sucks up ink from the ink well. he was spilling stuff all over the place. it was charming. spielberg was wearing his baseball hat. i was asked to be the script consultant. this was years later. they went through script after script and actor after actor, liam neeson and others. holly hunter was going to be -- i got to do a couple of stage readings with liam neeson and holly hunter as they were warming up to play lincoln and ma mary. i had a great time. they were not thrilled with the outcome. was asked to be the script consultant and asked to read the script. tony liked me. we don't live far from each other in town. we had meetings. and i got an early copy of the script. each page was stamped with my name on it so i couldn't xerox it. tight security, you know, no leaks. so i think -- then we had a series of meetings and we discussed issues and concerns that i had. you know, but anyone who has ever done this -- and you know, i've heard from other historians who have been historical consultants, it's not a really rewarding project unless you like to meet movie stars and pl wrights which i like to meet very much. but them recognizing your brilliant suggestions, that's the wrong business to be in. some obvious things like wilmington, delaware should be wilmington, north carolina. i'm not supposed to stay this out of school, not that i was paid for this honor, by the way -- in fact i'll tell you the other story. i was -- my contract quote unquote was that while i wouldn't be paid i would be brought to richmond, get a suite at the jefferson hotel and be onset for several days. keep that in mind. my big suggestion -- i'm saying this because tony has spoken publicly about this in a column in the "the new york times." i said tony, the one real problem with the script and unfortunately it's the climatic moment, i think you've confused congress with national political conventions. people don't sit in state delegations. are you sure, he said? i said well i worked for the first one called, a.b. actually the second. lincoln was a one-term freshman. he sat all the way by the back window. he didn't sit with the illinois deadation. you don't say how does connecticut vote. you don't say how does illinois vote. you do a roll call. he literally sunk out of my leather couch and on to the floor. that's how dramatically he took the news of this problem. so weeks go by. i got two pieces of information. one is that daniel day lewis does not want me on the set or anyone on the set. he didn't like visitors. he's the star. he's the boss. i mean he's a wonderful guy. i met him later and he just doesn't like people on the set. even spielberg couldn't wear his baseball hat and he had to wear a tie because daniel likes to be in the moment. and the moment happened to be 1865, not 2013. then the second thing is i got a call from tony kushner one day in whispered tones, stephen doesn't like your idea. i said what idea? he said the idea you had about the voting tan congress. i said it wasn't my idea, it was the way it actually happened. i didn't think of it. the founding fathers thought of this idea. well he doesn't like it. it's not dramatic. i said, you're going to live and die by the consequences. i said, threateningly. and it happened this -- he had his connecticut vote 2-1. this congressman from connecticut who was running for reelection made a big deal of it, went on the "today" show demanded that every print be confiscated, no connecticut high school accept the free dvds that spielberg offered every school in america because of this against the state of connecticut. and to this day tony kushner thinks he lost the oscar for best screenplay because maureen dowd and the times made such a big to do about the aerror that was avoidable. when we won the award, his first time was thanks for not giving this to "argo" which won the oscar. do you remember the movie? there was no chase down the runway in the real story. nobody cares. they care about those lincoln details. >> so i think -- >> but i loved the movie. i didn't answer the original question. i thought daniel day lewis was astonishing. brilliant. >> my fear is now when people think of lincoln, they're going to think of daniel day-lewis. it's like potton, you don't think of patton, you think george c. scott. >> lincoln would probably be happy. daniel day lewis is a great looking guy. an uptake in the image process. >> i don't know. >> we were going to talk about that image, lincoln as a towering presence. >> we'll get to that in a minute here. we're fine on time. one of the things i thought was brilliant about the movie is it showed lincoln and how he was at his best in that bare knuckle political fight. typical persons they don't like to see him in that light. >> don't like to see the making of the sausage. classic. >> right. >> just want to see the results. >> i thought this book, "lincoln and the power to have press." we see a man and lincoln who uses the press in some ways that i would like for you to talk to the audience about, in light of the fact that you are an avowed lincoln man and this is an area in which lincoln doesn't look so good some of the time. right? >> well, he looks more complicated than we have thought. i mean the only book that had been written about this was a 1951 book called lincoln and the press. i would have loved to have used that title but i thought it was a bit much. and we have heard of the press suppression cases during the civil war that are sort of the signature cases, the big ones. but i found about 300 cases -- and i didn't really do a complete inventory or audit as i could have if i spent another five years doing that. 300 cases that i found of the military, the state department, the post office department or is interior department closing down newspapers, confiscating printing presses, arresting newspaper editors, reporters, publishers, detaining them without charge, imprisoning them without trial, not just the chicago times, not just the new york world, baltimore, a lot of border state activity. francis scott keys grandson in baltimore. i see johns mars sitting here, ulysses s. grant proudly closed down a newspaper writing, i'm bringing back the printing press. he was very kpieexcited about i >> how is it defensible? >> lincoln's defense was elemental. he believed that the constitution gave him the ability to suspend the hebeas corpus and he said i now declare this to be called the war power. guess who has got it. i do and i can close down newspapers. and as he put it in one of these great, you know, similar lies, you would never -- you would never kill a patient -- this was actually sort of a very poignant thing to do in civil war when amputations were so rampant. you would never kill a patient to save a leg. but you would take a leg to save the patient. he was taking the leg of freedom of expression and redefining the thin line between dissent and treason in order to save the body politic. that was his argument. he was willing to live and die by it. people always turned to andrew jackson when they're doing these precarious thing. he turned to andrew jackson as an example. he closed down newspapers in new orleans but then he reopened them. i intend to stop using this excessive authority when the normal state of relationship between the southern states and the federal government is restored. so i don't see any great -- i'm still a lincoln man. i think he was awfully tough. in other ways of press manipulation, it is eerie to see how he, for example, was a pretty good purveyor of fake news when he wanted to be. he had that emancipation proclamation written, waiting a military victory for its announcement. a vow, a personal vow made with god to issue the proclamation as soon as he was free to do so by union battlefield success so it wouldn't look like the last shriek on the retreat. but he repeatedly told people that wasn't the case. he told horace greeley in a letter, although he hinted at what i was going to do, if i could free some and leave others alone i would do that to save the union. >> the line that never gets quoted to greeley, he says, when shown to be errs i shall adopt new views so fast that they appear to be new views. there's a pragmatism there. in today's political world see see that as -- but that's pure p precarism. >> probably i think his worst moment as president is when he lectures theati depositation of free african-americans and he says go back, because you're the cause of the world. and douglas says slaves are not the cause of the war, slavery is the cause of the world. he does it to set up a strawman. he's so worried about acceptance of the proclamation. but the one that no one ever talks about is the delegation of religious leaders from chicago that come and say, mr. president, we're begging you to do something to free the slaves when you the power and the moment. and this is even closer to lee's invasion of maryland. and lincoln says, what good would a proclamation from me do. it would be like the pope's bull against the comment. i think some of you may have heard that line. so this pope, i think pope vi -- i actually wanted to find out what he meant by that. he issued a paper order that the comme co comet was not to appear. of course they all ducked. the ministers go back to chicago and write an article about lincoln's leg tour to them. he has no power, no authority. not a leader of public opinion. guess what date the article appears? september 23rd, which is the same date that the proclamation is printed in the papers. he's made total fools of them. well they should have rushed to -- they should have gotten their news out. fake news has to be published right away or it's not good. he's a manipulator. brilliant at it. >> let's talk about political satire. >> this is tough stuff. >> it is tough. has there ever been a president who has been treated more unfairly by the press than abraham lincoln? [ laughter ] >> you know, lincoln could take it, though, right? he could take it. >> of course. >> he never tweeted about anything. right? he manned up. this was the only issue that ever got him riled up. >> could you describe this for everyone? >> yes. and by the way, all political cartoons that are separate sheet meant for display, not caricatures in the press. but these things meant for display are all commercial enterprises. so big firms like curious and ives would issue pro-lincoln cartoons and anti-lincoln cartoons. this is an exception. this new york world, the same democratic newspaper that lincoln had shut down earlier in the 1864, the same newspaper whose editor he had almost sent to ft. lafayette but general dicks thought it was so crazy he didn't let him go. kept him in his office. the same newspaper ordered this print made, along with other prints. and of course this is a -- as linco lincoln counseling quote, soliciting the soldiers? it's about the rumor, the charge that lincoln had asked ward hill lammen to sing comic songs buy touring the battle of ante tem. >> and with mcclelland. >> offering aid to colors. shuttering at this hideous request. so lincoln -- this was a big thing in the campaign. it was repeated by democratic newspapers. he's boarish, vulgar and tasteless. insulted the troops. lincoln wrote a letter to the editor protesting this image and this story saying i never visited -- first of all, i never asked for a comic song to be sung anywhere near there and second i never walked on a foot of that battlefield on which graves hadn't already been rained on more than once. something like that. and then she said to lammen, you sign this letter, and he signed it and lincoln didn't send it. it's one of the famous expressions of anger that he wrote and didn't send. >> we're going to skip over the next image. that's the one -- >> that's the one i was talking about. that's the curious and ives showing mcclen land as anvil land conspiring with davis and lincoln killing davis. that's not lincoln and mcclelland, it could be. >> there's a podcast called "back story." i got this idea from back story. it's about the physicality of being the president. and that presence that some presidents exude -- >> and some don't. >> and others do not. but of course obviously exert power. we have lbj. >> with abe fortis but the way who he tlalater put on that, wh treatment, right? >> yeah. lbj would spit on people while lowereding over them. and we have president trump pushing to the front. when we get mr. g's ice cream, i will push my way to get to the front. >> let me warn you the president of mont enegro is warned. >> this sets you up -- >> this is such a -- you know, alex ander gardner arrives on the scene at probably more like harper's ferry than the antedum. lincoln has this wonderful battlefield conference with mcclellan who sets up the first set. photographs in his tent with an american flag draped over the table. mccmcclellan, even though he ha been out in the sun, september sunshine, he has the white brow been out in the sun, september sunshine, he has the white brow been out in the sun, september sunshine, he has the white brow been out in the sun, september sunshine, he has the white brow. and they are looking face-to-face. mcclellan should have said, i'm done with the press, clear the room. but gardner convinced everyone to take this picture as well. as you see, lincoln is monumental. he makes mac look like a little napoleon. that's the tent where they had their initial meeting. you see the house in the background? not really noticed in most pictures. they could have easily had their conference indoors but it wasn't as photogenic. here is lincoln, by the way, slouching. you can see him bending at the knee. he does not stand very straight. but he is a totem and mcclellan is forced to lift his eyes upward at his leader, like it or not. as this picture was influential in a way. >> so we have time quickly for one more? >> again, the body of lincoln, as fox argued in his book a few years ago, this is lincoln putting himself in danger. in the surrendered city of richmond on april 4, 1865. being greeted by people, african-american people whose freedom was actually commenced when the union army entered the city. because this is before the 1th amendment becomes official but by terms of the emancipation when the troops occupied confederate territory, they are liberated. here is his son's birthday as it happened. this is, you know, there is no emancipation moment in lincolnography. we wrote about this. with astonishment. because the thomas ball statue, which was not dedicated until the centennial year of the country, 1876, is an emancipation moment. lincoln is not writing a document as he is in the famous painting by francis carpenter. he is lifting the representative enslaved person from his knees. liberating thereby an entire race symbolically. obviously no such moment happened. it was tough to enforce the emancipation, as we know. how it happened, we're still not sure. i think going back, and i said so in my book, that it was a journalist on the scene and we went up to people of color and said, do you know who that is? how would they know? they are denied the opportunity to read, read newspapers, see pictures. the people for whom they worked didn't have pictures of lincoln in their homes. they knew about lincoln, though. that's your monthses. that's mr. lincoln. and the word spread and lincoln was surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of people. by the time he finished at wetzel's headquarters, there were thousands of people. i would like to think that he realized this may have been the most important day of his life. it is the day he understood the destruction of the war. enof the war. and the changed relationship that african-americans would emerge from the war with. >> a true revolution. >> 1859, raid of federal troops, suppressing that rebellion on the side of slave holders and this, no one could have ever possibly conceived that. harold, thank you so much. you have been a very good friend to me oest years. and let me say it edith, you've been wonderful to me and my wife when we first came here at cwi. and we are so thankful. not just for your friendship, but your fantastic scholar. you've always been so successful and engaging to people and we are so thankful for what you've done for cwi and history. thank you. [ cheers and applause ] >> so i'm sorry. this is my fault. we are going longer than what i imagined. but if you have questions for harold and have you books for harold to sign, i'm sure he can do both at the same time. and harold will be just off to the left. for the rest of you, you will have to go out the doors right there. cheryl, which doors? go out the main entrance and turn left. again, my apologies for going a little long this evening. harold, you'll be around a little bit tomorrow? >> yes. >> harold will be around a little bit tomorrow as well if you have questions. thank you so much. see you over at the ice cream social. our focus on abraham lincoln on the civil war institute conference begins in a moment. next time on history tv on prime time, we'll be back at gettysburg college. it starts at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span 3. over on c-span, an in-depth look at the opioid addiction. we will hear from medical professionals who treat addiction, law makers from hard-hit areas, including kentucky secretary of justice and public safety, john tilly. >> we lost 1404 kentuckyians as congressman said. ent in fentanyl is the drive rs force, we had 13,000 er vice knits state of 4.5 million people. we lose in this country as you've heard the numbers, near lay commercial airplane a day. if this were a communicable disease we would be wearing hazmat suites to combat it. but overdoses only tell half the story. this devastates communities. our state police tell us we have seen a 6,000 increase in fentanyl in our labs. 6,000 percent increase. i think all of us know the devastation it's had on our criminal justice community. jails are at capacity. no more room at the end. public health crisis is on full display in kentucky. we have hepatitis of seven times the national average. across the river in indiana, an outbreak of hiv that rivalled that of sub saharan africa. we were one of the first states to pass the, maybe only, comprehensive surrender exchange program. we have 30 programs passed by local option in our state. we know that increases treatment capacity by five times. when someone walks through the doorstep of the programs it battles back these diseases like help c and hic. sadly kentucky, as cdc reports, has 54 of 220 counties, most susceptible to rapid outbreak of hiv. what has our response been in kentucky to battle this? again taking a bold state is passing comprehensive legislation. prescription pills and pills mills, secretary state of the country that battles back synthetics. dealing with heroin and fentanyl. being the first state in the country to mandate usage of what we call casper, our prescription drug monitoring program. now the first state in the country now to require physicians when prescribing to limit acute pain and limit prescriptions to three days. some have done seven. some have done ten. we limited three days. i can promise you our governor spent some capital on that. >> we want to hear from you about the opioid epidemic. we will open up our phone lines on thursday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. now back to gettysburg college's civil war institute for a