leadership, ideas but principally people who inspired and motivated him. it's a pleasure to welcome as our panel from my left to right, the author of the political life of abraham lincoln, volume i, a self-made man, sidney blumenthal. and richard brook hihiser, and finally, the author not only of the recently published american ulysses, the life of ulysses s. grant but the author of a. lincoln and an expert in lincoln's writings, ronald a. white. welcome to you all. so our goal today is to hear from you and see if we can evoke some differences of opinion. we will certainly welcome audience participation and questions from our usual microphone. in fact, i will give you a signal in about 20 minutes or so to encourage you to line up and engage with us. the first person i want to talk to in relation to lincoln's inspiration are the three sets of parents, really, not one person but three, the three sets of parents in his life. you have all written about them. by the three, i mean the woman he referred to as his angel mother, nancy lincoln, the woman who regarded him as a son, his stepmother, sarah bush johnston lincoln and his father, whose relationship with abraham remained something of a mystery or controversy even today. so of the three, who was influential and who is a negative influence? why don't we start with sidney? >> well, the positive and the negative were about one experience and that was an experience of being in the lincoln family growing up. his stepmother protected him crucially from his father, which enabled his early education, and that was the initial positive spark for lincoln. lincoln was a bright, inquisitive, naturally intelligent child but he was suppressed by his father. his father himself was an oppressed man. and that had an enormous influence all the way through lincoln's life and deeply on his articulate thinking on slavery. lincoln's father, thomas lincoln, had been a poor dirt farmer in kentucky. he had been cut out of the family inheritance. his stepbrother had taken it all and wound up being a kind of quasi-aristocrat. thomas had terrible luck. he was reduced to competing for wages with slaves. his dirt farm was expropriated from him, probably through chicanery from a philadelphia banker who owned the land and manipulated it. and he fled kentucky, he fled a slave economy in which he was on the lower rung and fled into the free territory of indiana. from then on, he rented out, abraham as a wage -- as an indentured servant until the age of 21, which was legal. he took all of his wages and sent him out as a laborer of all kinds. lincoln was, the opening line of my book is that he was remarkably reticent about his life and understandably so. lincoln, when he emerged with his identity, his new identity as a republican in 1856, is on the stump and makes a kind of joke but it's the kind of joke that is a freudian kind of joke. there was no freud then but it's still freudian. he says i used to be a slave. what he's talking about, he says now they let me practice the law, now i'm a lawyer. what he's talking about is growing up and his father. when lincoln makes what's called the peoria speech against kansas-nebraska act, his first great speech, he says slave states are states for poor white people to remove from. free states are states for poor white people to go to. that's his idea as well at the root of the struggle between slavery and freedom. it's not simply about the slave. it's also about the free white laborer. >> rick, would you -- i know you have written that perhaps we ignore these subsistence but positive provisions that thomas made for his struggling family that at least they survived. how would you respond on thomas and the women, let's not forget the women. >> well, i think sidney puts this all very well, and certainly, thomas himself moved from the slave state to the free state so he's both giving his son the short end of the stick but also showing him the way out that he himself took. but when i wrote "founder's son" i think the book that made the greatest impression on me was herndon's "informants" which is the publication of all the notes he took after lincoln died and he was preparing his biography and he realized there's a lot of stuff that i'm not aware of, lincoln never told me this, and he did what we would now call an oral history. the most moving single piece in that book is his interview with sarah bush johnston lincoln, the stepmother. she survived her husband, she survived her murdered son, she's an old lady and herndon describes when i first went to interview her i thought i was too late, she's lost it, i'm not going to get anything out of this. but he sits down and has dinner with her and he must have been a great interviewer. he just gets her talking, talks about the old days. then she opens up and describes how lincoln learned when he was a boy and how persistent he was and how careful he was and how she observed this. then she has this amazing sense where she says almost shyly, she says his mind and my mind such as it was were alike. i just read that and i thought lady, your mind was fine. >> yeah. you did us all a great service. >> moved in the same channels, right? even though she complained that he didn't like her food. as some mothers will. >> you can't have everything. >> you can't have everything. >> ron, please. >> well, picture this. we now have president-elect lincoln, he's in springfield. everyone is coming to see him. everyone wants his ear. many appointments are being made. he slips away from springfield to go visit his stepmother. this says volumes about who she is in his life. this is the trip he wants to make. we don't know exactly what transpired in terms of the conversation but what we have already heard from our two previous persons is how important she is in his life. when the mother died, the family fell into disorder. a comment mentioned about men living by themselves. so he goes back and brings sarah bush johnston into the family. she brings order, but she brings female nurturing to him. so i think it's hard to overestimate how important she is in nurturing this boy and he wants to say that back to her. this is the visit he wants. he slips out of town. he doesn't want anybody following him. nobody following him on this visit. this is a very deep, personal, intimate visit that he must make to his stepmother. make to his stepmother, and yet, i was always struck that it is a hard visit in february and not easy to move around once you get off of the train in charleston or whatever town is nearest the farm. i was struck by a letter that lincoln gets from dennis in the white house there. is not much evidence of what lincoln did to support his family, but there is this letter in which dennis says that the $50 that you sent has been appropriated by one of sarah's children, and she is not going to get any benefit of it. and it must have broken his heart, because he is not there to control the meager support. it is a fascinating relationship and quickly, what did you believe from the positive history as well, and why lincoln never introduced his wife and step children to this beacon of a step mo the. and mary writes to her after the assassination, and says you may not know this, but we have a son named after your husband. >> different classes maybe. >> and she writes that mary lincoln did notp approve of lincoln's family, and regarded them as lower class, but that is herndon who hated mary, and she would not have -- and just as he says that she would not allow l lincoln's family in the house, she would notal allow herndon in her house. >> right. >> and are regarded him as a problem. >> well, herndon was jealous, and you know, who could be closer to my hero than me? >> he was exactly the closest he thought. but lincoln had a very strained relations all of the way through with his father. >> didn't go to his death bed. >> he was summoned and he had gone earlier when his father was ill and recovered and then when his stepbrother summonned him again and refused to go and wrote a letter to his father saying, you know, that god will take care of thing, and he refused to see his father when he was dying. >> god will take care of thing, and i won't. >> and he says something like, if we meet now, it is more painful than helpful and it is a brutal weapon. >> i think that still felt the wounds of that relationship and it goes back to the stepmother who made possible lincoln's education, because the father regarded education as a waste of time. as useless dream iing. you know, in a positive sense, the father may have thought that my son should have been a cabinet maker or the carpenter like i am, and he should have a trade, and he regarded reading books as a complete waste of time in putting him on the wrong road, a road away from making a living, and he used to punish him for reading, and this is pa partly why lincoln escape and he described the father as a poor wandering boy, but it is lincoln who was the poor wandering boy. and who discovered other influences in indiana as a boy. lawyers who he would discover and start and defriend them in discover i discovering their libraries and read through them. >> let's talk psychobabble for a moment. [ laughter ] >> when we talk about the founders as we must, inevitably we refer back to the lisime address, the first public speech in which he talks about the fathers, and there is much speculation that washington is spotless, et cetera, and is that the moment when he discards his father as the psychobabblists have said and adopted the founding fathers at that moment as his true inspiration? rick, start with you, because you have talked a great deal about this in the your book. >> well, the lysem speech, i moon, there are flashes of the great lincoln, and he say s ts silent artillery of time, and this is from the top drawer, but the whole speech is not simply at that level. there is interesting thing, and a lot of the sort of the 19th century padding, i think. there, lincoln's problem is that the founders are dead. they are dead and gone and now what do we do in the absence, and how do we make up for the fact that they are no longer here. the lysem speech is 1838. madison die d in '36, the last sign e of the constitution, and the last one, besides aaron burr if you count him. and so they are all gone, and so in a way, lip conn would find a way to use them and make them living again in the lysem speech, they are gone and he is sort of mourning their absence, and he says in their place, let us set up reason as our guide. what is funny about this, if reason is the guide, why are you talking about the silent ar t artillery of time. that is not like euclid, but like a poet, so you are undercutting your own appeal with your own language, but he is a young man and still figuring it out. >> well, i think that the speech is kind of the rite of passage, also. it is the first public address and the toastmasters club springfield learning how the speak, and i think of the phrase 'tis only ours to transmit. as you suggested, yes, there is a sadness. and he is talking about the founder founders, but he is also beginning to ask himself, what is my identity? what is our identity? and a great sadness, there is not a great role to play, and he has not yet discovered what the role is, and this is a very real part of this speech. although the death of elijah lovejoy is back there in the n consciousness, the presbyterian editor of the newspaper in alton who had been killed in the streets, and he is worried about what he calls mobocracy in the speech, so there is a context of great crisis around him, and his speech is really an answer to the crisis, and lincoln is remarkable in always being very, very conscious of the context in which he delivers the speech. it is never just an abstract speech, and never a speech reaching backwards, but always a speech in the present, and the present the death of elijah love joy, and he is trying to answer the question, what do we do in the midst of the mobocracy, and he saying, i am terribly worried about the state of the nation at this moment. >> on the psychobabble front, the literary critic edwin wilson suggested that in the speech when lincoln talks about a da danger to democracy, coming from an individual who believes that he is a towering genius, and above all others, and will trample down the laws in order to gain the ultimate power, and do it on the basis of what lin h conn uses the word celebrity that somehow according to wilson, lincoln is projecting himself into the future and worried about himself and imagining himself being that individual. but in fact, lincoln is talking about his eternal rival steven a. douglas. >> and also, napoleon, don't you think? napoleon has not died that long ago. >> exactly right. >> and in either case, towering jeepous is a joke. >> it is -- rick is bad, the image of napoleon as a dictator who tramples democracy, and ruins the initial revolution, and lincoln had been writing anonymous editorial, and denounced unkcan der the pseudonyms, and denouncing douglas as those sorts of actions. douglas was enormously dynamic, capable, skillful and demagogic person who was already rising above lincoln and kept rising above him for decades. so lincoln is looking at douglas here. and ron pointed out the lovejoy connection, and this is crucial to the speech, because the background is that elijah lovejoy is an abolitionist editor who has been running the newspaper in alton, illinois, and who has this printing presses are being destroyed by mobs and thrown in the mississippi river, and in defense of the printing press in the warehouse, he is attacked by a mob, and he he brings his own people to protect him, and he refuses to give in, and they have a battle in which he is murdered, and there a trial, and the abolitionists are put on trial, and not the mob. this is completely taking over illinois politic, and lincoln does not use lovejoy's name, but it is a editor who is murder and in the context of many other incidents of trampling on the rule of lawp. so lovejoy is very important, and he becomes even more important to lincoln through lovejoy's brother, owen lovejoy who swears on his brother's coffin who will avenge himself by dedicating himself to abolition of slavery, and becomes the leader of the republican party, and later a great ally of lip conn and vouching for him by to a abolitionists of lincoln's true principles. >> one cannot say too much, and maybe one can, and so we shouldn't about lincoln's idealization, and the idolization of george washington. the mightiest on earth is the civil liberty and the moral reformation and in february of 1861, he leaves springfield for washington and delivers and later refines what i think is the first of his great elegyic speeches which is of course the farewell addresses, and the many layers and the one that i am astonished and continue to be astonished by is that no one seemed to be offended by it was lincoln saying that i have a task before me greater than that which faced washington. that seems to me to be a breathtaking break for his reverence for the founders, and do you agree or am i alone in this conclusion? ron do, you want to start? >> well with, we have to look at the speech, and what people understand is that his task was greater than washington, and in no way is he suggesting that he is greater than washington, but the fact that he references washington is the whole larger p perspective of what the nation is involved in, and so, yes, this is a remarkable speech, and we can argue whether it is spontaneous or not, and i think it is spontaneous, and he write it down on the train, and he hands it to nicklay on the train. and so even though we have what his ttorians would later call a second american revolution, and he has been given the task to step forward to lead that effort. >> but it is clear that is going to be a civil war which in his day, the revolution was not remembered as being. of course, it was. especially in the south, and also in upstate new york, and there was a lot of civil strife during the revolution, but it had been forgotten and smoothed away, and people remembered us against the brits, and so the enemy was foreign, and the enemy was the brits and the others who came over to fight us, and it was not the atlantic, but it was mississippi and alabama and so it was a few train rides or steamboat rides away. so this is a different thing, and this is arguably a worse thing. the enemies are not foreigners, but americans. they are all americans, and that is a terrible thing to k contemplate. >> did you want to comment? >> well, i think that i agree with ron and rick. it is a daunting task that he faces. a civil war war is more terrible, and he is speaking of washington becoming president. he is not speaking offing washington leading the armies against the british. and making the revolution, and i don't think that he is talking about washington at the constitutional convention. i think that he is talking about washington coming to be president, and that is a different thing. and washington was universally acclaimed and he faced no opponent. he had no real election. and lincoln faces something quite different. he is a minority president. he has a divided country. he is a ak u kuzed of being the source of the division, and he has to come into the country before the civil war and manage the beginning of what will be this great crisis. >> i will offer that i still think that it is audacious to say with the task before me, and yes, you can parse it and say it is the tax, but he is mentioning the challenge in the same sentence as the most beloved and revered spotless person in american history, but this is interesting interpretation. and also that washington did face a rebellion, and there was a whis can ki rebellion, and so the only rebellion that we had had was that, and of course, that is six counties in pennsylvania, and now we are talking about six states when lincoln sets out, and seven when he gets there. >> and when he takes the train which lincoln is about to do. >> and no more. and lincoln is going to be using the very same language that washington uses in the proclamation in the whiskey rebellion, because it comes from the militia act of 1972 or the circumstances under which a president could call up a militia in which the laws cannot be enforced in the reg ular way. so that is the only precedent, but what a small precedent it must have seemed. >> i was astonish and i will try to drag myself and ourselves away from the washington story as fascinating as it is. but so in 18661 with that side of virginia fairly secure marilyn conn engineers an excursion to mount vernon nfor the lincolns, and they go down in a steamboat and they get out at mount vernon, and mary lincoln is absolutely thrilled. she goes to visit the dilapidated and iconic mount vernon, and she visits the grave of george and martha washington, and she buys the photographs of mount vernon and the tomb which is like buying postcards today, but we don't do those today the either. but 20 years ago, she is all in. and lincoln does not leave the boat which i find fascinating, and it is as if his reverence for people does not extent to places, and i find it again and again with lincoln, and i have known, and i have been knowing political people who don't have that kind of reverence for place as much for theory as example p ple. just a story, and i knew that if i told that story, i would immediately kill the discussion of washington [ laughter ] which i apparently have done. did you all know about that story? i mean, it reminds me of in the education of henry adams how he describes being taken to mount vernon when he was 12 years by his fa the, and the roads were bad, and they were bad virginia roads, and in my mind, i link it with slavery, but in the end, there was mount vernon and george washington, and then he conclu concludes, there is no way to get to him, which is a very painful, painful remark. maybe lincoln felt something similar. >> maybe. >> he also resisted the ip i havetation to go to barnham's museum, and maybe he did not like visiting places. or extraordinary sites. >> right. >> and so, let's tourn the generation that -- let's turn to the generation that preceded lincoln more immediately and look there for some of the inspirati inspiration, and of course, lincoln himself proposed henry clay as his bole ideal or bo idi idi ideal as i have heard it say. and now, for expedient purposes in 1848 in order to secure a whig victory, and what was it about clay? i mean, he references the compromiser at the expense of webster who is a greater orator and who is reply on the senate floor that he reads over and over again or in preparation for other works. so let's talk about clay, and why clay the bo ideal? >> clay is the founder of lincoln's party in a way that he is a kind of a george washington of the whigs. but he is more than that. he is extraordinary political figure who create ss a new kindf politics that lincoln gross up in. and in the crackup of the federalists and after the long reign of the democrats, clay is central to democratizing what was left of many of the federalists, but also drawing in new elements. and he has a, a more modern hamiltonian vision of the e k economy, and the american system building up and using the federal government to build up infrastructure and canals, and roads. and he is rhetorically anti-slavery though he is a slave holder, and often speaks about programs of gradual emancipation, and the founder of the american colonization society which we can debate about it. and in the upper south, it was considered to be a philanthropic and benevolent way of looking at the problem. wu but he is more than that. he is the creator of the speaker with all of the congressional powers. he is a senator, and in kentucky, it is the border state, and lincoln's birthplace, and lincoln is married to mary todd whose father is clay's business partter in and ally and elected as a state senator, and this is a connection that lincoln has to clay. in fact, and so, he is the bole ideal, and as a boy, he studied the speeches and memorizes them, and reads the louisville paper, and the paperrors are hand and kept, and they are preserved. a dozen people will read one newspaper when lin skon a bcoln. they don't print local news, because that is word of mouth, but they print national news and whole excerpts from the annals of congress or the congressional globe as we would call the congressional globe. and so he recognizes the speeches of webster and clay, and he declares them as a boy on the stump. when he becomes a whig, the first time he betrays clay is not 1848 when he does betray clay, but in 1840. by then, even then clay carried the burden of having been in politics and fighting in the trenches, and he had been, suffering many wounds already by 1840. before he had been nominated for the president, and lincoln had suppo supported henry harrison who he thought was more likable and a general, an lincoln supported clay of course in 1844 when he was the whig chairman and clay narrowly lost, and then lincoln betrayed him again. lincoln meets clay in lexington after he is elected to the congress. and so it is unexpected meeting in which lincoln hears him speak on the platform and with his father-in-law presiding, and he has dinner with him, and he is shocked to discover that he is not drawn to the charismatic personality. he finds himle cool and condescending towards him. this just elected congressman from scentral illinois. >> and the one speech that he keeps quoting from is an old speech that clay gave to the early colonization society, and must have been an early meeting of the group and what struck me about the paragraph is how lin conian it is, and i don't believe that clay's orations wear well, but he was brilliant to hear, and at lot of it is the performance and the voice and the moment, but this the paragraph, clay is addressing the crickets of the colonization society who think it is too radical, and you are stirring up slaves, and stirring up putting thoughts in black minds that should not be there. and so clay addresses the impulse to freedom, and he makes a three-step argument which is very u much like lincoln, and he says that if you want to stifle the impulse, you have to do more than stifle the work of this benevolent society. so he is starting with the news, and starting with todayb and he says that you have to muzzle the canon that celebrates the glorious fourth of july and so he is going back to the revolution, but he says that you have to do still more, and go into the heart of man and extinguish the desire of freem dom there, and so he is going from the news to history to human nature, and this is a very, very lincoln-like argument. i can see why he loved that paragraph, and just quoted it numerous times. and so he found, you know, what was useful to him in this man's long and varied career. >> i think that one of the fascinating questions -- >> your microphone. >> of studying lincoln is the tensioner or the creative tension of the continuities of which there are many and surprises. to me, one of the surprises is that when lincoln arrives at congress, one of the youngest men in 1847 and then almost immedia immediately stands up and denounces the war with mexico, i spoke for the state department in mexico, and i called it the mexican american war and in five minutes a gentleman raised his hand and said, you mean the american war? well, where where did that come from. well, maybe as suggested by sidney ale cool response to clay, but i think that the speech in lexington galvinized, and this is what clay said. this is no war of defense, but on unnecessary and offensive aggression. one can -- and so lincoln has heard this speech, and the founders as we know they are all distant persons who we never met, and now he meets clay. maybe he had been the bo ideal that he will call later, and he studied the speeches, and spoken at the speeches and now he has heard him, and this is what galvinizes his attitude and belief in the war gaiagainst mexico. this is a southerner who can own slaves and saying to the audience that night, be weary, because the south wants this war, and they want to extend slavery into mexico, and lincoln hears this, and takes some, offers some surprising comments both in december of 1847 and january of 1848 and i think that henry clay is very important in his life. >> i think that ron adds a very important point about clay's opposition to the mexican war. in 1844, clay had been against the annexation of texas, and already this was an issue, and clay undermines himself during the campaign, and seems to send in some letters the so-called alabama letters in which he is doing to try to accommodate southern opinion, and undermines himself in this campaign narrowly loses, and which precipitates and with which leads to polk becominging president, and precipitating the mexican american war, and in that meeting where where he is listening to clay, his son, henry clay jr. had been killed in the mexican war, and so clay is a deeply grieving man as well on the platform. the issue of the extension of slave i have already present to what will happen in this new territory as to what is going to be gaped from mexico, and how it will be apportioned and well an issue to address the incominging taylor administration, and one that when he calls for the exact spot resolution, and calling for the exact spot with where there is then supposed mexican aggression, he claims it is false hly created, he is attacking the polk and he is attacking the very rash leratio the war, and another proviso who wi wished to revent any extension of slavery. and so in that e event where he meets clay indeed is interesting and intriguing event. >> i am going to propose the new aeer ya, a new line of potential heroes and influences, but as i do that, i want to invite those of you who have questions to begin moving to the microphone, because we do want to engage you in this discussion as well. so here's my new thought, and maybe it is an old thought that we have not thought about recently, but so lincoln, and no president up to then had ever entered more offices with a former president hanging around and it is remarkable. lincoln would meet and had met all of them, and if not he had not met the final one, and he met van buren when he came to springfield on the lecture field in the 1840s that sidney has where written about. and van buren found him amusing, and who wouldn't, right? i would like to know and i will inquire about what lincoln thought about him. he met fillmore in buffalo en route to the inauguration in 1861 and went to church with him. he visited buchanan at the white house unannounced once he got to gt washington. and then when he went back to the willard, he met john tyler who was chairing the old gentleman's peace convention in an effort to sort of make the policy before lincoln was inaugurated. so i guess that, pierce, pierce was alive and we don't know if he met him. but none of the people seemed to lincoln to be as powerful and influence as could overshadow him. five ex-presidents. what should we take from the fact that there were so many there and what he thought of them and whether he thought that he could do better? >> well, these are the guys that screwed up, right? >> there must be more to the story, right? >> i don't know. sometimes slesz moless is more. >> and when the train passes wheatland in lancaster for lincoln to look out the window, and see the actual home of the former president, he has the same reaction that he did when he was in mount vernon and as john hay writes, he does not look out the window. it is almost as if he won't allow himself to be overcome. >> there is no love for van buren campaigning in 1840 for harrison, and bam, bam, the used up man. and then van buren turned into a free soiler, and lincoln went to massachusetts to support the free soil party and defeat the whigs which is a result that one of the free soilers would regret if they voted for the third party. so he had no love for van buren and for the rest, he had no use either. i mean, buchanan had created through his weak ness the circumstances in which lincoln was address iing a task greater than -- >> the mike, the mike. we can't hear it. >> how about if you and rick share. >> great. how about that? >> okay. we will get a new battery. >> buchanan, tyler, and tyler was despised by all whigs. because when harrison died after a month in office from pneumonia, tyler came in and he was a state's rights democrat and undermined everything that the whigs especially webster claimed to do, and they all regarded tyler as the great betrayer, and so they despised tyler. who are the thoughs? who else was there? >> pierce. >> he never met pierce. and pierce of course became what many around lincoln regarded as a traitor. he was devote td to the relationship with jefferson davis and was to extend secret letters to encouraginging him and so on. pierce was about to make a speech denouncing lincoln for lose ing t losing the war and encouraging the democrats in the help launch the campaign of 1864, and this speech was to be given in july of 1863. and as pierce was about to give the speech in concord, new hampshire, the news arrived from gettysburg. and he never gave the speech. >> and lincoln also in the house divided said that pierce and buchanon are among the four conspirators who are -- >> franklin and james. >> who are preparing this gothic house and the workmen. >> and pierce sends a nice condolence letter when willie dies, and they share the loss of a son as a common bond one would say. so we have people lining up or lying down, i'm not quite sure, but you have been patient. go ahead, please [ laughter ] >> i would like to know how you reconcile the stories of lincoln interfering with his son's education, and sarah's recollection to herndon that it was not true. she says that it is abraham was reading and his father would tiptoe around him and sometimes do his chores that he was behind in, and was she trying to the make her husband look better than legend and how do we know which mother abraham lincoln was referring to as his angel mother. >> well, i will say something about the angel omother. i thought that several times in over the course of my lincoln studies that he might be referring to sarah who by then loomed more vividly in his mind as a savior and inspiration. but i think that herndon meant angel mother is someone who is in heaven, and sarah is very much alive and the reconciliation, i don't know what do you think, gentlemen? >> well, i think they she was in a way protecting her dead second husband. and nothing invidious about that. i mean, she is trying to maybe smooth over something that had been awkward and certainly thomas had gone to school to learn how to the read and write, but he thought of it as a skill, and not what lincoln thought of it, but so, there was that. >> well, no one can enter the psychobabble better than the only son of a psychoanalyst who became president of the american psychiatric association. >> and who might that be? oh, you. i see. >> there you are. and so i go back to the thomas of lincoln problem with slavery and it is slavery of making a point. and one of you says hubris, and one of you says that it is -- well, anyways that -- could thomas who had 14 people in his home that he had to take care of economically. it was legal as you say. it was also common and so we should not throw that away, because it was not only common, but maybe necessary, but my question is was h lincoln in ub ungrateful son for what thomas was doing for the family, and money going into the family. >> that is a very good question. >> and let's remember that he is the son of a psychiatrist. that is why he is asking that. >> and in charge for the answer. >> well, it wouldn't be the first time, would it? you know -- [ laughter ] and also, we should not use psychobab. i mean, people are people. and they have thoughts, and they have unconscious thought, and it is the duty of the biographer as much as he can to figure out what those are and to see in the way their minds work is in some ways similar to how their mins s work, and this is the hope of maybe making some discoveries here. >> and i thomas lincoln had his necessary problems. he had to deal with necessary. but how abe raham lincoln experienced it is quite different. he experienced it as being oppressed. he also, and this might with ungrateful, and it might be unfair regarded his father as a failure. and he saw him fail again and again and again. and lincoln was determined to succeed. and his father's failure was part of the element of his deeply rooted ambition to succeed and get ahead which was, and became the core also of his own message for all people. and a clear path for people to have opportunity. so it is what goes from the grain of his own smallest personal experience all of the way up to his larger speeches. >> dan, if i might say this. i think that all of us struggle and sometimes i do when he is speaking of lincoln, and make him a meritorious figure who does no wrong, and is there s e sometimes time to blame him, and think for example in another metaphor of lincoln traveling out there on the circuit of 180 to 200 days a year, and leaving his wife to be the single mother of all of these boys. is that meritorious? so in a sense he is being unfair to the father, and the father by the laws of the day as the youngest son that his father is killed, so he does not inherit anything that lincoln is not being fair. i would say however in terms of the 100% that he took in, isn't it true that the for many people the son would have received 10% of the 100%, and he would have received something. so in that sense, that is the grudge. he knows that other boys are doing similar things, but they are receiving part of what they earn. and maybe it is a small part, and maybe om 10%, but it is something. so he does bear that grudge against his father. >> also, if i could venture one piece here. lincoln as oppressed as he might have felt in rett row spect, he did not leave this bondage, the family bondage when he was 21 years old, and he could have walked out when he was 21, and he stayed with his family for almost another year, and helping them to move, and helping them to move another cabin and enduring all of the aspirations, and so it is a lot more co complicated. >> and so it is until he settles them, and so being contradictory -- >> he is so dutiful that his father has to tell him to get out of the household. he is so dutiful. >> anybody else is lined up? >> yes. >> so, i would like to follow up on dan's idea and suggest that there is a counter cultural idea of lincoln and his father, and i'd enjoy your comment on. one thing is that his father must have financed part of his schooling, the one year of schooling. one year of schooling is about as much as any frontier kid got. lincoln was not deprived compared to the other frontier kid, and so therefore his father arguably did support lincoln's getting an education, but only when he had time. and secondly, lincoln brought on his relationship with his father, the negative relationship largely or at least in part by his own behavior, because that is subsistence farming in those days, and labor was critical. and without lincoln laboring with his share of labor, it would have been disaster for the family, because they had to plant to eat. and lincoln would go to tend of the planting row with his horse and plow and stop to read are. and his a father took great umbrage at that, and i don't see what is wrong with his father's view on thax land conn was constantly testing his father, and provoking the father, and that is the counter cultural view that i'd love to have your comment on that. >> and that is recalling to mind one tof the hanks' cousins that said, i forget whether it is john or dennis when they were, and his father was at the fence and somebody was riding by on the road, if abraham horned in with the sanction, and he would smack him. and so who knows, maybe he was spoiling his father's set-up, and you have two competing storytellers, and he does not remember as sarah bush johnston said, he always waited for the guests to leave before he would ask what they were saying. so he does not have to compete with her, but the old man. so again, this is not new, and not the first time. >> and it is true that the biographers for generations have been angry at thomas for not looking at that tall boy and seeing him with the top hat and bear beard. [ laughter ] surely, he should have realized that this is abe raham lincoln d every precious moment that he gave him to read and study was, you know, expected and anything that he would do to inhibit the learning would be damning him in time and eeternity. and so i would add to what we heard that the reason that the farmers had big families if they could, they would produce the girls to cook and sew and churn and clean and the boys to work on the farm. and abraham was the only boy. and he was a big boy, ap capable boy, and i do also see thomas being reasonable and expecting the chores to be done, and the work to be done before abraham lincoln began reading newspapers and books. >> just to add one point. >> yes. >> on the point of reading the newspapers and books, young lincoln developed horizons that his father did not understand. and as a boy, he knew more about the world than his father did. his father could not read, and lincoln consumed newspapers voraciously, and spoke to people about all sorts of things that his father was not interested in. lincoln learned as a boy that there was a new school in indiana. and it was a school in a utopian community called new harmony, and created by the english socialist robert owen, and they were taking young students for advanced education. he was desperate to go there and it would be like aspiring to a great prep school at the time. of course, he could not go. and maybe that contributed to t the resentiment, and the end gratitude, but it was. it was part of his breath that his father lacked. >> how old? >> a boy in his early teens. >> and i think that one thing about 15 or 16-year-old boys, children are sure they know more about their parents, and only until they were 50 that they realized that they were wise in many ways. although we did not hear it from lincoln. >> and it starred when lincoln was 15, and adams is elected president in a rigged election in which he gets clay gets secretary of state because he throws his support to adm dam dams -- adams, and then andy jackson having been deprived if president after winning the popular vote, and then lincoln is 19. in southern indiana, jackson is enormously popular. and then four years later, he has moved to illinois and come to new salem, and there jackson is also highly popular. he is the people's choice they called him. why did lincoln decide that the whigs and clay and rather than andy jackson should be his model >> it is a great question and one that we should address. who wants to start? ron on this side now. >> and the irony of this of course is that the andy jackson's portrait will be in the white house when lincoln is president. and so he does push against him and he is drawn to the whig ideals at that time, and the order that he has drawn to the fact that labor can rise to become prosperous in business, and so he is drawn to the whig party which is growing in illinois and springfield is in the center of the state, and it is a mixture of political parties, and not simply andrew ja jackson and drawn to this and pushes against jackson, and what is remarkable to me is that he will look back on thisp perhaps with a different perspective. >> isn't springfield one that is the only congressional district. >> that district in sangamon county is where he lived. and he fell upon the su gat fatherhood of bowling green who was leading the whig party of power in new salem, and taught lincoln about the law, about party politics and train ed him on how to do that and he initially trained him in the most elementary forms of politics. so bowling green is deserving some blame here. >> do you want to add something? >> well, clay's most famous phrase is self-made man. >> it is. we neglected that. >> and he is wrongly credited with originating it, but he used it, and that must have struck a chord with lincoln. >> and clay is a poor boy who rises and lincoln sees that example as a model for somebody who could be politically prominent. it is a good image. >> what is fascinating is that when he calls clay a poor boy, he is not so poor, but he is magnifying that because he is identifying with clay, and makes clay's story, his story. and so he has been charged by the riff of bowling green. >> i am glad that you mentioned the irony of this jacksonian seeinging that essential decor over thehe mantle of andrew jackson over the mantle, and irony of irony, it is in the first reading of the emancipati emancipation, and it was fussed over so much so that it was almost unrecognizable. but not only that, when the authorities in maryland told lincoln that they did not want the union troops to come through washington through maryland and he got angry, one thing is that there is no washington in that, a and the a, and there is no jackson in that and there is no manhood in that, and so, you know, in the corning letter, he cites jackson's judicious suspension of the civil liberties in new orleans and how he restored them when the time came. so there is a mystery there. i think that he liked the ta authoritarianism when it was useful. >> and he cited the supreme court decisions when he finds the dread scott unacceptable. >> and part of it is stealing the enemy's hero, and trying to wrong foot the other party by saying that i am the one who really understands the man that you idolize. >> which you can say about the all honor to jefferson as well. >> and the one quote that jackson appropriates and relies upon is jackson's proclamation against nullification. he studies it, and uses mitt the secession crisis. it is part of his thinking about how to deal with secession. and so he regards jackson asing having provided the initial arguments against john c. calhoun who is the inspiration for this movement. >> could we also say that looking at the recent decades that it is one thing to stake out an opinion before you are president, but it is quite something else when you get into the office and look back and say, oh, my goodness, i look at the person or the business differently now that i am sitting in the office. >> one can hope. [ laughter ] >> well, just do these four questions, because we are running out of time. allen, you are first. >> okay. i want to go back to the farewell address in springfield, and i remember reading shelby foot who said that he felt that if you didn't understand the civil war, you didn't understand the history of america. i am wondering if lincoln maybe didn't have an insight as to the how big this deal was, and then in saying that, i again would agree that he was really talking about, about situation and not washington, itself, but the situation that he found himself in, and i guess that the view or the civil war it was this is going to be a big deal. it was right that he was facing a challenge that is as big or bigger than washington's, and i'd like your opinion on that. >> south carolina had been making troubler for years. the nullification crisis was all about south carolina, and i forget where it is, but lincoln makes a passing reference of the peoria speech of the ek sen are tri dk eccentricitieeccentricit that south carolina is no longer an outlier, but a leader, and this is a whole thing. so you are have to be incensable not to notice that. >> and rememberb that henry ballard the one who springfield dispatch describes the events that day, that lincoln arrives at the train station that day and he is so overcome with emotion that he can barely speak to the people crowded into the tiny station. he has told the press in advance, i will give no speech. he does not intend to speak, but here sh here, there are 1,000 people there that day and so he speaks. lincoln usually only speaks when he is really, really carefully prepare prepared the addresses. and i used to ask that question how many people wrote the gettysburg address on the back of the flap of an envelope and the answer was 50%, so i stopped asking the question. he was a writer and editor and more than spontaneously, it is remarkable how much religious language was in the speech. that surprised people. this is the thought that he offers at this particular h moment in time. and he has determined, remember, that seward told him to give up the train ride. you have to come the to washington right away, because we will have a fight on our hands to get the vote through the electoral college, and lincoln is determined not to say anything on the train ride. and then, over and over again say something, and would you respond, and he tries not to, but he says more in some ways in this small address than he says in any of the speeches perhaps the exception of trenton and what he says on that address, but it is extremely important to read what he is saying. >> i don't think that -- i do think that lincoln understood it was a big deal, but he did not understand the full dimensions of it until it unfolded. lincoln for example like the southerners thought that the war would be resolved quickly in one big battle. it was not. and as it developed into the longer conflict and the full scale of the what he was involved in became clear to him, and the nature of the transformation of the country, economically, socially and politically also was something that he would address and not the least of which through the emancipation proclamation. so, everything changed. he was as he said, you know, he was carried away by events and so on. he was not passive, but the events changed his views of things as they went on and his understanding of just how complete the transformation was and what the great revolution would be. >> and keeping himself in springfield he keeps himself sadly imdwrun the forces out there, and he did not fully understand them. he had not experienced new york or philadelphia or boston or the anything else, and so when he got to washington, it was a different story. >> my question is did there have any evidence of the influence of him on madison? >> i don't think so. but we considered the long washington story of lincoln. >> i agree. i think that we are more lincoln is more about the little engine who knows no risk than he is waiting for the call of duty and reluctantly answering it. >> and so was washington by the way. i mean, washington loved mount vernon, and he always thought of it when he was away from it, but he could have stayed there. you know, but he left it. he left h it twice. he will left it in the revolution, and he was away for 8 1/2 years and visited it once on the way to yorktown. and then he leaves it again to be president, and he gets to come back in the summers, but, you know, he could have been like george mason. another intelligent political planter who ly held office, but he didn't want to do that. he wanted to be out there in the arena. >> my question kind of deals with earlier on you gentlemen talked about how lincoln's relationship with his father gave him a viewpoint, too, of the effects of slavery and how he could relate to that and then later on in his career, he talks about the importance of the working man and how he builds the economy, but as he became president he has only spoken once to a group about the strife that is going on with the wage slavefully the north. certainly, he has his hands full with the war in the south, but there is a lot of unrest, and in 1863 with the draft riots, and he does not really speak too much about it. so, how come do you think that lincoln did not apply suffering e earlier in life, and the pushing of the working man and why he did not apply any of that while he was president? >> well, that is a provocative question. i would add that in one of the annual messages he does say that labor is superior to capitalism, the and i think you're referring to his comments in connecticut after cooper union about the shoe strike and which was pretty daring for a presidential candidate at that point to associate himself with an organized strike, but again, my deal is in more time labor is all about running a war. it's a little bit different, but really good question. does anyone have anything on this? >> what's remarkable is how little lincoln speaks. >> that's true, too. >> we have about three great addresses. today we expect any president to speak hundreds and hundreds and hundreds probably written by speech writers so we have an annual address that lincoln didn't deliver and parts were written by his own cabinet members. it's read by a clerk in the house and the senate so lincoln speaks very, very seldom in the civil war, which is perplexing in someways and the way it was in that particular time. >> considered to be his program. it was part of the original republican party slogan in 1856. lincoln talks early on in his first annual message about a people's contest. and talking about the kind of economy that he wants to create free from slavery. that's his idea of it. there's -- and that's his sense of the working man. >> every man should have an equal chance in the race of life, which he does say in the special message again sufficient onto the days the evil thereof. i mean, we look at the founders and say why didn't you guys fix slavery? well, they were freeing the country. they were setting up the government and then we can look at lincoln and say how come you didn't solve the labor problems that would bedevil the 19th centu century? he had another thing on his plate. there is that. >> thank you. >> yes? >> i have a military question since we really haven't talked about that. as president, lincoln became the military commander in chief. what history books or military studies did he study or military leaders did he study that ultimately prepared him to become the military commander in chief as president of the united states? >> michelle is here from the library of congress. i'm surprise she hasn't leapt from her seat to say he burroed books from the l.c. and as soon as he got to the white house including a book about strategy written by henry wager hallock. one person who read. which may explain why the war took so long to get organized. or one more from bob willard. >> the topic here is who inspired lincoln, but i wonder if you would be willing to broaden it a little into what inspired lincoln. i've always felt two trips to new orleans are sort of the equivalent of junior year abroad for today's students and i wonder what are your thoughts about those two trips and implication? >> great point. sydney, you've written -- >> according to his cousin, i went on a trip with him and informan informants, this had enormous influence on lincoln. lincoln was, i guess, the original huckleberry finn. he went down the mississippi on a boat, on a raft twice as a -- and the first time on his way there he stops in lewouisiana a at night attacked by a group of slaves who try to steal their goods. he bear as scar from it, a wound on his head his whole life. he gets to new orleans and he's in a state of shock at what he says. new orleans is, i believe, the second or third largest city in the united states. it's a teaming -- it's the most co cosmo poll tin city. it's been held by various powers and a lot wondering around, a lot of different languages but slave auctions of all kinds openly on the street including selling young girls for obvious reasons. and for this boy in the frontier in premium baptist churches, he's seen all sorts of things in his life. this was a shocking sight. so his cousin says, you know, he was determined to strike a blow in the end against slavery. well, maybe but he was certainly shocked by it and appalled by it on both of these trips and it was and it was his first real introduction to seeing seeing slavery. he's seen slavery before as a child in kentucky and this young man, this was his first sight of slavery in its full form. >> i think we also have to set that against the fact that some people who see -- saw slavery for the first time, you know, northerners thought this is great. this is really cool. try to liberate does he embrace the whole thing, had a big plantation and thought this is great. again, things can take different people different ways. i think sydney is absolutely right that for this particular young man with his experiences and also his nature and even all his sexual, you know, what is this about and how am i going to handle this and seeing women, young women auctioned, stripped. this just must have been like las vegas and hell. and i -- i'm sorry i said that. i shouldn't have made a laugh of it. i mean, this was just -- my god, look at this. that must have been the first reaction, overwhelmed. >> bob, one more comment. you introduced you question by talking about the junior abroad. some do a junior abroad and transforms their whole life. another people do a junior year abroad and wasn't that an interesting experience. the wife of the commander who is killed travels to washington, writes -- says i have an interview with abraham lincoln. lincoln say men and women separated from each other, husbands and wives and says to lincoln, you do not recognize women and men that are black are not legally married. i ask you to recognize their marriage and to give pensions to the widows of the black soldiers. lincoln's experience way back in new orleans, as men and women separated comes home to him after fort pillow and he executes an order that hence forth the widows of black soldiers who are not legally married will receive a united states pension. that experience i think traveled forward in the way he led his administration. >> and i would add only to that, only that in between those events, he's a member of congress and as a back bencher, has the opportunity to gaze out of the window from the back of the hall where he can see slave pens operating. those places in those case bob willard, i would agree although this session is devoted to people, there were certainly somepla places that influenced abraham lincoln. the inspirations remain a subject of discussion, debate, inqui inquiry. we haven't solved the question of who was his great inspiration yet but have had fabulous interpreters, and thank you-all for joining us. [ applause ] >> so which presidents were america's greatest leaders? c-span asked 93 people to rate. top billing this year went to the president who preserved the union, abraham lincoln. he's held the top spot for all three c-span historian surveys. tr three other top vote getters hold positions, george washington, franklin roosevelt and theodore roosevelt and dwight eisen higher from 1953 to 1961 makes his first appearance in the c-span top five this year. now rounding out the historian's top ten choices, harry truman, thomas jefferson, and reynold regan. lyndon johnson jumps up one spot this year to return to the top ten. but pity pennsylvania james buchanan and andrew jackson, the seventh president found his overall rating dropping this year from number 13 to number 18. but the survey had good news for out going president barack obama. on his first time on the list, his tore y historians placed him 12 and george bush moved to 33 with big gains in public persuasion and relations with congress. how did our historians rate your favorite president? who are the leaders and the losers in each of the ten categories? you can find all this and more on our website at c-span.org. now from sunday evening, our program from