 Good afternoon. Welcome to the third week of the American presidency, our series of conversations with noted historian, scholars, and journalists about the people and events that have defined the most important elected office in the work. Our program is brought to you by the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, the University of Texas Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and Humanities, Texas. I am Phil Barnes, and it is my privilege to chair the UT Alley Sage Enrichment Committee. Mark Lawrence, the director of the LBJ Presidential Library, and himself a widely respected and published historian, is again the host of our conversations. As a member of the audience, you may participate in the Q&A segment of our program by using the chat function to write and submit questions. Our Q&A host today is Mark's colleague and our friend, Sarah McCracken, of the LBJ Library. As we noted earlier, in this year 2024, we will hold our 60th presidential election since the first in 1788. Although our constitution makes no provision for political parties, the two-party system emerged in the nation's early years. Until the election of 1832, political parties nominated candidates through caucuses held in state legislatures or in the U.S. Congress. Since that year, our major parties have held national conventions to choose their standing bearers every four years. And those 19th and early 20th century conventions had no primaries from acting delegates as we have today. Those conventions brought together delegates from each state with the power brokers and politicians and political bosses and influencers and a lot of the national press and local press, promoting the nomination of their favorite presidential candidate. More than 40,000 people from all over the country descended on Chicago in the spring of 1860, with more than 5,000 of them crowded into the Wiglaw, a massive wooden arena built especially for the Republican convention. The 1860 Republican convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln is fascinating, a story as well as a defining moment in U.S. history. Our guest today is the prize-winning journalist Edward Acquard, author of two acclaimed books about Abraham Lincoln, including the celebrated The Lincoln Miracle. Indeed, we learned this week that The Lincoln Miracle has won the 2024 Lincoln Institute Book Prize. Now that's an addition to the Lincoln Forum Book Prize and the Lincoln Group of New York's Award of Achievement. So a special congratulations to him for this extraordinary and special recognition of this extraordinary and special work. The Lincoln Miracle is the work of an experienced journalist whose writing brings history alive. The author takes us through Lincoln's road to the nomination, giving us insights into Lincoln the man, the universal respect with which he was held by his colleagues, and the gift he had for getting along with nearly everyone, always acting graciously even toward his political opponents. Lincoln's unassuming and friendly manner wraps masking a quiet but intense ambition to become President of the United States. Yet on the central issue of the day, he was uncompromising, eloquent in his moral clarity, and persuasive on the evils of slavery. Even with these considerable political skills, without a careful, calculating, and effective team working the convention on his behalf, a team organized by his friend, the Illinois Circuit Judge, David Davis, Lincoln would never have been nominated, prevailing over among others Governor William Sewer in New York, who, going into the convention, was the overwhelming favorite. The three days of the Republican convention held in Chicago were certainly pivotal, and one of the pivotal elections in American history. So we welcome today, or today's interview, Edward Acorn, the author of the Lincoln Miracle inside the Republican convention that changed history. And now, to Mark Lawrence. Well, thank you so much, Phil, and welcome, everyone. Great to have you back for today's program, which takes us back to the 19th century for the first time in our series, two more specifically, the election of 1860. And surely when the subject is pivotal elections in American history, few of them stand out in quite the way that the 1860 election did. And honestly, we could not have a better guest with us today than Ed Acorn to talk about this pivotal moment in American history, a subject that he knows so well from his wonderful book, The Lincoln Miracle. Ed, welcome. It's wonderful to have you. Oh, Mark, it's so great to be here, and thanks to Phil, too, for those very kind remarks. Thank you. Ed, let me start out with a question that I'm betting you've gotten a fair amount, not just in connection with your most recent book, but maybe over the course of the last many years, since you turned to writing about Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln has to be one of the figures about whom more, you know, ink has been spilled over the years than any other. Maybe he's at the top of the list in terms of the attention he has drawn. Why another book on Abraham Lincoln and specifically why the 1860 convention? What do we learn about Lincoln from looking at that specific moment? Well, actually, Mark, I'm told there have been 19,000 books about Abraham Lincoln published, and that's more than any other human being than Jesus Christ. So that's quite a daunting field. My approach is to do sort of a micro history approach where I look at a very short period and I try to bring Lincoln to life by looking at that short period. So this book is about one week. It's about Lincoln's men going into this convention and securing the nomination when he was an absolute, absolutely nobody expected him to be the nominee at the start. And it's, I think it's a fascinating story. It tells you about how lucky we are at times in American history that miracles do occur. And so that's, that was my approach to it. Miracle is obviously a strong word. It's right there in your title. Tell me about the choice of that word to capture the significance of this moment. Yeah, well, some of the people who attended that convention thought it was a miracle in retrospect because they thought these delegates, you know, they nominated Lincoln, but they had no idea of the man they had nominated. They didn't know his peculiar strengths. Nobody would know that until the Civil War and he had to lead this country through just four terrible, awful years when it could have easily gone under. So I think that's a miracle. Also the way the convention proceeded, I think Seward, William Seward from New York, was poised to win the nomination on the second night of the convention. He had won all these test votes that day at the convention and everybody thought, you know, there's no serious competitor to him that had arisen and they were all ready to vote when the podium announced, well, we don't have the tally sheets ready yet. It'll be about five minutes and the delegates were there. We're hungry. We're going to just adjourn for the night. And that's when Lincoln's meant to work and actually toppled the thing and secured the nomination for Lincoln. So I think in many ways it's a miracle. I mean, look at this, Lincoln came out of nowhere. He had the perfect, I mean, a whole series of things fell into place perfectly to make this possible. Not all of them under Lincoln's control. So that's why I think it's something of a miracle that this happened. Yeah, I think if there's one thing I took away, it's the sheer contingency of that moment. You mentioned the thing about the tally sheets, but tell us a little more about some of the improbable, you know, ducks that lined up in just the right row for Lincoln to get the nomination. Right. Well, Seward went into this thing as the dominant favorite of the party. He was the founder and father of the Republican Party, most popular with the base of anybody. His campaign manager, Thurlow Weed, had sent him overseas where he sort of put on the finishing touches of his preparation for the presidency. He met with world leaders with Queen Victoria, with Emperor Napoleon III, with Pope Pius. And so he was really being prepared for the presidency. He had not run in 1856 because his manager, Thurlow Weed, thought the party's not strong enough, you're going to lose. So we should save you for 1860 when the party's strong enough and you can win the presidency. So everything was lined up for Seward. And there were also other things happening. Seward was the strongest candidate going in, but there were qualms about him because I don't know if I can get into all this history, but John Brown, who was the famous abolitionist, he had stormed into a federal armory in 1859, and he had tried to arm slaves with weapons to stage a bloody insurrection. And this, he was stopped, but this terrified voters all over the country. They thought all the slavery talk was creating an impossible strain on the political system. So people going into this convention, the professional politicians were a little nervous about having Seward at the top of the ticket because he would scare off swing voters. So that played into it too. It was also concerns about Seward because he was so friendly with immigrants. And a part of the Republican base was not friendly to immigrants. They were from the former no-nothing party, which didn't like immigrants. So these things made people sort of wary about Seward and the casting around for an alternative. Go ahead. Obviously, I want to take you deeper into this incredible cast of characters that you write about so effectively. But before we get back to Lincoln and Seward and some of the others I'd love to ask you about, let's talk just for a moment about the general political landscape of 1860, just to remind all of us of the intensity of that moment, the significance of this moment when slavery, sectional conflict, the possibility of civil war was very much in the air. Paint a picture of the larger backdrop against which the convention took place. Yeah, there were enormous political strains and pressures over slavery. The Democrats had been able to win repeated presidential elections because they were the party that would essentially keep the country from breaking apart. They had a support in the south and the north for that reason. But the Democrats had sort of overplayed their hand. They had become very corrupt. The Southern Democrats had become incredibly arrogant from the perspective of Northern Democrats and Northern voters. A senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, had been clubbed down almost to death in the Senate by a representative from South Carolina. These were things that were just horrifying and shocking. The nation and voters in the north were increasingly thinking, we're not going to be pushed around anymore by the South on this issue. There has to be some limit to slavery. This is something that the Republicans were hoping to appeal to in 1860 and get carried through. But the pressures were so great, they actually split the Democratic Party about a week before the Republican convention. They couldn't nominate. They couldn't come up with a platform that would appeal to both Southern and Northern delegates and they couldn't nominate a candidate. Stephen Douglas was the guy who would run against Lincoln for the Senate and won in 1858. He was the most popular of the Democratic candidates, but they didn't have enough votes to push him over the top. They had actually adjourned their convention without picking a candidate for president and they had to come back at a later time. The Republicans gathering in Chicago in 1860 thought, we have a very good, strong chance to win the presidency, so we shouldn't blow this. You mentioned, of course, that Lincoln was a long shot going into the convention in 1860, but in a way, it seems to me one of the more remarkable things about this story is that Lincoln was even part of the conversation, given his political career and the trajectory of his career up until that point. Review the story with us, if you would, just for a moment. Was it that Lincoln was actually a contender if only a minor contender, it seemed, going into the convention? Yeah. Lincoln had, we tend to think of history that things that happened had to be inevitable. They really weren't. Lincoln went into this convention as a very minor figure. He had lost two runs for the US Senate and he had not held political office for more than a decade. His executive experience was pretty much limited to running a two-man law office. These are not qualifications for the presidency, but what he had was he was the favorite son candidate of Illinois, which was a very important swing state, actually crucially important to the Republicans. That gave him a certain stature at the convention. People were talking about, maybe he could be vice president to Seward or something. He could be on the ticket, as that. When Lincoln's men arrived at the convention, the Saturday before the convention started, they started to detect, oh my god, there's all this sort of nervousness about Seward and people are casting around for an alternative. Here we've got Lincoln. He's got this great story we can tell about him being born in a log cabin and self-made man had no education, but he rose up and he became so strong that he was able to debate Stephen Douglas famously in 1858. They started to tell his story at the convention. As people cast around for some alternative to Seward, suddenly he was in the mix. Those debates with Stephen Douglas, it seems to me, were absolutely essential. One of the stories that you reminded me of or frankly may have told me for the first time is that those debates were published. There were a bit of a publishing phenomenon in the years leading up to the 1860 convention. Is it fair to put a lot of importance on that particular moment in Lincoln's viability or visibility, maybe I should say, as a candidate? Well, that gave him a stature he otherwise would not have had because Douglas was one of the most vicious and powerful debaters in the country. I mean, he would pummel his opponents verbally. Lincoln had sort of backed him into a corner several times during these debates. These debates, because Douglas was such a leading political figure in the country, these debates were sort of written down and published in newspapers around the country. So that gave Lincoln a certain stature he otherwise wouldn't have had. Lincoln made a point of clipping all these newspaper accounts of his debates and putting them into a folder and getting them published in the early 1860. Basically, I think the Republicans were publishing these debates to knock down Douglas, but they also gave Lincoln a certain stature too. So he was sort of suddenly in the mix in Chicago. Now, there were other alternatives to Seward clearly as you detail in your book. Remind us of who some of those other contenders were and why Lincoln became the compromise candidate rather than, let's say, a Bates or Sam and P. Chase or some of the other options that were also vying for the nomination. Sam and P. Chase was one of the options. He was a very strong opponent of slavery from Ohio, very brave man, smart man, but totally egocentric. And he was just smitten with the presidential bug and he had no sort of perspective. And Ohio, which was the state he was from, was split. So it wasn't totally behind him. So he didn't emerge as really one of the top candidates. The guy who was considered the strongest opponent to Seward going into the convention was this man named Edward Bates from the slave state of Missouri. And Bates was somebody who was a former Whig. He was very conservative. He thought all this talk about slavery wasn't doing anyone any good and it would lead to chaos and the destruction of the country. So he was very popular with sort of the conservatives at the convention. But he had been associated with the Know Nothing Party, which I mentioned was this anti-immigrant party. And the Germans, the German Americans just wouldn't abide him. And they were a very small percentage of the Republican base, but they were enough to swing elections in many Northern states. So they decided to have their own national convention the same week as the Republican convention right down the street from the Whigwam. And that was intended to send a signal, don't you dare nominate Edward Bates or we will bolt from the party. And so the delegates were sort of terrified to go with Bates and all that left it open to somebody like Lincoln. I mean, I call this the miracle because all these things sort of slotted into place perfectly. If these German Americans who were very fond of Seward hadn't been there that week, Bates could well have been nominated. Yeah, fascinating. And another wonderful feature of your book is the stories that you tell about the political operators, the kind of second-tier figures who in this election, as in so many American elections, are absolutely essential to reckon with and understanding what happened. Tell us a little bit about the Thurlow Weeds, the Horace Greeley's and others who, David Davis, Lincoln's campaign manager, right? These figures who may not be household names, but really were pulling strings and working, it seems, very hard behind the scenes to promote their man. Talk about the roles these figures played. Well, Thurlow Weed was Seward's manager and he was an Albany, New York newspaper editor. These newspaper editors in the 19th century weren't content with reporting or commenting on news. They wanted to make it themselves. So he had become a sort of a key figure in the Whig party and then the Republican party after the Whigs faded away. And he could make or break Senate candidates, presidential candidates. He had become so powerful and influential and he was a really sharp political operator. So he had set his sights for many years, decades, I think, on getting Seward the presidency. So he's the one who was, I should mention, the candidates in those days didn't show up at the convention themselves. They left it to their managers. And actually, Lincoln was thinking of going to the 1860 convention. He told a friend, I'm not enough of a candidate. I'm too much of a candidate to go, but I'm not enough to stay home. So he finally decided not to go, which was very wise of him. So anyways, Weed had the most money. He had a machine. He brought thousands of Seward supporters with him by train to Chicago. And they filled the Whig warm up and they screamed for Seward and created this sort of impression of this irresistible strength. And they would march in parades out on the street during the convention, just sending a signal, Seward's the man. Now, the other people, Horace Greeley, you mentioned, he's probably most famous for saying, go West, young man. He was another newspaper editor. He used to be an ally of Seward and Weed, but he had been turned over when he tried to become Lieutenant Governor of New York. Seward and Weed thought he was too flaky to be Lieutenant Governor. So they had given it to the editor of the New York Times. So Horace Greeley, who was the most influential newspaper and in the editor in the country, he went to the convention and spent the week talking to delegates. You can't nominate Seward. He will lose. And he really stuck the knife in Seward's back, which is another thing that played in the Lincoln's hands that Lincoln didn't really control. The other, David Davis, was this judge in Illinois. And he would travel from courtroom to courtroom on a circuit six months of the year. And Lincoln was somebody who joined him and worked as a lawyer in all these court. Court houses people would go up, you know, that day and hire him to represent them as their lawyer. And so they'd got to know each other quite well. Davis was a very self-confident sort of bossy guy who took charge of things and got things done. So he showed up in Chicago for Lincoln. And the campaign was so poorly organized, they hadn't even arranged to have a room for their headquarters in the hotel. So Davis had to bribe a family to leave and set up shop, put up a sign on there and didn't sleep for the next week. Nobody made him Lincoln's manager. Nobody appointed him Lincoln didn't. He just said, somebody needs to be in charge here and it'll be me. And that was pure David Davis. So that's how he took charge that week and got the thing done. So sticking with David Davis just for a moment, how did he and others with whom he worked make the case for Lincoln? What were they doing behind the scenes to sell Lincoln and win over wavering delegates or make the case for him as the ideal compromise candidate? Well, you know, one of the things that really struck me researching this book from the start was, wow, these delegates, here we had a country in crisis hurtling towards God knows what, and they didn't try to choose a president based on who would make the best leader or who had the best experience. The whole thing was about who would get the most votes and get the most Republicans into office around the country. And that was the sort of the sole criterion. So Seward was kind of scary to the swing voters. So the case they made was, oh, Lincoln, Lincoln's a former Whig, he's from the South, so he won't scare swing voters as much as Seward would. He's very strong on slavery, so he'll appeal to the base. And he's got this great personal story where he grew up in a log cabin. And he was already known as the rail splitter because he had split thousands of rails. And so he was a working man, he who had lifted himself. And this was the era of Horatio Alger and stuff. Americans, in this democratic society, they loved rags to riches stories. And Lincoln sort of personified that. So that was the case they made. He would have the best chance of attracting voters, not scaring off swing voters. And, you know, he was not as threatening to the anti-immigrant folks as Seward. I mean, some people thought Lincoln was a form, was a know-nothing, which was totally wrong. He was absolutely opposed to the know-nothing party. But he didn't scare people as much as Seward. So this was the case they made. It wasn't that Lincoln was a brilliant man or a wonderful writer, or you had the dogged determination to lead this country through a crisis. It was he would get the most votes. And yeah, I think you point out, if I recall correctly, that for all the integrity, for all the kind of genuineness of that story of the guy who grew up in the log cabin, Lincoln's team was not above, you know, making promises about cabinet appointments or, you know, patronage to use the all-important word in 19th century American politics. Were they out there making promises about, you know, who would get what job? I love this part of the convention, because they competed with the best of them in terms of trying to bribe people with government jobs. Lincoln, on Thursday night, Lincoln sent a document to them saying, make no deals in my name. And they were all crestfallen, thinking, you know, how can we advance him to the nomination without making deals? And David Davis took one look at that document and said, Lincoln ain't here. We'll have to go go ahead as if we hadn't heard from him, and he'll just have to ratify what we do. So they started really making deals for the cabinet. They put a guy from Indiana onto the cabinet as Interior Secretary. They made the biggest deal they made was with Pennsylvania. There was a machine politician named Simon Cameron, who was really, he was a very corrupt character. And they promised him the Treasury Department if he went along. And Pennsylvania, as it turned out on Friday, switched over to Lincoln on the third ballot. And that was, they made all the difference. And so it's quite striking. There's been a debate over the years whether they really made these deals. And some people said they didn't, but I think the evidence is overwhelming. They did. And this is, this is how politics is played. You have to make promises. Lincoln, to be fair, was very concerned about deals being made in his name because the Republican Party was this incredibly scattered party where people didn't agree on anything except they hated the Democrats. So Lincoln knew if he would, if he won the nomination, he would have to reach out to every segment of this party and be very careful in selecting these people for positions. So everyone got a share of the pie and they didn't, the party didn't fall apart. And they hit, but his, his allies had to remind him during the period, during the later on when he was elected and was choosing cabinet positions. They had to remind him of the deals made in Chicago. And actually they promised, apparently promised more, they promised the same positions to multiple delegations. And somebody later asked Davis, well, you must have prevaricated, huh? And Davis said, prevaricated, prevaricated, we lied like hell. So that was, that was David Davis. And meanwhile, while all this is going on, Lincoln is back in Springfield kind of biding his time. How did he spend those, those, what had to have been fairly stressful days for Oh, they're nerve wracking times. And he went to his office, he played, he played handball to to relieve his stress. I always wished it was baseball, you know, because that's the American game. And I wrote two baseball books, but it was handball. And he would, he would, you know, get get messages from people telegrams from his people. But he really had to leave it in their hands. And he had very artfully instructed them going into the convention what to do. He was a brilliant political strategist. He said, just don't offend anybody. No, don't knock any of the other candidates. Just say if, if, you know, your beloved doesn't make it, please look at us as the second best choice. And that was a really strong strategy. It's such a striking image of this lanky Abraham Lincoln playing handball back in the the streets of Springfield while all this, this is going on. But let's go, let's talk a little more about Abraham Lincoln, the star of the show. Well, here's someone, you know, as we've already discussed, who's been written about endlessly. What did you discover about Abraham Lincoln that maybe surprised you or, you know, that jumped out at you by virtue of the focus that you took in this book? Well, it's just his, his stubbornness is how he didn't, he wouldn't let defeat stop him over and over and over again. I mean, newspapers commented that, you know, he had suffered so many defeats, it would have killed an ordinary man, but, but he somehow he had been so accustomed to suffering and loss in his life that he was able to keep forging on. And it's very striking. He, he, he was absolutely devastated after he lost the election to Stephen Douglas in 1858. And he, he, he said, well, that's it for me in politics. You know, I'm finished. But maybe people will remember me for what I said in those debates. Of course, if he had not won this nomination, Lincoln would be a forgotten figure, I think, in American history, which is amazing when you think of it. But he very doggedly kept on. You know, you learn things about Lincoln just studying his past. I mean, I think it was deeply traumatized as a child when he lost his mother when he was nine years old to the sort of freak illness. She drank the milk of this cow who had eaten that had eaten a poisonous plant. And it's, I mean, one of the odds of that. And, and he just, he was so devastated by that he lost his sister. So he was very depressed during his life, very, very. And he sort of had the two modes, people said he was either depressed or he was telling a story and his whole face lit up. And he just was overjoyed at making people laugh. And this is a very strange character. He's not, he's, he's, he doesn't open his heart to anyone. He's very self-enclosed. He's in this terrible marriage with a, with an abusive spouse. But she's the one who believes in him and pushes him onto the presidency. So there's all these different strains of Lincoln. But the thing that really pushed Lincoln, as I mentioned, was he had this rock solid support from Illinois. And that was earned over decades of him going from town to town. People like respected his intelligence. They respected his sense of fairness. They thought this guy is really remarkable. He won't, he won't betray us. And Lincoln even, even Lincoln just kept on trying and trying. I mean, his law partner said his, his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest. And he, he was deeply ambitious, but he also profoundly cared about moving this country away away from slavery, putting it on a path to slavery's ultimate destruction. He wasn't an abolitionist. He didn't want to kill slavery immediately because he thought it would destroy the country. But he, he kept on working with the party, trying to get them to focus on one issue, which is stopping the spread of slavery. And then all these minor petty disagreements try to set those aside. And he was really strong that way. So a lot of Americans seem to have responded to this array of characteristics that Lincoln brought to the table. One I would just want to ask you about is the sense of humor, something that you, you really, you really highlight. Was that sort of on display publicly for, for people to see, you know, was that part of his, his appeal, not just to his circle of friends, but, you know, to the electorate more generally? Yeah, he would tell jokes all over the place. And people, some people loved him for it. Some people thought it was outrageous. I mean, there was a reporter named Henry Villard, who was a German American. And he thought Lincoln's great, except for these horrible, dirty stories he tells, he's, this really brings down his character, drags down his character. But Lincoln just, he, you know, David Davis, I think, or, or Herndon, his law partners said Lincoln would have to tell these stories or his heart would break. He was so overcome with stress and disappointment throughout his life, that he told these stories to sort of ward off disappointment. And the stories also functioned a different way. I mean, people love hearing stories, they love hearing jokes, so they liked him for that. But he also was able to sort of calm down political disagreements and feelings of bitterness by telling a funny joke that sort of got to the point of the disagreements without insulting the person. And he's, he's almost like Jesus telling parables. He, he gets to the point in very, in a very memorable way by telling jokes about it. So that, I think that helped his career quite, quite amazingly. Talk a little more about Lincoln's attitude toward the all-important issue of slavery. How would you characterize his stance around the time of, of the convention? Well, he was, he was a liberal in terms of where America stood at the time, but he was really a moderate. He, he believed slavery had to continue in the states where it existed under the Constitution. And he believed any attempt to threaten the southern states with removing slavery would precipitate civil war or secession or really drag the country down. And so he, he thought what we have to do is stop slavery from spreading to the territories, make it clear it had to end here. And he believed that's something the founders had done themselves when they, they passed something with the Northwest Ordinance, which banned slavery from a large portion of the, the northern Midwest. And so that was his position. He, he thought he was in, you know, that the Democrats tried to present the Republicans these horrible radicals, but he said this is a position the founders took. And he famously said this nation's going to be all slave or all free, a house divided against itself cannot stand. He believed that the slave, the money and the power behind slavery was getting so extreme that it would threaten the freedom of everyone. And he was very concerned about that. He really thought the country would go all slavery or all free. And he wanted it to be free. He was appalled that he believed so strongly in the American founding and the ideals of the declaration. And that was his load star. And he, and he, he thought this slavery presented itself to the world as making a mockery of the founding principles of freedom. And so he wanted, he desperately wanted this country to make a moral statement, slavery is wrong and prevent it from spreading and move on from there. And eventually he thought it would die just because it morally couldn't survive in a country founded on principles of freedom. Yeah. Yeah, it seems to me you make such an important and interesting point in suggesting that Lincoln was really in some ways a conservative, right? Hardly the radical that his opponents sometimes claimed because he was the one who was hearkening back to the founding principles, especially in the declaration exactly as you say. Yes. But, but of course, the South Vutum is just a wacko because they said that you shouldn't even be discussing slavery. That presents a threat to our whole constitutional republic. So they're very strong. Now, what about, what about Seward? You've given us a little bit of insight about Seward, but let's go back to him and talk a little more about what was it that made him such a formidable figure going into 1860? He was smart. He was articulate. He said things people remembered that stuck in people's minds. He spoke of an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery, which is pretty much what Lincoln said. But Seward's comment got all over the newspapers. Lincoln's House divided speech was much less covered around the country. And Seward was considered, you know, this, this brave, articulate, forceful man who would was fighting slavery as hard as anybody in the political system. I mean, he wasn't an outright abolitionist like Lincoln. He didn't, he didn't want to tear it down where it existed. But so he was considered really the leading figure in the country. And he was from New York, which was then the most populous and powerful state. Lincoln was a little out of the way in Illinois. So Seward was a very strong figure in the party, revered people, people, you know, when he cut back from his European tour, people mobbed him. I described this in the book and they, they, you know, just begged him to run for president. And he intended to do that. One of the reasons I love talking about these pivotal elections in American history is that there's always this really interesting counterfactual and there's a kind of unfair question in some ways to, to, to lob at a historian like you. But let me, let me try it anyway. What would have happened if Seward had been the nominee? How would the story be different through the 1860s with President Seward? Yeah, I have a lot of admiration for Seward. But one reason I call this the Lincoln miracle was because if I believe, if Lincoln had not been nominated, if I believe anyone else had been nominated at that convention, this country would have broken apart. I don't think Seward had the unique set of skills Lincoln had to deal with that crisis. I mean, who else but Lincoln could keep this country together through the Civil War, which was just an unbelievably tragic situation. I mean, 750,000 people died. People were just horrified America, but Lincoln had these incredible skills. He had an ability to speak to the people and this ringing language that nobody else possessed. He had this sort of ability to handle disappointment and defeat that other would have broken other people. He had this real sense of pragmatism, what he could achieve and what he couldn't. He was able to deal with difficult people, unlike anybody else. I guess from his marriage, he got a lot of training. Just a billion things that he was uniquely well suited to get this country through that crisis. One of the great things he was was he plugged into the political feelings of the American people better than anyone else in that era. He would make time every day to meet with people coming into the White House off the street and he did that as President-Elect too. He had regular meetings, open meetings at the station house when he was President-Elect and people could just come in and talk to him and these are the ways he figured out this is how people feel. He had political advisors all around the country writing to him constantly and he really knew exactly when, for instance, to push for emancipation, when he could get away with it and when he couldn't. I don't think these other candidates would have had this kind of brilliant ability to figure out a timetable for doing these things. Your book, of course, deals in a very detailed, compelling way with the convention those few days in Chicago. But just to round out the story here and take us forward to the election itself, was it more or less a sure thing that whoever the Republican nominee was was going to win because of divisions in the Democratic Party? Is that a fair generalization? Well, it's never a sure thing in politics. As you know, the Democrats did end up splitting between North and South and that really was the direct path to secession. They nominated a Southern candidate, John Brecker-Rich, they nominated a Northern candidate, Stephen Douglas. And so Lincoln was fighting and there was a sort of the remnants of the Whig Party created a new party called the Union Party and they backed in another candidate. So Lincoln was running against three candidates and you could say, well, the Democrats destroyed themselves by splitting up. But actually, if you even add the Democratic votes together as one candidate, Lincoln still would have won the election. He would have won the Electoral College because he was so strong in the North. And this is what really terrified the South, that political power had shifted to the North and they no longer could control the government and they thought their whole way of life was threatened. So and Lincoln did, Lincoln won convincingly in the Electoral College, but because of the split, he had the lowest percentage of the popular vote to this day. Only 39% of the votes went to him and that was more than any other candidate, but it was the least in our history. So you got to understand, Lincoln entered the presidency as this sort of minority president and he had to really rally people to support him. Including, of course, famously people in his own party. So I want to ask you, as we get close to the end of our time together here, about how Lincoln dealt with this formidable array of contenders who thought they, in many cases, were better qualified to be president than Abraham Lincoln. Much has been made of this idea of the team of rivals. So some of these folks found themselves, found their way into Lincoln's cabinet, including none other than Seward himself. How did Lincoln deal with them and maybe just as importantly, how did they deal with Lincoln? Yeah. Well, Seward, Chase, Bates, all these people entered the cabinet and they disagreed with each other. They disagreed with Lincoln. There was a famous portrait of the cabinet painted about the Emancipation Proclamation and Mary Lincoln took a look at it and said, oh, the happy family, which very sarcastically because they were all at each other's throats during his whole presidency. Lincoln had this ability to deal with people and put them in their place without insulting them. It's just extraordinary. I mean, Seward's the classic case. Seward thought, the Seward people thought, how can they nominate this uneducated buffoon to be president over me? I mean, he was the former governor of New York, a U.S. senator. And so he entered the, he refused to meet with Lincoln. Finally, he grudgingly met with Lincoln on a train during the campaign, but he really entered. Lincoln made him Secretary of State, which was the top cabinet position. And Seward entered thinking, I'm going to run this administration because Lincoln's so weak. And it turned out he very quickly came to understand Lincoln was the best of them all. He was an incredible chief executive and he wrote to his wife in June, 1861. He's the best of us all. And I think that says so much about Seward and Lincoln. Seward was willing to put aside his ego to serve Lincoln once he understood how good Lincoln was. And Lincoln didn't take offense at Seward's initial efforts to topple him. He turned Seward into his greatest ally and his greatest advisor during the war. And Seward ended up being absolutely essential to Lincoln's ability to win that war. And I think that says so much about both men. And a very important Secretary of State. Yes. Let me pause just for one moment to remind people in our audience to please put your questions into the Q&A function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. And I'll turn things over to the Q&A in just one minute. But Ed, let me just pose one more question to you before I yield the floor here. You've made a couple of fairly offhand comments connecting the events of 1860 to the present era of American politics. What are the lessons? What are the implications of the story that you tell that we would be well advised to bear in mind as we head into our pivotal election year? Well, I mean, one thing Lincoln showed was don't judge a book by its cover necessarily. You've got to, sometimes these candidates, you expect them to be foos, but they turn out to be something other than that. So the other thing is that you can always, there's always a miracle. I mean, this not always, but in American history, just when things seem darkest, something like Lincoln emerges, all during the Revolutionary War, there were just terrible defeats and disasters. And then these almost miraculous changes help propel the country to victory. So this, you can always hope, there's always hope up there, even however bleak it seems. And I think Lincoln also makes the case that this country is founded on freedom. It's founded on the ability of the people to decide their fate. So that's what we should always stick to. We should try to create a country in which the people are sovereign. And in which the declaration is sort of our guiding light, everybody should be treated equal. And we're all, we all have divine rights that no government can take away. So I would hope the lesson of Lincoln would leave us with that. Beautifully put, Ed Acorn, thank you so much. I have so enjoyed this conversation with you. Congratulations again on the Lincoln Miracle inside the Republican Convention that changed history, a really fantastic read. Ed, I'm going to drop off and reluctantly cede the floor to Sarah McCracken, who will throw a few more questions at you that come from the audience. So thanks again, everyone, for being here. Really appreciate it. Hello, Ed. Hello, Sarah. Been fascinating so far and grateful to get to ask you some questions on behalf of our audience here today. The first one is, how did his campaign signal how he would later govern as president? Well, the, you know, the, the platform of the party was a crucial thing back in those days. And there was a lot of, you know, people don't care about it now, but there was tons of attention paid to that. And the platform was essentially created around approaches Lincoln wanted to take, especially limiting the spread of slavery. And that's the, that was the key point in the platform he felt he had to defend as president. And that created the whole terror in the South and the movement for succession, which actually happened before even took office, a number of states seceded in the South. So that was in, in, you know, there's a lot of marching in the country by a group called the wide awakes, which were young men, sort of almost paramilitary figures, but they carried torches, flaming torches and marched at night. And they said, it's, you know, that we've got to have a change in this country, the young people have to take over a new approach. And that sustained Lincoln through the election too. There's another question, a related question. How, or about slavery, how did Lincoln come around on the issue of slavery from one who only opposed expanding slavery in newly formed states, but didn't propose abolishing slavery in southern states to someone who would eventually sign the emancipation proclamation? Well, he, he was driven to that position by the war. I mean, he was, he was president of a country that had split up and then the North had to conquer the South in order to preserve the union. And as the war went on, it became clear and clear, this wasn't going to happen unless slavery was, was directly attacked. The only way to save the union was to free the slaves and actually enlist former slaves in the union army. And Lincoln, Lincoln did this at the last possible moment, I think, because it was so politically unpopular, but he absolutely needed this as a weapon of the war and that's how he justified it. So he issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863, and that freed the slaves in this, in the areas where they were in rebellion against the United States. And of course you could say that, well, that doesn't free anyone, but it did send a message throughout the world and to the South that this war is now a war for freedom or slavery and slaves escaped and joined the union ranks. And they turned the tide of the war on, on convinced over a hundred thousand black soldiers, they were incredibly important in winning that war. So I don't know if that answers it, but it's, it was definitely a war necessity. It was, Lincoln hoped, Lincoln thought the only way to keep the country together was to reassure the South that we would not attack slavery. But when it became so apparent this war was going to go on, he had to resort to that measure and it was a war measure and he absolutely insisted that they were forever free once they were emancipated. And he, that was the real reason he was desperate to be reelected. He wanted to keep that promise. This is a question from Anita. She says, deja vu with vicious partisanship tearing apart America, the fierce battles raging over racism and slavery, but concerns about racism and the shame of slavery seem to forget or ignore our history of oppression of the native or indigenous peoples in this country. What would Lincoln say? Well, Lincoln thought the treatment of Native Americans was as bad as slavery. So he would, he thought it was basically a terrible thing, but he, this was not at the, this was not the front burner during the Civil War. I mean, he, he was slavery and the war effort itself or what he was deeply concerned with. So he did not really, I mean, there's, there's issues involving his role in, in allowing the execution of some Native Americans to go forward, but that wasn't really a central concern of his during that war. We have a couple of questions about Mary Todd Lincoln. I know you referenced her briefly and her, her influence on Lincoln. Tell us a little bit more about her and how she might be compared to other presidential wives who are a force in their husband's political careers. She, she's a very interesting character because I, I think their very true relationship actually led to him spending six months out on the road. When he was a lawyer and that built his political support. So if he had had a perfectly happy home situation, he might not have gone out and become so political. The other thing was she believed in him more than anybody. She, she thought he'd be president someday very early on. And he told a reporter in 1858 that, you know, I, I, you know, it took me a long time to accept that I could be a really first level senator. And he said, my wife thinks I'm suitable for the presidency. And he said, imagine a sucker like me for president. He just burst out laughing, but she did believe in him. She, she pushed him forward. She wouldn't let him go back. He was thinking of going back into the legislature. He was actually elected to go back in the state legislature. And she said, no, you've been a congressman. You've got to move forward. You've got to be a senator or you've got to be president. And even during this convention, there was talk of Lincoln being vice president. And there was a, I write about this in the book a little, they, they had a dinner in supper in Springfield with a friend and they were talking about this. And she said, you're not, you're not accepting the vice presidency. You have to be president. So she was, she was really pushed him forward. He wouldn't have been president without her, I believe. But she was also a lot of trouble. I mean, as, as president, he had great difficulty because she was doing semi corrupt things. And she had a real emotional problems. And that made it very difficult for him as president. So it's, and of course, she's the one of the most tragic figures of all time. She lost two children in childhood. She lost a third as a teenager. And she's our husband shot to shot in front of her. So, you know, I have a lot of sympathy for Mary Todd Lincoln. Thank you. You talked about patronage. What were the principal motives driving Thurlow Weed and his tireless support for Seward and Judge Davis and his circulate and effort to nominate Lincoln? Was it shared values, access to power, friendship, personal gain, other? I think in the case of both of them, I mean, Thurlow Weed was famously interested in patronage and building political alliances and getting power and so forth. But I think he genuinely believed Seward was one of the great men in American history. And he had spent his whole career basically supporting Seward and moving him forward, as first as governor and then as senator. And I think Davis similarly believed Lincoln was a great man who deserved the presidency. And they both, I think they both acted in Chicago, not so much for personal patronage, but to use patronage as a weapon to get their guy into the White House. Someone asked, what was Lincoln's role in the selection of his vice president? Lincoln's, this is so interesting about 19th century conventions. Lincoln's role was zero. He had nothing to do with Hannibal Hamlin chosen as vice president. What happened was Lincoln had been nominated and the New York faction, which was very important in the Republican party, was just devastated. And they thought this convention is a joke. I mean, how dare they nominate this rail splitter over Seward? So they were just furious. And the rest of the party thought, oh, God, we got to play Kate New York to bring this party together so we can win in November. And they first tried to enlist some New Yorkers to be vice president. And they all refused. They said, we're not going to put our stamp of approval on this ridiculous convention. So finally, they went with this guy from Maine, who was a Seward supporter. He was a former Democrat. Lincoln was a former Whig. So that provided some balance. He was a senator in Washington. Lincoln was an outsider. So it was sort of insider outsider. He was from the east. Lincoln was from the Midwest. So that sort of provided some balance. And people were just shocked, though, because they had never heard of him, even though he was a US senator. I mean, very few people had heard of him. And he found out about it in Washington. He was playing cards that night. And there was banging on his door. And he opened the door. And they said, congratulations, Mr. Vice President. He said, what are you talking about? And they said, oh, you've been nominated vice president for the Republican party. And he said, but I don't want the job. And they had to sort of pressure him to take it. And he was Lincoln's vice president during the first term. We might have been better off if he was vice president during the second term, but Andrew Johnson was. But Lincoln had nothing to do with it. So wild. This question is from Anne. She asks, protective tariffs helped the northern industries, but hurt southern exports. That was also an economic cause of the Civil War. What was the Republican party's position on this? Yeah, Lincoln was that was one of the things Lincoln sent his supporters into the convention with saying, well, I'll go along with moderate tariffs, but don't push this issue. It shouldn't be a central issue. But it was a central issue to sort of the middle states like Pennsylvania, especially. And so the Republicans passed a tariff, just sort of, but it was wishy washy language in the platform. But that was a very contentious issue with the South. And that's one of the reasons the South very greatly feared a Republican president because they had lost their power to control Congress. The Republicans in the North had become more powerful than the South. And they were very afraid that they their whole economy would be gradually crushed by Northern tariffs. So that was, you know, it was one of the issues of the campaign, but it wasn't one that Lincoln was very concerned about. He was always concerned about slavery. He thought that was the key issue. Thank you. This question is, did Lincoln in reality have a quiet, burning ambition for the presidency that was maybe masked by his self-effacing folksy manner? That's a great question. I think so. I think he was very ambitious. I mean, he I think he didn't quite perceive himself as presidential material until very late in the process, but he kept pushing forward. He kept, he pushed the party into a position where it was focusing on the issue he thought was most important, which was the territorial question. And he, you know, it's very strange. He never really announced for the presidency. He, but he told a senator from Illinois very early in 1860, well, the taste is in my mouth a little. And that's that was essentially his announcement for the presidency. And he, but I think he really had a burning ambition to, I mean, to to have as much political power as possible to fight the slavery question. And he clearly greatly desired to be president when, when this came down. But he, you know, he's so strange. He doesn't show emotion when, you know, like he didn't jump around and they carry on when he was, when he found out he was nominated president, he just said, oh, I got to go home. There's a little lady there wants to hear this news. And that's, and that was about as excited as he got. You or Mark mentioned at the top that there are more than 19,000 books written about Lincoln. Are there any others you would recommend for further reading and feel free to tell us about your other book on Lincoln as well. Oh boy. Well, my other, my other book is every drop of blood, which is about the second inauguration. And basically it's 24 hours in the life of Lincoln in the nation around that's that speech, you know, there's this famous speech with, with malice toward none with charity for all. And I saw I look at different people were intersecting with him that day. Walt Whitman was covering it for the New York Times. And Frederick Douglass, the great black leader was standing there listening to the speech and later discussed it with Lincoln at the White House. And John Wilkes Booth was there stalking Lincoln, and I think planned to kill him that day, but he didn't succeed. So there's, so I, I talk about the, you know, the terrible suffering of the Civil War through the, through the prism of that one day. And that that did very well. I think people liked that book. So many great Lincoln books. I probably would offend everybody, but one of my heroes is this guy, Douglas Wilson, who's won the Lincoln Prize twice. He's written a number of just absolutely suburb books about Lincoln. And there's so many others. I'm probably going to offend all my friends by not pulling them up off the top of my head. It's, it's this real bounty of books about Lincoln just because my God, it's, it's such a privilege to spend time with them. I've spent like the last six years day and night with Lincoln talking about him or reading about him or reading what he had written. And I just feel so privileged to have had this experience. Thank you. We do have a few more questions, but I know our time is running out. So I will hand it back over to Bill Barnes, but appreciate your interesting discussion on Lincoln and the, and the Republican convention. Thank you so much, Sarah. Oh, yeah, that was just a wonderful, wonderful afternoon. Thank you. Congratulations again on such a marvelous book. Thank you, Mark and Sarah again for such good work. Many of us in the audience are supporters of Humanities Texas and are members of UT Allen or friends of the LBJ Library. If not, please check us out. Each of these organizations offers a wide variety of outstanding in-person and virtual programs. Information about these organizations and how to contact them is highlighted on our closing slides. And thank you all for tuning in. We will be back next Thursday, February 1 at 4 p.m. for a conversation with historian Nancy Beck Young, the author of Two Sons of the Southwest, Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 battle between liberalism and conservatism. I hope to see you next time and goodbye for now.