inauguration. she comes back and she's disappointed in lincoln. by the 1865 inaugural, she's singing his praises. >> she's one of the most eloquent of all and intelligent and thoughtful of all the abolitionists, male and female. that's a good point. thanks for pointing that out. i thank you for your attention. this weekend, we continue our four-day book tv and american history tv programming. saturday at 10:00 eastern on book tv's afterwards, the history of the birth control pill and sunday at 11:00, bill nye the science guy. and an american history tv on cspan 3, saturday night, just before 9:00, george washington and benedict arnold and sunday afternoon at 4:00, a glimpse of american life between 1914 to 1930 from henry ford's film collection. find our complete schedule at cspan.org or call us. e-mail us or send us a tweet. like us op facebook. follow us on twitter. next, authors and historians discuss the impact and significance of the 1864 presidential election that took place in the midst of the civil war. lincoln, who ran on a platform of emancipation and preservation of the union defeated his opponent, george mcclellan, winning 212 electoral college votes. the hour long discussion was part of a discussion hosted by the lincoln group of d.c. normal way to start off the panel is to let each of the panelists have an opportunity to comment on what they've heard each other say. does anybody want to comment on anybody else's talk? >> well, it's, i think, pretty clear from john's talk that john and i have a little bit of a different take on a couple of things. but here is one of the things that i will argue. >> sure. >> i don't think that the soldiers becoming republicans or how they voted is wholly top down. i think it's more of a bottom up experience. sheer what i think happens. here is my theory on this. is that the 1862 election does not go well for republicans, but it goes very well for copperheads. by that time, i think that is a wake-up call for the soldiers that this group that has been railing against the war and against lincoln, rather than being this fringe group that i think the soldiers and many other people had regarded them as, the soldiers now realize, these are for real and these people have political power, among other things, they have taken over the state legislatures of illinois and indiana. the governor of indiana, the governorships you are talking about, they have real power now. i think this becomes a wake-up call for the soldiers in the field, because after that election you start seeing soldiers writing home about how angry they are at the copperheads and how disrespected that they feel by the copperheads who do not acknowledge or support their sacrifices in the field. and i think this is what turns them to lincoln in a serious way. and i think it happens by april of '63. and i think it is also what turns them around on the issue not all of them but most of them on the issue of emancipation is i think it becomes a story of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. and in this case, the copperheads are my enemy. they hate lincoln. so we are on board with lincoln and emancipation. and i think that accounts for their adherence to republicans more than people being cashiered for being democrats. >> let me add one quick thing about the persistence of that soldier resentment of the copperheads. you would think after they had gone down in flames and the democratic party, as you said, will suffer from the self-inflicted wound for a good bit of time, that maybe the resentment would abate. the foe has been defeated. in my study, i found that northern soldiers vent a great deal of bitterness against copperheads in the ranks and civilians at the moment of lee's surrender because they feel they aren't happy enough -- sufficiently happy about it that they are showing their true colors at that moment at which they show a tendency to downgrade the northern victory to essentially parrot a southern interpretation of northern defeat in which it had been northern numbers and resources and not skill and bravery that brought the union victory. you see this resentment vented not only in comments soldiers make in diaries and letters and civilians. even the deep resentment persists and you see it on the part of the most famous soldiers of all, grant most notably, who loathes the copperheads, more than he loathes the confederates. that's a real resentment that persists after the copperheads have been neutralized politically. >> if you want to push that forward, the grand -- not the -- what's the -- the grand army of the republic -- the grand army of the republic becomes some some ways the core of the republican party for the rest of the century. >> i think you are right about the importance of timing, especially pointing to that period in the winter/spring of '63. you have january, february, march, april. i think you are right, there's something important going on in that time. and one thing you point to in your book -- it's a beautifully written book. you should read it. i disagree with a lot of its conclusions, but i still think it's a wonderfully written book. in that time period, there were a number of resolutions that were adopted. you mention those in your book, i think. what was going on is soldiers were issuing resolutions in mainly february, march, april of '63 where they are doing precisely what you are saying. they are thrashing against the copperheads. the way historians look at this is that it's a bottom up swell. that's the argument i think you are making here. you point to letters that they write. but the resolutions i think are important. and haven't really been fully understood. i have a section in my book on the resolutions. again, these resolutions have been interpreted as bottom up, the soldiers are angry at copperheads so they are expressing themselves. i think this was a top down process. there's evidence in the governor's papers and other officials in indiana that morton is trying to get these things distributed to the soldiers and voted on. then he can publish them in the newspaper and say look how the soldiers are on my side. i found soldiers who were court-martialed for refusing to sign on to these resolutions that were denouncing the copperheads. i found an instance where the officer ordered all the soldiers to come out and vote on the anti-copperhead resolutions. he took the votes for aye and dismissed before they could vote no. the soldiers oppose the copperheads. most of my evidence -- my book looks at pennsylvania, indiana and ohio. after publishing my book, i found the same thing with connecticut, new england where, again, there was a top down pressure to get the soldiers to support resolutions that were against the copper heads. there's no doubt in my mind that there's soldiers who hate the copperheads and they get to that on their own. i think if you look at a broader spectrum of records and look at some of these things that were going on from a different angle, you can see how some of the republican leaders at the state and national levels were using this sentiment to develop more anti-copperhead sentiment to persuade voters at home. i think it's top down and bottom up. >> michael, tom, any other comments on this before we turn to our audience or anything else? >> i have a question for jonathan and others on the panel about -- there were a lot of printed material that was produced by union leagues and other -- the republican party and other organizations. pro-republican. but there was also a lot of pro-democrat pamphlets that were published and newspapers. my understanding is that they were not allowed to circulate to the soldiers in the field. by an order by stanton, until -- i think it was lifted in october when it was probably too late. one, is that accurate? if it is accurate what would happen to a soldier who was found reading, say, a democratic or even copperhead paper or passing pamphlets out to his colleagues and so on? >> i don't know about that order. i wish i did. there were -- i don't know about that order in '64. there were orders earlier in the war, often they were done at the regimenal level. they were planned by brigade level officers. i found one where he writes in his diary, i have to ban the newspapers so the soldiers will not take in the ideas. i mentioned during my talk, i found -- to your question in particular, i found a soldier from ohio who were court-martialed. so they could be punished for distributing the materials. during the debate over whether or not northern states should grant soldiers the right to vote, republicans said, this is the patriotic thing to do. soldiers are fighting for their nation. democrats countered with an interesting but politically suicidal argument. that was, soldiers won't be free to think for themselves, they are not going to be given campaign materials. so it's a controlled army vote. in some ways, i think they were on to something. there's no way there was as much democratic campaign literature circulating as there was republican. >> but as far as context goes, i think republicans surely felt and justified in thinking the likes had targeted the army. that was lincoln's argument. do i have to punish the naive farm boy? so in a sense, lincoln helped set the terms of this debate by putting it in that way, convincing the northern public that the copperheads they had gone after the army. they threatened the army. that was the argument that lincoln made and many republicans accepted. >> i don't disagree with that argument. i think the corning letter has some -- i think the corning letter has some weak constitutional arguments. it was written in june of '63 in the wake of landingham's arrest and transferred into tennessee. that's the argument lincoln is making. he said that when landingham spoke out against the draft -- when he never advocated violating the law. he wanted to vote out republicans. he said when he advocated not going to fight, he was warring on the military. so that's precisely the argument. >> i would say, in my research, it did not appear to me that this was a widespread problem. what it did appear to me that was that in certain units, it was. there was an issue. that it was -- it really depended on the commander. one of the things to keep in mind here is that at this time, particularly those units that had been raised in the first couple of years of the war, the commander of the regiment was a political appointee from the governor. the governor named the commanders of the colonels typically of the regiments. that may play into this a bit as well. i also would say that were the shoe on the other foot, the democrats would not have thought twice about doing the same thing. >> i don't deny that. >> could i throw in a question? when i was working on my biography of lincoln, dealing with the decision to reappoint mcclellon. >> i don't know. in terms of army -- >> i can talk to that. >> i want to jump in and say, you know, about stanton's order. i didn't know about this order either until i came across this in something i was doing research on very recently. and i can't for the life of me i can't remember where i saw this. so i can't help you. i didn't know, michael, if you had come across that anywhere. no? >> i will google it. >> the mutiny. yes, there was serious talk among the high command under mcclellan about moving on washington and rousting out lincoln. this actually is the great moment for george mcclellan where to his credit he says, no. we are not going to do that. and he keeps the high leadership under him from doing that. >> but he came close to issuing a statement denouncing the emancipation proclamation and arms were twisted and he backed down. but he did back down, to his credit. >> we have members of the lincoln group and other visitors. questions that you would like to ask the panel to address? >> those are the people who have access to democratic papers or they feel strongly. do you see a lot of correlation or influence from letters from home? >> is that directed to me or the panel? >> anybody. >> i will let other people talk. >> you would see certain savvy northern governors who positioned themself as the soldier's friend but also the friend of the soldier's wife. and had taken measures in pennsylvania to relieve the economic suffering of soldier's wives. this was -- curtain is an example of a middle of the road type who would run representing a people's party during the antebellum period. he's a union first type who embraces that designation. so there were northern politicians who saw clearly the connection between soldier moral and civilian moral. and who sought to kind of mold public opinion in both spheres by measures aimed at the home front and at the battle front. >> you have seen evidence where the soldier's wife says, governor morton is doing this for us. you better vote republican. if things are not being allowed to be in camp but yet wives and sisters and mothers are writing to the soldiers, are they getting information that way? do you see if there's any sort of conversations back and forth? i know you don't often get as much of the homefront letters surviving as the letters from the soldiers. but is any of that going on? >> yeah. what you see during campaign time, especially but even not, these are -- these are people who grew up in the 1850s. they have been steeped in politics really their whole lives. they are very politically astute and politically oriented. so their letters going home -- back and forth are often highly political or about politics. there's a political conversation about it. that includes with women as well. one of the ways to really think about the men who are at war is, they're a broken off chunk of their community that is somewhere else, but the way the troops are raised, they're all pretty much from one place. so you have this sort of rump community out there. if you think about it as a communication loop, it's really the -- the soldiers are influencing home front. the home front is influencing the soldier. it's just -- it's this circle. yes, this is how newspapers are still getting to the soldiers or political material is still getting to the soldiers. they will show up in the mail from family members. so that is happening. soldiers are being updated all the time about what's going on at home. letters are going around the camp and the community. they are being passed from hand to hand. lots of people know what's going on on both ends. >> another question? back on the far left. >> parties do lots of different things. this requires money. in 1964, how much money did these parties spend and where did they get it? >> i think they -- certainly, office holders were asked to cough up money in support of -- particularly in republican office holders were asked to cough up money to raise money for actually publishing pamphlets and things like that. i think there was also particular donors who were asked to come forward with funding. there isn't a lot -- unfortunately, there isn't a lot of documentation out there in terms of how much money was raised and from whom. i don't know if anyone has anything more specific. >> federal employees were expected to chip into the republican re-election campaign. there was quite a scandal about that in the brooklyn navy yard which employed a huge number of people. this was before civil service reform. >> one other form of campaign material that the parties didn't have to pay for would be congressional speeches. they would be published at the expense of the government. you often find state level and local politicians writing to congressmen saying, will you send me 100 copies of the speech? i will make sure they get sent around. >> drumming up voters, passing out tickets, they had to be paid. they have to have walking around money to -- >> do you mean the agents collecting the soldiers votes? >> no, no, the agents on behalf of one party or another were out lobbying the soldiers to vote one way or the other. >> in some cases they were funded by -- >> for proper votes. >> in some cases they were funded by the state government. for example, new york -- i understand. but they acted in a partisan way. for instance, the governor of pennsylvania pledged to nominate -- to select both republicans and democrats. they could go out and they would be funded. >> before civil service reform is the key observation here in the sense that you take something like the post office, which is the nerve center of communication in the 19th century. now we think of a postmastership as being a bureaucratic job that's apolitical. back then the post office was the biggest federal bureaucracy. all the postmasters in the country of the other party, they're out of a job and the party faithful are rewarded. each is supposed to appoint a partisan army that is going to use the post office for the greater good of the party. there were postmasters who did considerable mischief in the south. a postmastership was understood to be a stepping stone to political office. lincoln had been a postmaster. there are these bureaucracies before civil service reform are for more partisan than you would imagine them to be now. >> chicago politics were national then. >> keep in mind, this doesn't just happen in election years, but printing contracts that are being issued to partisan papers. while there may not be money passed through, getting a printing contract from a government agency allows a paper to be published and then circulate and disseminate a particular point of view. that's something that's ongoing. >> question in the back row. >> how long did lincoln have to wait before enough votes were counted and reported for him to learn that he, indeed, won? and then, was there in washington, for example, a republican party headquarters set up where the voting results would be telegraphed and then run over to the president? what was the procedures for learning what the vote tally was? >> i'm not sure myself. lincoln learned fairly early on, in 1864, that he had won. that was in large part because the elections in october in key states, pennsylvania and ohio, had gone republican. that seemed to assure his re-election. the degree of tension that existed was not -- it wasn't a nail biter until 2:00 in the morning. as for here in town the data would have been -- it would have been at the army telegraph office. >> i think that's where it was. he was waiting as the returns would come in via telegraph. >> they do arrive at the war department. for example, nevada had become a state. one of their political operatives wrote in and said, you are winning nevada by x number. we slaughtered the copperheads. a lot of the individual states or party people were telegraphing in. i'm sure lincoln was in the telegraph office. >> you have the day and time so you have a sense of what time of day the news came in. >> sometimes today in our discussions on what mcclellan intended to do if he were elected. he did not oppose slavery. he did want to maintain the war going. i wonder what your thoughts are about what would actually have happened if mcclellan had won. he is facing a country where the slave system has actually fallen apart. slaves have left the plantations. he would have maintained the military effort. but how would he have formed a government? who would have been in that government? we think of -- we think that we escaped a great danger by electing lincoln. but what was that danger? >> the primary danger i think was that emancipation would be rolled back, that perhaps slaves would be restored to masters, that perhaps masters would be compensated for them, that the proclamation would be overturned. so i think that that was the primary danger. you make a good point, slavery, the friction and abrasion of war and the agency of slaves had eroded slavery to such a great extent that it would have been far more difficult than southern masters wishfully imagined to reconstitute the institution. there were now many people with a vested interest in its demise who hadn't perhaps had a vested interest in its demise before the war. so i think that was perceived as the main danger for sure. less that he would concede southern independence than he would roll back emancipation. that in times of peace, could lose its standing was on lincoln's mind as he pushes for the 13th amendment. >> i think one thing he would have pursued was to end the war on the battlefield. i think that's been made clear by several papers we heard today and by his own statements. >> there's some kind of armistice. >> there's one person who reported later that he was ready to let the confederates have their independence. he was quiet on the topic. i only was able to -- ever to find this one document. but i thought it was interesting. i think his aversion to fighting and his aversion to war may have really led him to shut the war down before it came to a conclusion militarily. >> also, his party was -- had a very strong copperhead wing. and he was having -- he would have to placate that wing of his party. it's hard to know for sure what would have happened. but it seemed like there would have been some kind of truce, some kind of residue of slavery -- persistence of slavery. >> it would have to be a balancing act because it had a strong war democrat wing. he couldn't have risked i'll alienating them. so he would have -- it would have been a balancing act. he would have found himself constrained, i think. >> i don't think he was a particularly talented politician. >> that's right. >> that's a problem. and i don't think that he had really strong -- i will say moral core. but i don't think that he -- i think he was more the kind who would blow with the wind rather than somebody like lincoln who, you know, digs in and is just not movable on a couple of topics. i don't think that mcclellan is that firm. >> question in the middle. >> i'm a big mcclellan fan. i know he has a lot of flaws. i see the pictures taken after the battle in which he seems to confront lincoln. i have a feeling of him standing up to a system, however many flaws he may have had. i bring flowers up to his statue in northwest washington every year on his birthday. if anybody is of a like mind, come see me. this may be a very unusual place to be asking for such allies. thank you. >> up by the statue is the hinckley hilton hotel with a restaurant called mcclellans. the service was remarkably slow. [ laughter ] >> in the second row. >> what were some of the vote tallies and statistics from the border states? i know lincoln carried all but three states. how did the border states vote? i know in 1860 election, maryland only gave 2% or 3% of their votes to lincoln. how did the border states -- how was that turnout in 1864? >> kentucky and delaware did not go for lincoln. maryland was a close call. but lincoln was actually more concerned about the election for a new state constitution in maryland, which would abolish slavery through state action. that was carried by soldier vote, if i'm not -- >> it was. that was a two-day referendum, october 12 and 13, 1864, in which the soldier vote gave the referendum about a 2,000 vote majority, i think. >> john, second row. >> about the soldier vote, what percentage of the soldiers had been under the command of mcclellan? secondly, among officers, what was the breakdown to the extent of your knowledge for mcclellan versus lincoln? >> that's a great question. something i wish i had looked into more deeply -- in a more detailed way, especially -- in hindsight, you know, you write something and then it's out of your hands. you think of things you wish you had done. i wish i had paid more attention to the eastern versus the western armies in terms of how they came down. there were a few -- there were some regiments transferred from the east to west. it would been a good comparison. those would have been men under mcclellan and now weren't. i don't know -- i don't flow if anyone else can speak to that. >> i would say apropos about finding new stuff after you finished your book, i was able to persuade my publisher to allow a version to be posted online which could be corrected. so i'm hopeful that that would be an option that's available to many historians in the future. >> let me comment that when michael says the manuscript of the green monster is online, it's at the lincoln studies center knox college, if you google. >> we have been talking about civil service reform. one of the villains we have talked about tonight is george pendleton, the vice presidential nominee, copperhead notorious. who is the father of civil service reform, this self-same george pendleton who came back. >> the society for history in the federal government is named -- i think it's an article prize after him, the pendleton award. >> thomas jenks of rhode island had something to do with it, too. you are right. >> would you like to comment or talk about van landingham's demise? >> actually, after the war, sort of recanted some of his -- the views he had had on matters of race and whatnot during the war. i believe it was 1871 when he died. he was and attorney in a murder case. he was in his room. he was sort of preparing for trial, i guess. and was going to demonstrate in court what he believed had happened. and he took a pistol and it was loaded and he killed himself accidentally. he had no idea. >> he had -- for those of you from ohio, this happened at the golden lamb, which remains the oldest operating restaurant in ohio. at the time, it was an inn across the green from the courthouse where all the lawyers and judges stayed. this was, i think, the third time the suspect had been tried. the two previous cases resulted in hung juries. what the defendant claimed was he had a pistol in his pocket and that these two men were tussling and it had gone off. so i think he was -- i think there were other people in the room. >> i believe so. >> he was practicing what he was going to say the next day in the courtroom. and his argument. he had his loaded gun in his pocket, and it went off. he was gut shot. it took him about a day to die. there are these heart breaking telegrams from him to his family saying, i am dieing. i love you very much. it was an awful way to go. there's some speculation that this was not an accident. >> i never heard that. that's interesting. >> that this was a suicide. but, man, that's a tough way to commit suicide. >> i would like to follow up on a point jon made about lincoln's corning letter in which he defends the administration for the arrest of him. jon was saying there's problematic features to that document. one of them is that lincoln says that even the person who stands aside and is silent and does not enthusiastically support the war is betraying the cause. >> that's a view that lincoln had held since the beginning of the war. at the beginning of the war he says, referring to kentucky, he says neutrality is treason in effect. that's a pretty broad concept for treason, which is the only crime defined in the constitution. >> kentucky was a special case given the geographical location. >> sure, sure. >> but it's interesting to note that at least from what i found -- you might have found something differently. the first person that i have heard about saying that anybody who does not agree with the administration is a traitor was stephen a. douglas. >> right. >> right after the war. >> patriots and traitors, that's all that's left. >> that's much to douglas' favor. >> i agree. >> the knights of the golden circle were a secret society. it's hard to know how -- because they were secret. we don't know how many people were involved in that or how widespread they were. there were a number of federal agents who seemed to be fairly successful in penetrating these organizations. they had secret handshakes. they were dedicated to opposing the war. it varies from place to place. if they did anything more than just talk about it, if they assaulted troops coming home on furlough, if they organized resistance to the draft, although i think in some places that clearly was the case -- there's been an argument that this was really kind of a republican boogie man and that they didn't exist. i don't agree. i think there's evidence that they did exist. the question is, how widespread were they and how much damage did they do? i think that varied from place to place. >> certainly, those confederate conspirators we talked about before with their mac nations trying to disrupt the northern election, they could find evidence of talk on the part of these groups. when it came time for action, help us, they had a hard time drumming up support. >> one of the most interesting episodes, there was a large meeting in chicago right before the democratic convention opened. there were a lot of people who -- a lot of men who had come there to plan some sort of violent overthrow of probably not the federal government but at least state level government somewhere. and they were in there with some confederate agents and realized as the confederate agents were talking that this may involve actual violence, that they may actually die. and a number of them decided that maybe they weren't in for that. and they thought they might just wait to see what the outcome of the election was instead. and opted not to go for violent resistance. >> any other questions? yes, on the left. >> lincoln letter that he had his cabinet sign, was the passage of the 13th amendment included? >> you're referring to the blind memorandum? >> no. >> it had been incorporated into the republican platform by that point. that was not part of the letter or memorandum itself. >> i had to arrive late. was that discussed? >> a little bit. >> briefly. >> that is a strange document. does anybody have an idea what it was all about? >> i think it was -- my interpretation of it was sort of a -- is a sketch. i don't think it's full plan, by any means. but a sketch for really, we want to try to win this before the next person comes in. i think that that was the general tenor. >> why seal it up and have people not read it and sign it? it's such a strange document. i have spent a lot -- >> how many people does he want to know that he's thinking that he is going to lose? that might have been part of it. >> i'm thinking, he doesn't want leaks. two months earlier, you have what appears to be a leak of a draft memo which was a bogus draft proclamation in may of '64. my hunch is that's his biggest concern and that's why he keeps it secret. >> at another presentation, there was a gentleman, he said he didn't believe that the blind memorandum existed, even though we do have the document. but he couldn't understand why the cabinet would have signed something lincoln asked them to sign something that they didn't read. >> are they supposed to say, i quit? >> i mean, was it to the point where his cabinet by that time trusted lincoln and they blindly trusted him by signing that statement? have any other cabinet members, have they talked about it in their diary about signing this blind memorandum? >> we don't know, do we, what he -- how he presented that to the cabinet and what he said when he asked them to sign it. we don't know. >> this person doesn't believe there was a blind memorandum even though it exists? >> it's there at the library of congress. he said, why -- why would cabinet members sign something that lincoln gave them sealed? they signed their name and they hadn't read it. >> can you go get it and bring it back and see? >> i would imagine that's a show of loyalty. >> but it's surprising how people will not accept what you think is obvious. let me give you an example. one of lincoln's most beloved documents is the letter to the widow bixby. it's a beautiful document in which lincoln signs a letter saying, i have been shown in the files of war department a statement of the adjutant general of massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who died on the field of battle. i feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine. but i cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republican they died to save. i pray our father will aswathe the anguish of your bereavement to have laid so costly a sacrifice. it's a beautiful letter. i remember i said, that lincoln could write. i discovered significant evidence, including in the library at bryant library, evidence that he didn't write it. i was working on my first book, i wasn't going to address that question. the librarians at brown university called my attention to a scrap book of john haze clippings that he had pasted into a scrap book. and there was the letter clipped out of newspaper and pasted into a scrapbook of his own writings. i thought, for heaven sakes. i would have never noticed it if they hadn't called that to my attention. i investigated this and discovered that he had told six people that he wrote it and lincoln signed it. i thought there was some features of that letter which seemed a little unlincolnian. beguiled seemed literary. i did a word search of lincoln's writings and beguile shows up once in this letter. there was no such searchable database of hay's writings. i found dozens of examples of beguiling, including during the civil war, two examples, two articles that he writes in which the beguile is used twice in the same article. assuage, lincoln doesn't use that and hay uses it regularly. i cannot refrain from tendering you. lincoln doesn't use that. i found a letter just before in which john congratulates a general and his promotion. i cannot refrain from congratulating you. i thought, that's all very interesting. then i looked and see what was lincoln doing at that november 24th. he was writing his -- he was like my students, he was behind in his writing assignment. he was preparing his annual message. don't bother me. he gets this letter from the governor of massachusetts saying, i have this constituent who deserves to be recognized. john, take care of this. lincoln could write a very beautiful letter of condolence as he does to the parents of ellsworth. but it's pretty clear, given all those -- the scrapbook and then there was another at the library of congress, one at brown. i was a journalist on the side at that time. i would clip out when i had an article published, i would put it in a scrapbook. why would he do that unless he had written it? i was accosted on the high holy day out in springfield, february 12, by a high ranking member of the judiciary who said, i don't believe your interpretation of the authorship of the bixby letter. how do you account that he has it in his scrapbook, he told six people he wrote it? lincoln was busy at that time. it was the thing that he would have been asked to do. he said, i shouldn't be making -- bad-mouthing jurists. he said those are important but you are leaving out a more important consideration. what's that? he said faith. i said, faith? he said, i have faith that lincoln wrote it. >> what are you supposed to say, right? >> she hadn't -- that had been discovered earlier. she had lost two sons and she was trying to chief the government out of pension funds. she probably ran a whore house in boston. here is this gold star mother, right? she apparently was born and raised in richmond, disliked lincoln and tore it up when she got it. we don't have the letter. michele gets lithograph copies regularly from people who think they are rich. the gettysburg address, too, right? >> i should identify michele at the library of congress, the expert on the civil war era of the original manuscript documents held at the library o. >> are a historian's best