 John Avalon, welcome and congratulations on Lincoln and the fight for peace. Thank you, my friend. It's good to see you. You point out in the book, John, that over 16,000 other books have been written about Abraham Lincoln, and yet you say, yet few, if any, have focused on his role as peacemaker. Why did you pursue this angle? My guiding light in writing a book, as you can relate probably, is that you should write the book you want to read. But there's a tendency, especially given I wrote this during the Trump presidency, on nights and weekends, as editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast and as an anchored analyst here at CNN. You know, spending time with Lincoln was a pleasure. It was medicine. But that's not a good enough reason to write a book about a guy. I had found a quote more than a decade before that stuck with me from an unexpected source, an American general who oversaw the occupation of Germany, a guy named Lucius Clay, who was born in Macon, Georgia, 30 years after the Civil War. And he oversaw what is known as the good occupation. And this had been the subject of some interest to me in the wake of the Iraq War. What did we do right in Germany? What did we do right in Japan? And somebody asked Lucius Clay that question. What guided your decisions? And he said, I tried to think what Abraham Lincoln would have done south if he had lived. And that was so unexpected and so profound to me that I became fascinated with, what was Lincoln's plan to win the peace? What was it that was thwarted? And the reason I'd never been written before is because he was assassinated five days after Appomattox. He never got to implement his vision. But as I show in the book, if you look at his speeches, his proclamations, his policies, his letters, his statements to generals, his personal actions and examples, particularly in the last six weeks of his life, he has a very clear idea of how he believes we can win the peace after winning the war. And that's one of his revolutionary insights. If you don't win the peace, you don't really win the war, particularly in a civil war, particularly in a democracy. We have to learn how to live together again. And I distill it to a very simple prescription. Unconditional surrender followed by a magnanimous peace. You start the book off brilliantly with a scene of Lincoln walking into Richmond as the south is about to fall. It's April 4th, 1865. And again, this is written brilliantly, almost cinematically. Lincoln, talk about that day and what it says about our 16th president. You know, Lincoln in the fall of Richmond is one of the most cinematic moments in American history. He chooses to go to Richmond less than two days after the city had fallen. The Confederates abandoned the capital, burnt it behind them. The city's not fully secure yet. It's secured militarily. There's no great military guard to meet President Lincoln when he scrapes his shore in a rowboat. And he arrives with his son, Tad, on the boy's 12th birthday. And it is a moment piled high with risk, high with drama. The city is still burning. Lincoln makes his way uphill from the river. He's recognized by newly liberated slaves. They cluster around him. He makes his way as a crowd gathers around him ever larger, going up the hill. And at one point, one of his guards sees a Confederate man in gray with a rifle tracing his path. He could have been killed at any moment. But it was a moment where he was really connecting with the people. There was a feeling with a force of revelation. And it was where his personal touch is most exhibited. And he ends up making his way to the Confederate White House and sits in Jefferson's Davis' chair and looks out the same windows. And all his actions and statements from that day, which somehow gets short shrift, even in two-volume biographies of Lincoln sometimes, are just weighted with the awareness that he is setting a personal example of magnanimity. There are many stories from that day that stand the test of time. But one of them is as he's going to his boat, the Malvern to spend the night, because he's going to have further negotiations with the few remaining Confederates the next day to talk in terms of peace. And the 29-year-old German immigrant, General Gottfried Weitzel, who is overseeing the occupation of Richmond at the time, who had previously been running the 25th Corps of African-American Union soldiers, asked him who was getting on the boat, how should I treat the rebels now under my command? And Lincoln says, I think we are not likely to find harmony through hatred and resentment. If I were in your place, I'd let him up easy. Let him up easy. But throughout that day, every detail, which I cobbled together from contemporaneous journalists to letters home, to memoirs by Black Union soldiers to really build out. It's not only the first scene, but it's the heart of the book in many respects. That day is one of the most powerful in American history. You are looting John to the danger. Why is he there on that? He doesn't have to be there. Why is he in this seat of Confederacy as the civil war nears its end? He wants to be there. I mean, this is, you know, he's been fighting the war. He's been a wartime president despite being a man of peace. He is at the front lines visiting his generals at a place called City Point, which was the Union headquarters for the last nine months of the war. It's actually south of Richmond, right where the siege of Petersburg was happening. Petersburg being a vital transportation hub for the Confederacy. And what Grant knew is that if he could take Petersburg, Richmond would go. The supply lines would be conscious reminder of how often war is an operational question, as well as one of force, as we sometimes are belatedly reminded. And when he got word, he went there because he'd been recently re-inaugurated, or it's given a second inaugural address. He was exhausted. He was tired. He wanted to get out of Washington. He also felt that if he was on the front lines that maybe, just maybe, he could talk to his generals in person about his vision of winning the peace, meeting on the River Queen in a painting that hangs in the White House to this day bought by Harry Truman in 1947, painting called The Peacemakers. Famous painting where, you know, Lincoln's there in the River Queen, which was the presidential steamship, the time talking to Sherman Grant, Lincoln in the center, and then Admiral Porter. And he says in that meeting and many others, give them the most liberal and honorable terms. So on the one hand, he's saying, you know, he says, let them have their guns to go home and shoot crows with and their horses to plows the field with, plow their fields with. We want them to have, to return to the laws of this nation. So on the one hand, he's setting his generals a message about the kind of peace that he wants to see in terms of surrender, he imagines, which basically Grant, when he writes out the letter of surrender at Appomattox, he's taking dictation from the many times he's spoken to Lincoln in the previous days. But he's also there to encourage the soldiers and the officers to press on. That's part of his rationalization. If he is at the front, he does not think they will lose an opportunity to be aggressive. And this has been a constant theme. It's nothing he worries about with Grant, but it's why he's cycled through five generals before. They were being insufficiently aggressive. So he's at the front lines already. And he finally gets word after visiting Grant in Petersburg the day after it falls, spending an hour and a half with them on a porch of a house that still exists, which now apparently is near to be in being. But he hears, you know, back at city point that Richmond has fallen. And against the advice of obviously the Secretary of War, who sees it as reckless, he says, don't worry about me. I'll watch after myself, but I'm going to Richmond. I want to see Richmond. It was the prize. He's been fighting the Confederacy. But he didn't go in with it with a conquering spirit. There's no triumphalism about Lincoln towards the end of the war. There is instead sort of a big hearted humility. And he walks in. He doesn't arrive at the head of a grand army. He walks in and he shakes hands. And when people follow his feet, he says, do not kneel to me. That's not right. Do not thank me for your freedom. Thank God only. And that moral humility is very characteristic of him. But he got to see Richmond. He was always very concerned about making sure he understood how people were feeling on the ground, feeling of the people. It's one of the reasons he hung out in telegraph offices so he'd get the latest information. But that's different than getting the feel of the people. And that's one of the things he hoped to get Richmond. So in the book's first chapter, you asked the question, what accounts for Lincoln's transformation from an untested prairie lawyer to a wise wartime president? What's your answer? Character and the capacity to grow. I mean, I think it's very clear if anyone's spent any time studying history and you know this, that certainly in presidents, but I think with all people that character is the single most important quality. Character gives you the 3 AM courage. Character says what someone's instincts will be. If they have good character, the country will be fine. If they don't, nothing else really matters. The capacity to grow is also key. And you got to remember, and this is part of the miracle of Lincoln in terms of studying his leadership. He is the most unlikely president for any time, but especially at that time. Here's the country on the verge of civil war. It's a powder keg because of the expansion of slavery. He comes into the presidency representing an upstart third party, Republican Party, the most successful third party of all time. It's a moderate progressive party at that time. It's a big tent party dedicated to opposition of slavery. Lincoln has had precisely one term in Congress well over a decade before. He's been a prairie lawyer for most of the last several years. He's had no executive experience, right? A governor, not a mayor, never run a business. He's got no military experience. The only thing he's been as an honorary captain in a Blackhawk war sort of regimen of volunteers where he jokes the bloodiest fights he saw were with mosquitoes. And so he is the most unlikely figure. He is attacked and demonized and dismissed and disregarded, but it's the combination of character plus a capacity to grow. And I think that's rooted in the essential elemental aspects of his personality. I think we often forget how often someone's politics and policies are reflection of their principles and that's often a reflection of their personality. His personality was defined by empathy and honesty and humor and humility. Those are the critical elements of his character as well. There are some, if you look at his psyche, there are some demons roaming around. Oh yeah. Lincoln has some very dark chapters in his life and he staves off these demons. In fact, he even contemplates suicide at a couple points in his youth. And yet he takes the presidency during the darkest hour in our history. So what sustains him during the course of his presidency? It's a great question. And his personality is defined by sunshine and shadow. One of the constants in Lincoln's life is that he combines opposites. He is known as a storyteller, someone who tells jokes all the time, but that's really a form of self-medication because of his own melancholy qualities which were very defined early on. I think growing up in the prairie alone and the pain, for example, of having to build his mother's coffin when she dies as a boy is searing. But it also adjusts expectations. There's no sense that life is going to be all sweetness and light and that you're guaranteed that. Life is difficult, especially if you want to achieve great things. And Lincoln, I think, develops a sense of emotional discipline because he feels so greatly. His pains are compounded by the fact that he and his wife have a very difficult relationship, particularly after the death of their son Willie in 1862. At the lowest point of the war, he suffers the greatest loss imaginable. And I do think that more than a stoicism, I think there is a deepening of faith that you see. Lincoln is not an orthodox believer. He's not a member of any denomination. But he becomes more religious over the course of his presidency, I think, in part due to the pressures of the presidency and just dealing with the bottomless grief of losing Willie. One of the stories that always struck me as being quite odd is that he was seen several times reading the book of Job for comfort. And he would emerge oddly true. I think because the sense that God has a plan, even if you feel unmoored from all of that, surely God must have a plan. And you see that in his second inaugural address, which is a very Old Testament vision of the Civil War as collective punishment for the original sin of slavery, but ends on that Old New Testament paragraph, New Testament leadership, a roadmap to reconciliation. Also his use of humor, which is so characteristic to him. I think many people have a very graven image of Lincoln. It's what's communicated in the photographs, which are, there's no smiling allowed in those photographs given the shutter speed of the time, but also the Lincoln Memorial itself. Lincoln in fact was a man who spoke in parables. He told stories and jokes all the time to the great annoyance of many of his contemporaries. I mean, you wouldn't believe it. There are these objectively historic moments in history like before he signs the emancipation proclamation. He is reading from a pamphlet of his favorite humorists, whether Artemis Ward or Petroleum V. Nasbi. And it seems inappropriate, but partly what he's doing is he understands that storytelling and humor is a way of communicating to the common people in a way they can understand. So it's a communication strategy. It's a time saver, he says too, because often he's able to explain his position through a story rather than going into great detail. But there's one other story I love about the interplay between that sunshine and shadow of his personality, where it's 1862, that darkest of years. And the Union has just lost a devastating battle. And Lincoln's friend Isaac N. Arnold is a congressman from Illinois. Remember, that's the West then. Goes to the White House to see him. And at the time you could just show up to the White House knocking the door of an official doorman that lets you out. And he found Lincoln sitting by the fireplace. He's reading one of his favorite humorists, Sardimus Ward, and laughing. And Isaac N. Arnold is shocked and he is furious. And he says to his friend, how can you be laughing at a time like this? And Lincoln turns to him, Arnold recounts in his memoirs, with tears welling up in his eyes, throws the book down on the floor and says, don't you know that if I could not find some relief, my heart would break and I could not do this job? And it's moments like that that I think are not only so revealing but oddly comforting. You know, when we understand our presidents, particularly our greatest president, as a human being, we take them off the pedestal. We can look them in the eye. I think we make his wisdom more accessible. We make the lessons of his life more accessible. When we make them too distant and imply false perfection or just an overly simplistic view of who they were, they become more distant and therefore inaccessible. And so moments like that I find, it's gut-wrenching. It's also very revealing to realize that he's using humor as a form of self-medication. And they're definitely less healthy ways to handle that in the grand scheme of things. So I've read innumerable books on Abraham Lincoln. But I've not read a paragraph that so vividly describes Lincoln as the one you write in your introduction, which I'm going to read. He was a man of peace in a time of war, tough-minded but tender-hearted. While spurring his generals to be more aggressive on the battlefield, Lincoln embodied an interpersonal absence of malice. He practiced the politics of the Golden Rule, treating others as he would like to be treated. He did not demonize people he disagreed with, understanding that empathy is the pathway to persuasion. He was uncommonly honest and tried to depolarize bitter debates by using humor, logic, and scripture. Balancing moral courage with moderation, Lincoln believed that decency could be the most practical form of politics. But he also understood that people were more inclined to listen to reason when greeted from a position of strength. From this foundation, Lincoln developed his prescription for peacemaking, unconditional surrender followed by magnanimous peace. That is a brilliant way of capturing Lincoln in my view. But I want to ask you, John, so many leaders, so many U.S. presidents have emulated and channeled Abraham Lincoln. I've interviewed seven presidents, not one of them. One of them would tell me that they didn't look at Abraham Lincoln during the darkest hours of their presidency. I wonder, from the research that you've done, from what you can glean, is there someone that Lincoln looked toward as a model for leadership as he tackled the greatest challenge our country has ever faced? It's a great question, and I really appreciate you highlighting that paragraph. You stumbled upon my favorite paragraph in the book, and no one can say that about their own work, but that was one that I... I always try to get the music right, but I spent a lot of time on that paragraph because it's about so many things. It's about the essence of his personality and his character, how it impacts his leadership style, his principles that flow into his politics and his policies. So thank you for likening that. First of all, I'm also really impressed by the president's little drop in the mic moment before you're there. And I'm sure all of them identify with a subtly different facet of Lincoln because he is so multifaceted. He is this sort of archetypal forever American. And indeed, as I make the case in the book, the arc of his life actually follows a classic hero's journey in the Joseph Campbell sense, which is one of the reasons, I think, for the endurance of his story. But that's... you ask who Lincoln looked to. And I'll answer that in two ways. Part of what's miraculous, impressive, sign of genius in Lincoln is that he is confronting a problem without precedent. There's never been a civil war on this scale before. There's never been a Democratic Republic on this scale before. So unlike even the founders, when they're doing out the Constitution in constitutional convention, they can draw on at least the lessons of ancient Greece and Rome and how republics fell in the past, however distant. And they did. Madison would write up treatises based on books Jefferson sent them from Europe to say, look, here's how ancient Greece and Rome and republics fell. What lessons can we take and how can we build fail safes in the Constitution? That was a process they were consciously engaged in. I wrote about it a bit in my last book, Washington's Well, it's fascinating to me. Lincoln doesn't have that. There's no great leader of a civil war, of a democracy and a civil war on that scale. He basically invents a reconciling leadership. It reflects his personal temperament. He's a moderate temperament. He's a reconciler in time of radicals and reactionaries. And the feedback loop between those two is part of what gets us to civil war. But there is no one person he can draw on, which makes his achievement all the more impressive because so many presidents to your point draw on Lincoln. That said, you can see very clearly that as a young man, being almost entirely self-educated, he was very attached to the Parson-Weems biography of George Washington. Many of the founders were still alive in the early years of his childhood. So there was a sense of communion with the examples of the revolutionary generation. And he spoke about that a lot. There's a speech he gives in Trenton on his way to the presidency where he talks about how even as a boy, he understood there must be something more than common about the courage and sacrifice of the founding father's generation. That America had to stand for something more than itself. He calls Americans, God's almost-chosen people, which is a phrase I love. So I do think that he is drawing on the examples of the founding fathers, particularly the courage and fortitude they show in the war. In those Valley Forge moments, Lincoln crossing the Delaware, those moments of great risk and real perseverance in a sense that America means something more than just itself. We're not a tribal nation. We're based on an idea. And so our patriotism is much more than mere nationalism. So I think he has a sacred relationship with the idea of the Union. So is this a uniquely American form of leadership that Lincoln is manifesting during the course of his presidency? No. It goes on to inspire leaders around the world. That's one of the extraordinary things. And actually there's a long list of particularly Nobel Peace Prize winners who cite Lincoln. His leadership, when Nelson Mandela died, his biographer in Africa wrote a obituary for him called Africa's Lincoln. And he made the point that both Lincoln and Mandela did the most difficult thing that most politicians don't do. Most politicians divide in order to conquer. They pit tribes against tribes. They use the old calling card of us against them. It's a very cheap shortcut, leadership, because it's easy to galvanize people against their fellow citizens in some way, shape, or form. You can blame other people. You can become a leader of a tribe. But of course, particularly that old demagogic trick is particularly deadly to a democracy. And what he said Lincoln and Mandela both did was to focus not on what divided people, but focused on what united them, their common humanity. They tried to lift everybody up and make a divided system whole and consistent, which is one of the definitions of reconciliation. And so you look back and you see Mahatma Gandhi praising Lincoln. And particularly what inspires foreign observers of Lincoln. By the way, Willie Brandt and Martin Luther King go on and on. It's not just that he ended slavery and helped the nation move closer to its founding ideal. A more perfect union, something we don't arrive at. But that he extended his hands out to the fellow citizens he defeated. That was actually in many people's eyes one of his greatest achievements. And it's the one we spend the least time talking about or thinking about in the United States these days, it seems to me. Because it goes against all the human instincts. The cycle of vengeance is difficult because it is naturally occurring within human nature. It's far more difficult as a leader to think long term. And that was part of his genius. He is able to look beyond the cycle of violence and vengeance. And imagine a future that's not predetermined by the pain of the past or the present. And then, except the leadership, to steer us toward that horizon of reconciliation. That's remarkable. Because it's so unusual that it so stood out and inspired leaders around the world. So what was Lincoln's vision for reconstruction? He saw the war to its end. Through his inexorable resolve we conquer the Confederacy. We make our nation whole. But what was his vision going forward? Well, let's start with that and then we'll talk about what went awry. There's a lot to talk about there. I don't think we can talk about studying reconstruction in the opposite society. But his vision of reconstruction was practical and non-ideological. But he had certain principles he wanted to guide us. It's very characteristic of Lincoln, by the way. He focuses on great goals for which he is going to be inflexible. He calls them, in many cases, in two occasions where he's negotiating with Confederates. He writes three indispensable conditions down on a piece of paper. So there's no compromise on those. This is totally negotiable. He's going to be enormously flexible in everything else. It's characteristic of the way he thinks about leadership. We're going to get the big things done. How we get there, that'll change. I'm willing to be very flexible, liberal, as he would say. Part of what it is, is that he believes the rank-and-file rebels have been misled. And he's willing and says early on that he wants to give them amnesty. He does not want to be nearly as lenient on the people who misled them, the people who ought to know better. These are the Confederate leaders, the members of Congress and the courts, and the military who left the Union to join the Confederacy, to join the rebellion. He doesn't want them to be able to claw back their power and their privilege and their property quite so fast. On the other hand, he doesn't want to execute them, which is the traditional punishment for treason. He also wants to move black and white Americans. He says over time, and he knows this will take time, towards living themselves out of their old relations with one another. And he wants to move blacks towards not just the rights determined in the 13th and then 14th and later the 15th Amendment, all of which he imagined, but begin on a state-by-state basis. He's actually his very Federalist vision for reconstruction as long as certain conditions are met, part of which is the ratification of the 13th Amendment, ending slavery, and then moving towards voting rights for African-Americans beginning with veterans and what he calls the very educated. He knows it's going to be a process. It's going to take time. But he's thinking in very concrete ways about this early in the war, and he's thinking about it, not just in terms of securing military gains so that you don't have a vacuum of power so vigilantes don't come up. You've got to establish law and order. He's a lawyer after all. But political reform, right? Removing the root cause of slavery, a root cause of the war, which is slavery. You know, he understands, and this is why one of his indispensable conditions is no ceasefire before surrender. If he gives a ceasefire before surrender, he's afraid the country will backslide on its commitment to ending slavery, and then the war will reignite. He says, nobody wants peace more than I, but I'm unwilling to have a peace if on the terms in which it's achieved, would only guarantee more war. He's thinking about economic expansion. He works with Republicans in Congress to pass very ambitious, far-reaching economic agenda in 1862. Again, the darkest year of the war with an eye towards creating conditions for an economic expansion when the war ends that would move the nation's attention west. Take some of the north-south polarization and the irritant out of things. Move everybody west. And in doing so, to create a sense of optimism about a shared prosperous future. And finally, the most difficult bit is the immigration. And that's why he's thinking on a very granular local level. He doesn't want to top down heavy reconstruction. He understands that ultimately that kind of healing is going to have to occur on a community level. And so while the federal government can establish structures and rules in place, ultimately that's the living out of the old relations with one another that has to occur. And that's got to happen on a local level, not a top-down level in his eyes. You know, his vice president, who you call the anti-Lincoln, Andrew Johnson. Lincoln's first vice president during his first term is Hannibal Hamlin. He's an abolitionist senator from New England. But in his second term, he drops Hamlin from the ticket and he picks up Andrew Johnson. Who is Andrew Johnson and what is his impact on reconstruction? Remember how we were talking about how character is the most important quality character. Character is destiny is the Greek sin. Character is destiny eventually. You know, Andrew Johnson is, first we should say that Lincoln picking Johnson on a political level is pretty inspired. Right? The reason he picks Hannibal Hamlin early on is that he's from the West Illinois. He wants someone from the East, Maine. And you know, Hamlin as vice presidents didn't participate in the cabinet meetings. They didn't participate in the function of the executive government. So Hannibal Hamlin was in Maine most of the war. But Johnson to his credit is the only southern senator who doesn't secede with his state. Right? It's a pretty big deal. He knew Johnson from their one term in Congress. Johnson came from humble beginnings which he was sort of obsessed with, but they shared that in common. And here he was able to run for reelection by rebranding the National Union party. And actually if you look behind me there, I have a little poster from the National Union party there. Because I love that. And he's got a Democrat as his vice president. So this really is a National Unity ticket. No president's ever been assassinated before. And so even though Lincoln's getting death threats all the time and he's pretty fatalistic about it, it doesn't, I think, adequately occurred to him that he could be selecting a successor. Ironically, the radical Republicans thought Johnson was their guy. They thought Lincoln was going to be too lenient to the South and Johnson would be tougher. Lincoln's assassinated. And all his effort to create a magnanimous piece is dashed, right? The pendulum starts swinging back towards vengeance again. And some leading confederates recognize that. General Johnson says when he surrenders to Sherman a few days later when he hears about it, he says, my God, the South just lost the best friend it had. That was not an uncommon attitude. That's not to say there weren't plenty of southerners writing in their diaries that the tyrant got what he deserved because they did. But there was a sense from people who had a larger perspective that this was going to be bad for the country and bad for the South than it was. But they didn't expect what they were getting with Johnson. He is he is alternately radical and reactionary. He is not a reconciler. He is erratic. He is thin-skinned. I found a quote from the Atlantic Monthly at the time which describes him as being egotistic to the point of mental disease. Which, you know, many people say sounds reminiscent. And he does things once he starts getting into his groove that clearly are a departure with Lincoln, even though he always says I'm trying to pursue what Lincoln would have done in 1863. Well, first of all, Lincoln in 1863 is not Lincoln in 1865. Second of all, Lincoln he's undoing things that Lincoln clearly would have supported. I mean, he starts by trying to dismantle the Friedman's Bureau, which is an incredibly important sort of public-private initiative under the auspices of the Defense Department to help move people from slavery to self-sufficiency and to take care of refugees in the wake of the Civil War. He just wants to dismantle it. He vetoes civil rights acts that Lincoln never would have done. He acquiesces to the creation of the Black Codes which are basically slavery without the chains. So ex-Confederates start running local local running and getting control of political office. And one of them in Mississippi, a former Brigadier General says, look, we have to accept the end of slavery but that doesn't mean we have to accept equality. And they start passing laws to fundamentally restrict the freedom in every sense of the newly freed slaves, the formerly enslaved Americans of African descent as one of my favorite journalists, Thomas Morris Chester writes the time. Black correspondent for the Philadelphia Press and the White House. He betrays the ideal of reconciliation and Lincoln's vision of Reconstruction. And it gets the nation often precisely the wrong path because the radical Republicans then overreact. He pulls black troops from the south for fear of offending the Southerners. Well, then radical Republicans send more troops back to the south increasing resentments. Well, it just sends us careening off in a horrible direction and it is rooted in the fact that he is bitter and resentful and he ends up basically giving blanket, you know, first writing a whole bunch of amnesties for powerful ex-Confederates and then giving blanket partners for ex-Confederates. So he is a destructive president when it comes to certainly the legacy of emancipation and reenacting the nation. Section 5 of your book is talks about the evolution of Reconstruction in three different acts. You've started the first act with the Andrew Johnson presidency but take us through the trajectory of Reconstruction. So, you know, President Ulysses S. Grant who has the benefit of hearing and really internalizing Lincoln's vision for how you went a piece early on becomes president after Johnson. So, you know, he has a lot of campaigns on a slogan of let us have peace. And in his inaugural, you know, Grant's presidency often has historically gotten sort of short shrift from historians although it's beginning to make a rebound particularly his first term and deservedly so. I mean, one of the things he does in his first inaugural which he wrote himself was call for the passage of the 15th Amendment. You know, that's a pretty courageous act, you know, at that time. You know, it's a real credit when the KKK and white vigilante groups start terrorizing newly freed black families particularly those who have the temerity to run for office, black legislators. He goes to Congress personally, personally which is very unusual and lobbies for the passage of the Enforcement Acts which is the anti-KKK initiatives that were put in place. And he has the wit and wisdom to a point at a Southern Attorney General taking advantage of a new creation of a new Justice Department. The Attorney General previously had basically been like the White House Counsel. A guy named Amos T. Ackerman who had been a Southerner fought briefly for the Confederacy to be Attorney General to implement those laws, make it a little more just a little more difficult for them to say this was Yankee imperialism. And he consciously reached out to ex-Confederates who were his friends to support his campaign to try to reunite the nation that goes from James Longstreet to Mosby for Mosby's Raiders. And the first incarnation of the KKK actually is crushed. I mean they actually follow Lincoln's dictum even there. The rank and file to witness against the upper crust, they're given amnesty and the top tier of the KKK leaders go spend a decade at a prison near Albany, New York. And other white vigilante groups do emerge, don't get me wrong. But the Ku Klux Klan in its first incarnation is basically snuffed out by those actions. And so that is the brief moment of success. I mean there are black legislators throughout the South serving in Congress, the House and the Senate. We are making too rapid for some people clearly progress towards a multiracial democracy which is consistent with the majoritarian democracy. And one of the things that Reconstruction teaches us in the study of Reconstruction reminds us is that there's been enormous resistance at actual majoritarian and multiracial democracy over the course of our history. Deep. But the economic depression of 1873 really sucks the wind out of citizens enthusiasm for following through on the promise and the premise of Reconstruction. A group called the Redeemers, Democrats start to come back into power and they're calling, you know, even though the South's rebuilding, you know, many of them are calling for cutting taxes and cutting spending in part because they want to defund integrated public institutions. The election of 1876 comes through and Samuel Tilden a Democrat New Yorker, reformer not a opponent of slavery runs on a anti-corruption ticket wins the popular vote. Nobody wins the electoral vote is up in the air because there's a lot of questions. It goes to the month before the days before the inauguration a corrupt bargain is struck where Republicans hold on to the White House for one more term but Reconstruction has ended, troops are pulled and then you have segregation replacing slavery for a century. And what I think is not adequately appreciated often is we date things to that election of 1876 and the corrupt bargain of 1877 which is negotiated at a black socialist hotel, the Wormsley Hotel in Washington. But the court cases that go over decades, ex-Confederate start serving on courts and the Supreme Court certain laws are overturned and then state constitutions are rewritten. And so one of the when we debate sometimes well you know why should we care about accusations of voter intimidation voter suppression, elections of version because of Reconstruction because you can have three constitutional amendments passed and if they're not enforced they don't mean anything. In 1900 I found there are 180,000 registered black voters in the state of Alabama. Two years later there are 3,000 and that entire era of African-American legislators are erased from history. It's just a very sobering reminder of how much enforcing part one rights is absolutely essential because they can take the road. John, there's one inflection point, one point during the course of Reconstruction where we could have pulled together and put our nation on the right course as Lincoln might have wanted. It is a it's an interweaving of factors but if you ask me as I have been asked and it's a difficult question what would Lincoln have done differently which is different than sort of the counter factual histories that some folks want to drag you into that are fun conversations but ultimately kind of useless what I think you can say knowing Lincoln, knowing his policies is that he wouldn't have allowed the freedoms bureau to be dismantled he would have made it more robust and that could have created a landown in class of black farmers that in the long run could have made all the difference in the world I don't think he would have acquiesced to the black codes despite his focus on sort of a federalist vision of Reconstruction because it violated the fundamental promise and premise of the laws that had been passed and that also would have made all the difference in the world and I think he would have done what Grant did with regard to the KKK but he also would have had much more political capital than Andrew Johnson did and one of the things you see and you see this in history and I'm sure you can appreciate this in your own work there are certain windows in history where the cement is not set yet it's a jump ball moment and what happens in those windows has a disproportionate downstream effect and in the spring and early summer of 1865 was one of those moments and Johnson squandered it and let his foot off the gas so to speak with regard to the South White Southerners and that moment in which we could have had a real adjustment of the social contract consistent with treating everyone as individuals worthy of respect was lost and we fell back to group identity and group power politics and the resentments that flow from that and the deep seated races and it was never going to be erased quickly obviously became even more of a powerful cudgel so it's that window that was lost in the spring and summer of 1865 is the real tragedy it seems to be so your last book was Washington's Farewell a lens into the presidency of George Washington through his seminal Farewell address and of course your current book is on Lincoln so you've looked at these two great American presidents who clearly are in the pantheon of Washington or Abraham Lincoln oh man great question well I mean by height very good dodge thank you no I look they are rightly judged together because as is often been said Washington secured our liberty and secured the republic and Lincoln saved it what's more heroic I would argue that defending democracy can be just as heroic as winning it in the first place and that's what Lincoln embodies I think the struggles of Lincoln's time are more relevant to the debates and the fissures in our society today I think the story and this is where you get to being a nation founded on an idea of a tribal identity that kind of a nation depends on stories and a shared history disproportionately because anyone can buy into the story and indeed it needs to be inculcated and the second founding seems to me is a much more inherently unifying narrative more relevant to our times than perhaps the first founding is what also strikes me is the similar qualities they have are different neither is a formal education Lincoln is by far the better writer and thinker Washington's strength was judgment and a military bearing that mask command but both men also even though Lincoln was a real politician and Washington was not they both had a disinterested sense of the office and civic responsibility and a country over party all the way all the time they were men of deep principle Lincoln is a more engaging character he's a more I think relevant and resonant fellow because Washington was so self-monitoring that he kept himself distant even from his contemporaries in a way that Lincoln did not and Lincoln's speeches are are beautiful it's the poetry of democracy but what strikes me is how many commonalities they have and at the heart of it is this this combination of moral courage and moderation a real focus on uniting the nation not dividing it for political gain a focus on and the mere fact that Lincoln could do that in the middle of a civil war also is a great achievement Washington creates the nation he creates a national character through the force of his character but Lincoln preserves it and extends it and reconciles it to be consistent with our founding ideals so if I had to pick I'd put Lincoln one notch ahead of Washington we do this conversation under the auspices of the National Archives the repository of our nation's history why is it important John for our nation's youth to learn about civics and our history as a nation it's absolutely essential it's completely foundational it's the table stakes for being a self-governing society I mean when in Washington's farewell he talks about how enlightened opinion is essential for a self-governing society that requires education that requires understanding requires a sense of perspective it requires an understanding of the sacred trust you've been given and the institutions that have been handed down to you that you have to hand to the next generation better than we found them and without civic education without understanding of American history I don't think that's possible you're flying blind you're not going to adequately appreciate the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in this kind of country it is mission critical that we tell our story and by the way that's the good the bad and the ugly doesn't mean you need to do a whitewashed, overly sanitized version of history I think that's less interesting certainly less real and less relevant but you should celebrate the great good you should acknowledge the bad and you can talk about the ugly because it reminds us that the past generations were not remotely perfect and being a vigorous citizen means you've got to roll up your sleeves and get involved in a number in your chosen field but also think a little bit bigger about the responsibilities of being a citizen of the republic and helping the nation form a more perfect union and I think that's what civic education and American history and museums that are run by NARA and the civic organization these are places that reinforce the America's civic religion which is a term we don't use very often anymore but it's the sense of firmament that America does stand for something larger than itself and that by communing in these spaces and these places and understanding these people that you get a sense of the legacy that's handed down to us the space in which we operate the civic air in which we breathe and our place in it and it can inspire you to reach higher it can inspire you to play your part to write this chapter this great and sacred opportunity as being a member of We the Living as Lincoln Woods so it could not be more fundamental and I do think that when we have when we have downgraded it or when we have disrespected or when we have cut funding from these basic things in the long run you reap the whirlwind so I think we need to make an added and urgent effort right now to tell our story we've got to make the old stories new again that's part of the process but it's absolutely fundamental to being a Democratic Republic and especially at a time when accurately we are in a global struggle between democracy and autocracy perhaps a perpetual struggle it's even more important that's a perfect note on which to conclude this conversation and the book is Lincoln and the Fight for Peace an old story which is renewed and told brilliantly by my guest John Avalon. John Avalon, thanks so much thank you my friend, be well Mark take care