 Hello, my name is Ed, my name is Ed Acorn. I'm the author of the new book, The Lincoln Miracle, inside the Republican Convention that changed history. And I'm, I've been a journalist for 41 years I was the former Vice President and editorial pages editor of the Providence Journal. I was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary, and I won the Yankee Quill Award for lifetime service to journalism. So I've been spent a lot of time in journalism before turning to writing history. I've done a lot of research at the National Archives it's a wonderful resource and I hope my fellow citizens take advantage of it. I'd like to share a PowerPoint presentation with you give you some images of the period I'm writing about. Well, that's the new book The Lincoln Miracle, a little bit about my background. I started off in the 19th century baseball history with another side of American culture, which is the great game of baseball. In 1959 and 84 on the left was about the greatest of competitors Hall of Famer, Old Haas Radborne, who won more games in a single season than any picture in history, something players and managers well into the 20th century considered the greatest feat ever in baseball. And he was quite a character. He, according to a relative, he drank a quart of whiskey a day at the peak of his career. And he was so ornery he dressed in the opposing teams locker room, but because he couldn't stand his teammates at times. And he was apparently the first man ever photographed, giving the middle finger. And you might notice what he's doing with his left hand there on the cover. The second book was the summer of beer and whiskey about a crazy early major league, the American Association founded by brewers and immigrants, who saved the game of baseball from going under. And that book is still doing very well I think the title didn't hurt. Of course anyone who wants to write about the most remarkable figure of the 19th century has to be drawn to Abraham Lincoln. It's my extraordinary privilege in recent years to have spent day and night in the company of Abraham Lincoln immersed in his world and his observations. I've written two books now about him. I was trained as an old fashioned journalist to search earnestly for the other side. Excuse me. And I have spent a great deal of time investigating the evidence that Lincoln was a tyrant and a white supremacist. But I found that no matter how hard and relentlessly I focus on Lincoln's flaws and errors. This man's humanity integrity pragmatism and moral courage shine through. And there's a reason he's revered. Lincoln told the story about a woman on horseback in the woods. He waited for her to pass but instead she scrutinized him carefully before saying, Well for land's sake you were the homeliest man I ever saw. Yes madam but I can't help it he replied. No I suppose not she said but you might stay at home. The next story is someone whose training was in daily journalism rather than academia. I've often felt like something of an interloper in the field of Lincoln scholarship. I might have stayed at home to some 18,000 books about Abraham Lincoln have been published more than about any human being other than Jesus Christ. How could I dare at anything to that pile. When he proceed with my 2020 book every drop of blood was my feeling that there was a story about Lincoln that had never been told this way. The story is basically 24 hours in Abraham Lincoln's life from the evening of March 3 1865 through a second inauguration to the evening of March 4 1865. Through which I think we can see in remarkably sharp detail, the monstrous suffering unleashed by the Civil War, and to grasp the ultimate meaning of that war. As Lincoln explained that meaning and what I believe is his greatest and most profound speech is second inaugural address. Directed by the very famous people who kept popping in and out of the story that day, interacting Lincoln and with each other interwoven like a rich tapestry. The great African American leader Frederick Douglass who watched Lincoln deliver his speech and later discussed it with him at a White House reception. The popular actor John Wilkes Booth, who stocked Lincoln at the inauguration, the great American poet Walt Whitman, who covered the inaugural events for the New York Times. And the angel of the battlefield Clara Barton spent that week trying to meet with Lincoln, and finally greeted him at the reception. And of course the Vice President elect Andrew Johnson, who showed up at the inauguration embarrassingly drunk. The perspectives of these very different people provide a powerful and moving view of what this war was about. And what Lincoln was up against on that rainy muddy day in Washington. And I tried to weave them all into the story. At the center of it all of course is Abraham Lincoln, who can be seen standing in the middle of this crowd reading his speech, just above the table with the glass of water on it. It was something that day that no other politician would on the cusp of victory after four years of a brutal divisive and widely despised war. He declined to make a speech about the Union's impending triumph. Instead he argued that both sides have been wrong. He argued that both sides had shared might have been the price required for ending the terrible moral wrong of slavery. That speech is pure Lincoln brief moving unbelievably profound sonorous with the language of Shakespeare and the King James Bible and steeped in a biblical understanding of the shortcomings of human beings. All of the misery, the forever forlorn mothers, the maimed men writhing on the battlefield and suffering in hospitals, the murder of black prisoners and the starvation of white ones. The brutal insult of Sherman's March, leaving a gaping wound across the south, the hunger and deprivation on the home front, the wretched refugee camps filled with escaped slaves with no means of support or education. Lincoln argued after all that that it was time for Americans to stop thinking about self righteousness. The only way forward he argued was to recognize that all had been wrong to sacrifice hatred and vengeance and to treat each other with mercy with malice toward none with charity for all. I think that a very narrow focus on a historical event can give us an understanding that the usual omniscient historical view cannot. We have, we read history in a strange way because we know what happens inevitably that shapes our perception of the event. But I think with an approach of looking very intensely at very short periods. It brings us very close to the ground, instead of viewing everything from 30,000 feet up. In the course of one day historical figures almost magically become flesh and blood real human beings subject to emotions and other vicissitudes including the politics of the moment becomes clearer they were groping in the dark and had no idea how things would turn out, just like us. With this force perspective, we also get a stronger sense of how everything looked sounded and smelled. I adopted this approach, which some call micro history and my new book, the Lincoln miracle just out a week in the last week. In that book we go back five years before that inauguration to one week in Chicago in May 1860. The nation was divided by bitter hatred and partisanship. At the time many northerners were fed up with the political bullying corruption and censorship of the Democrats. Since Democrats that split between north and south and were unable to choose a candidate at their convention in Charleston days earlier. Republicans who gathered in Chicago knew that they had a very real chance to nominate the next president of the United States. But a political struggle that took place that week I do believe constituted a miracle for Lincoln, and for the United States. Lincoln went into this convention as the darkest of dark courses. After all he had lost two elections for the US Senate, and had not held public office in more than a decade. In Illinois paper said of him, Lincoln is undoubtedly the most unfortunate politician that ever attempted to rise in Illinois. In everything he undertakes politically he seems doomed to failure. He has been prostrated enough in his political schemes to have crushed the life out of an ordinary man. Lincoln had almost no formal education, and his country mannerism struck many people as quaint at best. He told dirty jokes. His executive experience was pretty much limited to running a two man law office. Lincoln himself had told people he did not think himself fit for the presidency. Earlier he had declared with roaring laughter. Just think of such a sucker as me as president. In early 1860 when he visited New York City, he struck many people as crude. He had trouble deciphering a menu with many dishes in French until a waiter mentioned beans. Lincoln's face brightened and he said, hold on there, bring me beans. I know beans. One famous New York lawyer William M. Everts approached him at his table and Lincoln used a barnyard metaphor to explain how he was getting along with his dinner companion. He introduced me as a Democrat, the companion said, but one so good tempered that he and I could eat out of the same rack without a pole between us. In fact, Lincoln's chances seemed so remote that the leaders of the Republican National Committee approved Chicago as the convention site in part, because they thought it was neutral ground. No serious candidate came from Illinois. The candidates in those days did not show up at the convention, and Lincoln was such a long shot that he contemplated attending. He told a friend he felt like he was too much of a candidate to go and not enough to stay home. In the end, he wisely stayed back in Springfield. In this lithograph center spread of the candidates published on Saturday, May 12 1860 when the book begins, Harper's Weekly played Lincoln's picture on the bottom with the also rands. It's written description of Lincoln was dead last among all the candidates at best people were talking about Lincoln as a possible vice presidential nominee, coming as he did from an important swing state. Front and center with the biggest picture and first and longest write up was the superstar of the Republican Party, the former governor of New York and current US Senator, William Seward. Seward was regarded as the founder and the father of the Republican Party, a bold opponent of slavery and defender of the rights of immigrants. And he was managed by a brilliant political strategist named Thurlow weed, who could make or break senators and presidents. He had more money behind him than any other candidate. Seward had traveled to Europe several months before the convention, where he kept his preparation for the presidency by meeting with world leaders, including Queen Victoria, Pope Pius the ninth and this is Emperor Napoleon, the third. When he returned he was mobbed by Americans who wanted him to be the next president. He was far and away the most popular candidate with the delegates gathering in Chicago, but his strength was deceptive. Again is militant abolitionist John Brown, the previous October Brown had raided a federal armory and plan to provide slaves with guns for a violent insurrection against whites. While Brown was apprehended and hanged the incident infuriated the South and terrified many voters in the north. Many thought all the slavery talk was putting impossible strains on the political system, and threatening to break the nation and to an ignite a violent civil war, and nobody was more famous for anti slavery rhetoric rhetoric than William Seward. The Lincoln had made many of the same points against slavery. He was far less known to the voters. In fact, Seward had openly supported immigrants and was close to Catholic leaders, something that turned off a sizable portion of the Republican base, who feared that rampant immigration was helping Democrats steal elections and destroying America from within. Former members of the American Party often called the know nothing party might well bolt from the Republicans if they nominated Seward. Lincoln's position on immigrants meanwhile was so little known that some people assumed he was a know nothing. In truth, Lincoln despise the movement and like to tell a story about a man who helped with his gardening and Irish immigrant named Patrick. Lincoln asked Pat why he had not been born in America. He said I wanted to be but my mother wouldn't let me. One of the most striking things that quickly became clear in my research was that these men gathered in Chicago were not choosing a candidate on the basis of who would make the best president in a terrible national crisis. The question I had to answer was who would get the most Republicans elected, which meant power jobs and money. The pro Lincoln Chicago press and tribune appealed to this naked self interest and an editorial aimed at arriving delegates. It was more than presidents in the long run it wrote as a means of holding political power. The legislature is a vastly more consequence to particular states than their delegations in Congress. We look to Mr Lincoln to tow constables and General Assembly members into power. The gods help those who help themselves. There was something else going for Lincoln that wasn't immediately apparent to the national press, though he was obscure and had been defeated repeatedly in the political realm. He was well known and well liked in Illinois. For years he had worked the eighth district court circuit in central Illinois going to small towns and making friends with his funny stories and his fairness, kindness and intelligence. He had a team of die hard supporters ready to work themselves to exhaustion for him in Chicago, and they could afford to do it, because the convention was taking place in state that loyalty made all the difference. Early in the convention the chief alternative to Seward appeared to be a Missouri judge named Edward Bates, a conservative man who did not like all this agitation about slavery. Supporters argued he would calm the south and negate all threats of secession, and he had the backing of some powerful forces, including the most influential newspaper editor in the country, Horace Greeley, who was angry at Seward for blocking his political career. Unfortunately for Bates, German immigrants were dead set against him, because he had flirted with a know nothing party. The Senate Germans went so far as to hold their own national convention in Chicago that same week, just down the road from the Republican one, sending a terrifying signal to the delegates. German immigrants made up only a small percentage of Republican voters, but they were enough to sway elections in many northern states. The delegates did not dare go with Bates. I call this book the Lincoln miracle in part because so many things beyond Lincoln's control slotted into place perfectly to advance him. Chicago in 1860 was a powerful symbol of the American spirit of daring and innovation. A few five years earlier it had been a small cluster of primitive cabins around Fort Dearborn on the swampy banks of the Chicago River, but its location turned it overnight into a roaring transportation hub. By 1860 its population it soared to 112,000, making it the nation's ninth largest city. The rail line was dominated by giant grain elevators and it was already connected by more rail lines than any city on the globe. Unfortunately that explosive growth left it overrun by rats and plagued by disease. In 1860 the downtown was in the midst of lifting its buildings with giant corkscrews so that the street level could be raised and sewer pipes buried. The streets were horribly muddy when it rained and horribly dusty when it didn't. The Chicago River had the color and consists consistency of pea soup and stank so badly that women had to cover their noses with handkerchiefs when shopping downtown. This is the wigwam, the site of the convention built of wood thrown up in just six weeks to host the convention. Fitting up to 11,000 people it was the largest indoor auditorium at the time in America. This is inside the inside of the wigwam viewed from the ladies gallery upstairs. This is looking down on the giant stage on the left there where the delegates were sitting in two groups with the press in the middle. Now one of the things a Lincoln supporter did was assign the seating on stage of the delegates to tilt the playing field, he put the solid sewered votes all on one side, but the doubtful ones on the other side. It was easier for the Lincoln forces to negotiate with the swing delegations between votes and almost impossible for the sewered men to reach them. There was no electric amplification back then, but the way the structure was designed with that curved ceiling speakers voices could be heard all over the hall. Ladies got first dibs on seats and parts of this gallery, which made them valuable assets for men trying to get inside. Quickly men began picking up any woman on the street, including washer women school girls and prostitutes and paying them to come inside with them. The man tried to bribe one woman to come with them but she refused, saying she had already entered the wigwam six times before sneaking back outside, and she was afraid she'd be arrested if she tried it again. The decorations you can see here were put up by the ladies of Chicago with gas lights flaring amid evergreens unfinished wood and cloth bunting. The wigwam must have been as historian Bruce cat noted, one of the most dangerous fire traps ever built in America. The manager Thurlow weed there on the left understood crowd psychology and the herd instinct, and he brought thousands of supporters with them by train to Chicago. They led huge parades in the street and filled up the wigwam creating a strong impression of the inevitability of seward's nomination. That was paltry by comparison. It was led by a good friend David Davis, a 300 pound judge who traveled the Central Illinois Judicial Circuit of Lincoln for six months a year. That's him in his delegate card to the convention. When Davis showed up in Chicago he discovered no one was in charge, and the Lincoln campaign was so disorganized. Nobody had even booked a room to serve as its headquarters. Davis took over as Lincoln's manager without any official appointment, and he barely slept the rest of the week. The convention started on a Wednesday on Thursday evening. The delegates had still not settled on an alternative to seward. The manager had won a series of test votes that day, and was poised to win the nomination. When another miracle occurred. The tally sheets for voting had not yet arrived at the podium, and the delegates were so hungry by that point that they decided to adjourn and vote the next day, rather than wait a few minutes. The result of tally sheets seward was not nominated that evening. That gave the Lincoln men more time to defeat him on such slender threads, hang the destiny of nations. The Lincoln men worked hard that night. Judge Davis countered seward's psychological advantages by finding champion shouters and assigning them spaces in the hall for maximum effect Friday. Somebody on the team managed to print counterfeit admission tickets to the wigwam, forging them overnight with the names of Republican officials. After the seward forces staged a final grand parade with marching bands Friday morning. They arrived at the wigwam to find their seats occupied, even though they had tickets. The Lincoln supporters would create an illusion of great strength. Davis had also worked overnight selling cabinet positions and other offices for support. Lincoln sent a message from Springfield warning his supporters to make no deals in his name. Davis told his team, Lincoln ain't here, and don't know what we have to meet. So we will go ahead as if we hadn't heard from him, and he must ratify it. Overnight Davis made deals that he did not know would stick until the actual voting the next day. In fact, he confessed later that he promised some of the same offices to multiple delegations. But the prevaricated somewhat, a friend responded to a story. Prevaricated Davis replied, Prevaricated, we lied like hell. Lincoln was way behind Seward on the first ballot, but with his men inside screaming and the Pennsylvania delegation flipping to Lincoln as promised. Lincoln captured the nomination on the third ballot. He astounded many people in the hall, never mind the nation outside. The political professionals at the wigwam accepted him as the candidate who was as bitterly opposed to slavery as Seward, thus appealing to the party's base, but much less famous, and thus, not as scary to swing voters. In the last few decades, he was not offensive to immigrant voters. So all these things, John Brown, the know nothings, the Germans, the location of the convention, the momentary lack of tally sheets, slotted into place perfectly for Lincoln. The party insiders also knew they could sell Lincoln's classic rags to riches story of lifting himself from a poor childhood in a log cabin. He was known as the rail splitter for having split thousands of rails after he came to Illinois. The Seward supporters were livid to see the nomination stolen away from them. And they blame this man, New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Greeley probably most famous for the phrase go West young man spent the week warning delegates that Seward was too controversial to win. The Seward men thought it was all an act of petty vengeance. Since weed and Seward had refused to make Greeley, Lieutenant Governor of New York, giving the job instead to New York Times editor Henry Raymond. Greeley had a lot of influence with the Republicans, and his timely opposition was another reason the Lincoln miracle happened. After the vote Greeley had the nerve to show up at the New York headquarters where delegates cursed him to his face. Seward's men when reporter wrote accused Greeley of stabbing Seward and say he shall be paid for it. In less than a year he was paid for it. The Seward team got its revenge by blocking Greeley from the US Senate. Even on a good face, he was also devastated, thinking himself far superior to an uneducated and it experienced rail splitter. Before the November election Lincoln invited him repeatedly to visit him in Springfield, and Seward only condescended to stop his train at the station there, while heading to a speech in Chicago. In a second, Lincoln had to wait on the platform for the great man and then fight his way through the crowd to get to Seward inside the railroad car. After Lincoln approached Seward delivered a calculated snub. One reporter noted Seward rose from his seat shook hands with them, introduced him to the ladies and gentlemen in his company, and then without entering into a conversation of even formal courtesy with them, resumed his seat. Like most presidential candidates of the time Lincoln sat out the election, remaining at his house in Springfield, refusing to comment on the crisis engulfing America. He sat face out front to the right of the door, as the massive campaign parade stopped on August 8. He did communicate with an 11 year old girl named Grace Bedell, who advised him to grow whiskers. Your face is so thin she wrote all the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you, and then you would be president. Lincoln listened and grew his famous beard. Whether the whiskers helped or not. He did win the presidency handling in the electoral college, though we captured only 39% of the popular vote, the second smallest percentage of any victor in our nation's history. His name was not even on the ballot in the deep south, though we proved very popular in the north. The delegates who nominated him succeeded in getting their jobs, power and patronage, for the most part. But they had no real idea of Lincoln's greatness of his political brilliance, humanity pragmatism flair for the English language, and powers of endurance that would be crucial to the nation's survival and the end of slavery during the Civil War. The reporter on the scene at the wigwam wrote. They had nominated the plane every day storytelling mirth provoking Lincoln of the hustings, the husk only of the Lincoln of history. It took four fearful years to give the event it's true relations and right proportions. And it was not until the veil was drawn by an assassin's hand that the real Lincoln was revealed. And it concluded that the delegates had been the unconscious instruments of a higher power. So much had to come together perfectly for Lincoln, but I think the word miracle is not an exaggeration. The check here. Don't see any questions here. The meeting chat so. Today. I truly believe this country would not exist today in the shape it, it's in as a unified country if not for what happened at this convention. In fact, it almost didn't happen. It happened just by the narrowest of margins. I think makes it a real miracle. And it's a wonderful thing that our history often America survival is dependent on these very iffy events. I'm very grateful that the delegates in that convention chose this man to be president as I don't think Seward would have been able to keep the country together I don't think any of these other candidates had the powers of endurance that Lincoln did. So, I thank everybody for being here. And I'm very grateful for this opportunity to speak.