 Good afternoon. Welcome to the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives. I'm Trevor Plant. Today I'm filling in for David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States. He's under the weather so he called in sick today so he sends his regrets so he couldn't be with you. I'm pleased you could join us whether you're here in this room or participating through Facebook or YouTube. Before we hear from Sidney Blumenthal about the new volume in his biography of Abraham Lincoln, I'd like to alert you to two programs coming up soon in this theater. On Thursday, September 12th at 7.15 p.m., we'll have a program connected to our exhibit, rightfully hers, American Women and the Vote. We'll host a panel discussion to explore the topic African American Women in the Suffrage Movement and the Battle for the Vote. On Monday, September 16th at 7 p.m., Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch will be here to discuss his new book, A Republic If You Can Keep It, which explores the essential aspects of our Constitution and the importance of civic education. Check our website, archives.gov, or sign up at the table outside of the theater to get e-mail updates. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. Another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports the work of the agency, especially the education and outreach programs. Check out their website, archivesfoundation.org to learn more about them and join online. We often accept history as inevitable. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, guided the nation through the Civil War, preserved the Union, and advanced the abolition of slavery. He's regularly placed at the top of best president's list, and we see his image whenever we handle a penny or a $5 bill. The inscription on one of the statues in front of the building tells us to study the past, however, and when we do, we discover that the path of events has seldom certain. Sidney Blumenthal has looked deeply in the historical records and now presents the third volume in his biography of Abraham Lincoln. In the years before his election as president, Lincoln was an unlikely leader. A one-term congressman of ungainly appearance did not seem to be on the path to becoming a highly admired president. Senator Stephen Douglas was the well-known politician from Illinois, not Lincoln, yet the series of debates between the two men during the campaign for the Senate brought Lincoln to national attention. In all the powers of earth, Mr. Blumenthal takes us through the crucial years of 1856 to 1860. It shows us the emergence of the leader who led the United States through its greatest test. Sidney Blumenthal is an acclaimed historian, journalist, author, playwright, and film producer. The first two books in his five volume biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, were a self-made man in wrestling with his angel. The second volume was named one of the 10 best books of 2017 by the Los Angeles Times, and he's received the award of achievement of the prestigious Lincoln group of New York. He was elected a fellow of the Society of American Historians in 2018. He's a former assistant and senior advisor to President Bill Clinton and senior advisor to Hillary Clinton. He's been a national staff reporter for the Washington Post and Washington editor and writer for the New Yorker. He was a senior fellow at the New York University Center for Law and Security, focused on issues of international terrorism and has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 1989. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Sidney Blumenthal. Well, thank you, Trevor, for that kind introduction. I'm delighted to be here at the National Archives, which is a jewel of our nation's history in preserving and disseminating it and providing programs like this to our citizens. So I feel as though it is my privilege and honor to be here. I hope you don't mind if I read a little to you, and then I will look forward to your questions about Lincoln in this period. This is the third volume of a five volume political biography of Abraham Lincoln. I want to thank you for coming here to hear me speak about Lincoln. It's always important to know about Lincoln. And today it is even more urgent. As Lincoln said in his House Divided Speech, if we could first know where we are and whether we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it. So I'm here to talk about this volume of the Lincoln biography. I would not discourage you from reading the first two. Sort of the prequel. This book chronicles the gathering storm that led to Lincoln's election. The House divided the manipulations of demagogues, the appeals to anti-immigrant nativism and racism, a reactionary Supreme Court, a dysfunctional presidency, and the breakup of the old parties. All of these are what Lincoln confronted and hardly unknown subjects from a distant past. Now my talk here today will simplify things, of course. To get the full story, I hope you'll read the book. I'll do my best to give you some version including speaking some of Lincoln's words. What Lincoln had to say sounds fresher and more acute than ever. Now usually when people talk and want to talk about Lincoln, they tend to ask first about movies about Lincoln. There's the Spielberg movie, the John Ford movies, and I just want to say to begin that my favorite Lincoln movie is Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter. The rail splitter with an axe to grind is hard to top. For one thing, the facts are not an issue. No one can challenge them. On the other hand, no other Lincoln film depicts the scale of the menace that Lincoln had to face. And therefore, we come to the question it raises, did Lincoln kill vampires? In fact, it was commonplace among abolitionists to refer to slavery as a vampire. William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist editor in his first anti-slavery speech in Boston on July 4, 1829 called for a crusade to crush the vampire which is feeding upon our life blood. So what did it take to drive a stake into the vampire? Slavery. It took for Lincoln all the powers of earth. It's the title of my new book. That was a phrase of Lincoln's in order to destroy the greatest concentration of wealth and power in the country, the slave power, a phrase even Lincoln used. And according to Lincoln, it controlled all the powers of earth. In order to deal with it, he had to create new instruments of power at every step of his way, from the Illinois Republican Party to the Union Army. If anyone else had rested the Republican nomination in 1860 and found himself in the White House, I believe that it is highly unlikely that the United States and American democracy would have survived. And that slavery would have been struck down. No one else combined Lincoln's political skill, his force of logic and argument, his sense of when to step forward and when to build his strength by not stepping forward prematurely, the clarity of his principles and his subtlety and practicality in achieving them. He had to summon all the powers of earth to save democracy and overthrow slavery on his own. Now, Lincoln begins in virtual obscurity, forgotten after one term in the Congress, roaming county courthouse to the courthouse in the 8th judicial district of central Illinois in the company of an entourage of traveling lawyers, like an itinerant troop of Victorian Shakespearean actors. But instead of reciting the lines of Lincoln's favorite playwright, he is mainly pressing the claims of small debt collectors or defending against them and studying Euclid's geometry by candlelight at night. Suddenly, in 1854, he was, as he said, aroused as he had never been before. His perpetual rival, since he had entered Illinois politics, Stephen A. Douglas, senator of Illinois, a master demagogue who envisioned himself as the living spirit of the age, desperate to win the Democratic presidential nomination, wanted the credit for sponsoring the first transcontinental railroad, which would have to be constructed across the territory of the Great Plains, not yet organized into states. Douglas cut the deal in the Kansas-Nebraska Act with the great southern beasts of the Congress and the administration of Franklin Pierce, who the South also dominated, particularly through his secretary of war. The true acting president of the United States, Jefferson Davis. Back to Douglas, his art of the deal wiped out the Missouri compromise prohibiting slavery above a certain northern latitude and potentially opened the new territory to slavery. He said whether it would be free or slave was up to the settlers. They could have slavery if they wanted. He called it popular sovereignty. Enter Abraham Lincoln. He joined the resistance. Under the pressure of the slavery question, the political parties cracked up. The northern wing of the Democratic Party in the Congress was reduced to a virtual rump in the midterm elections of 1854, giving the South even more sway over the party as a whole. Lincoln still thought of himself as a member of the Whig Party, which had already split north and south with a sizeable section drifting into the anti-immigrant know-nothing party, also known as the American Party. That party's platform demanded that only native-born protestants should hold public office. Lincoln didn't yet join the Republican Party. It was not yet a party. The people calling themselves Republicans in 1854 in Illinois were a small group of radical abolitionists. The Free Soil Party, a broader anti-slavery organization than those calling themselves Republican, had only attracted 6% of the vote in Illinois in the previous presidential election of 1852. In 1855, Lincoln wrote his close friend, Joshua Speed, you inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig, but others say there are no Whigs and that I am an abolitionist. I now do know more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a know-nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring all men are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal except Negroes. When the know-nothings get control, it will read all men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics. When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty. To Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. State by state, the Republican Party organized. A fragile coalition of former Whigs, Democrats, abolitionists, free soilers and some errant know-nothings held together against the extension of slavery at the preliminary meeting for the Illinois party. Lincoln's authority prevented an early collapse by supporting an anti-Natavist resolution. Now it's 1856. Lincoln is on the train to the founding convention of the Illinois Republican Party at Bloomington walking car to car hoping to spot conservative old Whigs. He discovered two and according to a colleague, his face was radiant with happiness. The convention opens on May 29th, 1856. Consider this span of ten days. Ten days that shook the world. On May 21st, pro-slavery Missouri Ruffians sacked the free state town of Lawrence, Kansas. On May 22nd, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the abolitionist champion after delivering a Jeremiah on the crime against Kansas on the floor of the Senate is caned nearly to death while seated at his desk at the Senate by congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina. In Bloomington, about 350 delegates cram into the third floor of Majors Hall above a hardware store. Lincoln writes the platform, keeps together the patchwork and hostile factions and edgy personalities and delivers the keynote address. It was the only important speech Lincoln gave that was never recorded and is known as his lost speech. Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune recalled, at first his voice was shrill and hesitating. There was a curious introspective look in his eyes which lasted for a few moments. Then his voice began to move steadily and smoothly forward and the modulations were under perfect control from then forward to the finish. He warmed up as he went and spoke more rapidly. He looked a foot taller as he straightened himself to his full height and his eyes flashed fire. His countenance became wrapped in intense emotion. He rushed along like a thunderstorm. He prophesied war is the outcome of these aggressions and poured forth hot denunciations upon the slave power. The convention was kept in an uproar, applauding and cheering and stamping and this reacted on the speaker and gave him a tongue of fire. So why was Lincoln's speech lost? Probably because Lincoln didn't want its text published because it was too radical for the times. In 1856 the Democrats nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania for president, a northern man of southern sympathy. Passing over Stephen A. Douglas who seemed to the southerners too ambitious and uncontrollable. The Republicans nominated the far west explorer and California Senator John C. Fremont. He was attacked as a secret Catholic of illegitimate birth and not born in the United States. It was the first birther campaign. Buchanan won narrowly. It helped to be from Pennsylvania. The 1856 results predicted a future in which Illinois would be the Democrats weakest link and the Republicans greatest opportunity. After the election the Republicans of Illinois were in a buoyant mood. The first time their party was in the field they had gained power in a state that previously had voted for a Democrat for governor with only one exception since it had been admitted to the union. On December 10th Republicans held a celebratory banquet in Chicago addressed by Lincoln. He was already looking to the Senate race in two years against Douglas. On the stump Lincoln had made it a point to be introduced as the next senator from Illinois. His keynote was the beginning of his campaign. Our government Lincoln said rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change the government practically just so much. Public opinion on any subject always has a central idea from which all its minor thoughts radiate. That central idea in our political public opinion at the beginning was and until recently has continued to be the equality of men. The late presidential campaign was a struggle by one party to discard that central idea and to substitute for it the opposite idea that slavery is right in the abstract. The workings of which as a central idea may be the perpetuity of human slavery and its extensions to all countries and collars. With the advent of 1857 on the eve of the new administration the capital Washington was swept with talk of a momentous decision to be handed down from the Supreme Court. The new president James Buchanan wanted that case to settle the question of slavery in the territories once and for all at the beginning of his term. Dred Scott v. John Sanford was the case in the docket. Dred Scott a slave had sued his owner claiming that because he had resided in a free state he was therefore free. Behind the scenes Buchanan lobbied the justices to speed up the decision. Two days after his inauguration Chief Justice Roger Tawny of the Supreme Court ruled all men are created equal did not mean the whole human family. The unhappy black race were separated from the white by indelible marks and were never thought of or spoken of except as property he wrote. Blacks tawny pronounced had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. And therefore his decision opened the territories potentially to the entrance of slaves and in effect rendered illegal the central idea of the new Republican party by declaring that Congress could not prohibit slavery anywhere. Stephen A. Douglas angling again for the Democratic presidential nomination this time in 1860 defended the decision. He attacked the Republicans to position himself against his opponent in the coming campaign for the Senate none other than Lincoln. So long as they quote the declaration of independence he said to prove that the Negro was created equal to the white man we have no excuse for closing our eyes and professing ignorance of what they intend to do so soon as they get power said Douglas about what he called the black Republican party. The founders Douglas stated sought to preserve the purity of the white race and prevent any species of amalgamation between superior and inferior races. Now what was amalgamation? What did this word mean then? It meant the sexual mixing of the races and Douglas accused Lincoln of having that as his real agenda. Lincoln answered Douglas on June 26, 1857 he disputed Tony and Douglas. In those days our declaration of independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all. But now to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal it is assailed and sneered at and construed and hawked at and torn till if its framers could rise from their graves they could not at all recognize it. Lincoln's framers were not Tony's or Douglas's and then Lincoln took flight beyond the law. His precise mind escaped into metaphor to capture the reality of the captivity of the slave and he said all the powers of earth seem rapidly combining against him. Mammon is after him. Ambition follows and philosophy follows and the theology of the day is fast joining the cry. They have him in his prison house. They have searched his person and left no prying instrument with him. One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors upon him and now they have him as it were bolted in with the lock of 100 keys which can never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key the key in the hands of 100 different men and they scattered to 100 different and distant places and they stand musing as to what invention and all the dominions of mind and matter can be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it is. It was not only the slave that was held captive but the country. Lincoln had set himself on the path to discover the prying instrument, the invention and all the dominions of mind and matter of emancipation. Lincoln's mission was to create such a power that could overthrow all the powers of earth. That power of mind and matter must be Lincoln's own invention. Lincoln's imagery in the part of his speech about the imprisoned slave was not abstract to him. Just weeks before he had intervened to rescue a black man held captive behind an iron door in a bolted cell to be sold as a slave. He had not mentioned the incident in his speech and I would like to tell you this story because it's not well known. In early 1855 a free black woman named Polly Mack appeared at the office of Lincoln and Herndon with the tale of woe. Her son named John Shelby had hired himself as a hand on a steamboat on the Mississippi River as Lincoln had done years ago. But when Shelby reached New Orleans without free papers he was arrested under the black code and fined. But then his boat had left. Unable to pay his fine he was to be sold into slavery to defray his expenses. He had no means to escape. The case was a perversely refracted version of the Dred Scott case. Through a series of unfortunate circumstances the free black from a free state would become a slave. Lincoln appealed to the governor of Illinois who he had slated and elected. But the governor said he had no legal authority over another state. Lincoln appealed to the governor of Louisiana who rejected his request to free John Shelby. But through a man Lincoln called one of my most valued friends Abraham Jonas with whom he had served in the state legislature. Both Republican presidential electors in 1856 and who was indeed Lincoln's closest and most prominent Jewish friend he reached out to Jonas' brother, an attorney who lived in New Orleans. He told Lincoln that John Shelby could be released by purchasing his liberty. Lincoln collected some funds from a few friends but paid most of it out of his own pocket. And he bought John Shelby's freedom. His first act of emancipation. In May of 1858 preparing for his nomination as the Republican candidate for the Senate at the state convention Lincoln began work on his acceptance speech. Scratching out fragments and phrases on scrap of paper and the back of envelopes. Stuffing some of them into his stovetop hat for safekeeping. Spreading his notes on his desk he carefully composed his text. Just before the convention Lincoln held a rehearsal inviting about a dozen of his advisors and friends to the law library at the state house. Upon finishing his reading they were unanimous. Lincoln must not give the speech. One gently told him it was ahead of its time. Another less kindly called it a damn fool utterance. Lincoln turned to Herndon, Billy Herndon, his law partner. Lincoln Herndon said deliver that speech as read and it will make you president. I don't know if we should believe his later account. On June 16th Lincoln spoke. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated and the about object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agitation has not only not ceased but has continually augmented. I believe it will not cease till a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. I do not expect the union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction or its advocates will push it forward till it will become like lawful in all the states old as well as new north as well as south. Several weeks later at the celebration of the 4th of July Lincoln made his most memorable public statement against nativism. He had always been opposed to the know nothing party but he had expressed his strong sentiments privately. In the founding of the Illinois Republican party he had been instrumental in passing resolutions against nativism but he had not shown himself acting in front of the curtain. Now he stated that immigrants were our equals in all things. Blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence. The electric cord in that declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty loving men together. But that was not his final conclusion. He carried the logic of the Declaration of Independence through the immigrants to the slaves from a refutation of nativism to a condemnation of slavery and to an explanation of how nativism and racism were being used to create despotism. What he said are these arguments. They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king craft were of this class. They always bestowed the necks of the people. Not that they wanted to do it but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument. And this argument of the judge, that is the name he gave Stephen A. Douglas, Judge Douglas. This argument of the judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn it whatever way you will whether it come from the mouth of a king, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race. It is all the same old serpent. And I hold that if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this should be granted it does not stop with the Negro. Lincoln had spent more than 20 years yearning for his chance to take on Stephen A. Douglas. He challenged him to a series of seven debates in towns all over the state. Douglas called Lincoln a traitor in the Mexican war, a clown and a drunk. But his main line of attack was that Lincoln was for Negro equality except that Douglas did not use the word Negro. He dismissed the declaration of independence as supposedly including blacks as a monstrous heresy ridiculed Lincoln for his house divided speech. Claimed that Lincoln favored sex with black women amalgamation and was worthy of a medal from Frederick Douglass. Again and again Douglass drove home his point that as he said this government was made on the white basis made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity for ever. Douglass' attack on race to shift the debate from slavery put Lincoln on the defensive as he attempted to answer his demagoguery. In one debate in the conservative southern part of the state Lincoln retreated to say he could not admit to the social equality of blacks which was in fact the widely accepted view of almost all whites at the time including even most of the radical abolitionists. But then Lincoln qualified his statement adding that there is no reason in the world why the Negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the declaration of independence and that he is my equal in the equal of judge Douglass and the equal of every living man. Now this moment was his low point in the debates. From there he soared in Galesburg in one long breath Lincoln called slavery wrong 16 times in a moral, social and political evil. He said of Douglass when he invites any people willing to have slavery to establishment he is blowing out the moral lights around us. And he says he cares not whether slavery is voted up or voted down that it is a sacred right of self-government. He is in my judgment penetrating the human soul and eradicating the lighter of reason and the love of liberty in this American people. In Quincy in the next debate Lincoln called slavery wrong 33 times. In Alton the last debate Lincoln said it is the eternal struggle between these two principles right and wrong throughout the world. They are two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says you work and toil and eat and earn bread and I'll eat it. No matter in what shape it comes whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestry the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race it is the same tyrannical principle. Lincoln won the popular vote but he lost the election because it was determined by gerrymandered legislative districts. Remember it was the legislature not the popular vote that determined who would be the senator at that time. The fight must go on he wrote the cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered surrendered at the end of one or even 100 defeats. Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the last contest both by the best means to break down and to up hold the slave interest. No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in harmony long. Another explosion will soon come and the explosion came. On October 17, 1859 John Brown led a ragtag band of followers in a raid on the federal armory at Harper's Ferry with the idea that he would create an army of fugitive slaves to overthrow slavery. Before his raid he unveiled his plan to Frederick Douglas who told him it was a perfect steel trap and that once in he would never get out alive. Much then wrote Frederick Douglas was my connection with John Brown. Brown's scheme was a disaster. U.S. Marines under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee captured him. After his trial he was hung before a military guard that included Major Thomas Jackson later known as Stonewall Jackson then of the Virginia Military Academy and an itinerant actor named John Wilkes Booth who came to the event as a member of the Richman Gray's militia and admired Brown for his fanaticism and courage in the face of death. On the evening of January 5, 1859 the eve of Stephen A. Douglas's four ordained election by the Illinois State Legislature the next day an inner group of Republicans, Lincoln's closest political friends met with him in the capitol's Long Library to discuss how to keep the party afloat. According to Judge David Davis who was the maestro of the lawyers that Lincoln traveled with across central Illinois after a discussion of various names of possible presidential contenders Lincoln spoke up. Why don't you run me? Lincoln asked. I can be nominated, I can be elected and I can run the government. David Davis was surprised. We all looked at him and saw that he was not joking, he said later. A week later on February 16th the Chicago Tribune published a blazing editorial, the presidency dash Abraham Lincoln which touted him as the candidate to win the swing states and cataloged his virtues from unimpeachable purity of private life to great acuteness of intellect to right on the record. On February 22nd, George Washington's birthday the Republican National Committee met in New York City at the Astor House best hotel in New York on Broadway. The layer of Thurlow weed, the political boss of New York and closest advisor to Senator William Seward generally considered the inevitable Republican nominee. Norman B. Judd, a member of Lincoln's circle was the representative to the Republican National Committee from Illinois. Seward's supporters wanted the convention to be in New York. Senator Salman Chase of Ohio's supporters wanted it to be in Cincinnati. And the advocates of another candidate Edward Bates of St. Louis wanted it to be in St. Louis. Judge Judd, Norman B. Judd, the Illinois representative proposed a neutral city. In a state the party needed to carry and did not, he said, have a serious national candidate of its own. And without ever thinking of Lincoln, the Republican National Committee decided to put its convention in Chicago. Lincoln left for New York City the next day to speak on a political subject at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, a pulpit for anti-slavery crusading. Lincoln's sponsor, the young men's Central Republican Union had come into existence to provide a forum for potential alternatives to Seward. The group was created by some of the most influential liberal figures in New York who regarded Seward's political machinations to be corrupt. Lincoln arrived in the city two days early, only to learn from reading a notice in the New York Tribune that he would not speak at Plymouth Church but at the Cooper Institute, which we call Cooper Union. February 27th, representatives of the host committee met Lincoln at his room at the Astor House. They knocked on the door. We found him in a suit of black, much wrinkled from its careless packing in a small valise. Recalled Richard C. McCormick, an editor of the anti-slavery New York Post. He received us apologizing for the awkward and uncomfortable appearance he made in his new suit. And expressing himself surprised at being in New York. His form and manner were indeed out and we thought him the most unprepossessing public man we had ever met. At 8 in the evening, 1500 notables who had paid an admission price of 25 cents gathered under 27 crystal chandeliers in the great hall of the Cooper Union, which just opened the previous year, anticipating the words of the man whose debates with Douglas they had read in the newspapers but whom few, if any, had ever seen. Numerous members of the audience described him as ungainly and awkward. The wrinkled suit, the disorderly hair and the hasty accent were the shock before the recognition. Once he was heard, his initially off-putting appearance had a reverse effect of giving a depth of credence to his words. The facts with which I shall deal this evening he began are mainly old and familiar, nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there be any novelty it will be in the mode of presenting the facts and the inferences and observations following that presentation. Systematically reviewing the records of the signers of the Constitution he proved that 21 out of 39 supported federal control over slavery in the territories and that of the rest their positions were unknown but likely to be in line with the others. Lincoln declared that he believed in evidence so conclusive and arguments so clear and that Douglas, who argued that the founders denied power to the federal government to prohibit slavery was engaged in an act of distortion. But, said Lincoln, he has no right to mislead others who have less access to history and less leisure to study it into the false belief that our fathers who frame the government under which we live were of the same opinion thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. One after another he deconstructed and demolished the arguments made for slavery. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, he said. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling that sentiment by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. Rising to prophecy Lincoln foresaw the rigid legal originalism exemplified in Tawny's Dred Scott decision as a thin cover to maintain oppressive power that would extend even to secession. Your purpose then plainly stated is that you will destroy the government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the constitution as you please on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events. Lincoln asked rhetorically the question recurs then of the pro-slavery people. What will satisfy them? Simply this, this and this only cease to call slavery wrong and join them in calling it right. Finally unapologetically and unreservedly liberated from conditional tenses and question marks no longer speaking to imaginary figments he issued a crusader's call to battle. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government nor of dungeons to ourselves let us have faith that right makes might and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it. The crowd that had been taken aback 90 minutes earlier by the appearance of the ungainly speaker now rose as a body, cheering and cheering again waving hats and handkerchiefs. Late April the Democrats gathered for their convention in Charleston, South Carolina. Douglas had a clear majority but two-thirds of the delegates were required for nomination. The southern states rights altars proposed a platform plank that no territory could prohibit slavery. Douglas simply favored the Dred Scott decision he said but that was insufficient for the southern altars. In a vote of delegates the Douglas platform passed. Alabama let a walk out. Seven southern states walked out. They seceded from the Democratic Party. And still Douglas could not be nominated by two-thirds. After 56 ballots the convention adjourned. The secessionists convened across town. Later they nominated their own ticket. A vice president John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky for president. The Democratic Party was broken. And yet another party emerged led by Senator John Bell of Tennessee appealing to the old wigs and no nothings called the constitutional unionist party but who would be the Republican nominee? Judge David Davis arrived in Chicago on Saturday May 12th first on the ground four days before the convention start to set up the headquarters at the Tremont Hotel. A sign affixed to his door. Illinois headquarters. Douglas created a political machine overnight marshalling the Illinois delegates and alternates in the entourage of the 8th judicial circuit. Thurlow Weeds operation on behalf of Seward was reinforced with 13 railway cars packed with 2,000 men. Seward's irrepressibles from New York singing songs according to one journalist not found in hymn books. The New York crowd intended to create a clamorous momentum for Seward but it had the reverse effect of reminding those wary of weed of their reservations about Seward. Weed soon began promising key political figures large piles of cash for swaying their delegations. The proceedings began on Wednesday May 16th in a brick and wooden structure that could hold at least 10,000 people and was topped on its arch with letters reading Republican wigwam. It was the largest indoor space in the country built in short order for the event itself considered a marvel and example of the will and muscle of Chicago. Weed offered to pass out money while Davis cut deals with politicians who were anxious that Seward could not win and that Lincoln, the fresh face, was the true available man. Lincoln sent Davis a message. Make the no contracts that bind me. Damn Lincoln, said Jesse K. Dubois, one of Lincoln's oldest friends on the scene. Another working hard for him, part of his coterie, Leonard Sweatt, part of Davis' team, said I am very sure if Lincoln was aware of the necessities, well said Davis with finality, 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. Herndon who was there too wrote that Lincoln did not appreciate the gravity of the situation and Davis went ahead with his negotiations. Cabinet posts were discussed. Pennsylvania and Indiana swung to Lincoln. On the first ballot, Seward was in first place with 173.5. But Lincoln was second at 102, just where the Illinois team strategy wanted him to be on the second ballot. Seward immediately took losses. Then Pennsylvania announced 48 votes for Lincoln. Without stop, the role of states was called for the third ballot. Massachusetts, four switched from Seward to Lincoln. Pennsylvania, four more switched to Lincoln. Maryland, four Bates delegates switched and one for Seward. Ohio, Chase's vote collapsed. The Ohio chairman rose to change, four votes to Lincoln. The deed was done, wrote the journalist Marat Halstead of the Cincinnati newspaper. There was a moment silence. The nerves of the thousands which through the hours of suspense had been subjected to terrible tension relaxed. And as deep breaths of relief were taken, there was a noise in the wigwam like the rush of a great wind. In the van of a storm and in another breath, the storm was there. There were thousands cheering with the energy of insanity. On the day that the struggle within the wigwam reached its climax, Lincoln and Springfield played handball against an alley wall with some boys. Then he went to his law office. Soon a wire arrived to Lincoln. You are nominated. Lincoln did not campaign. His policy was discretion. He did not leave Springfield. Instead receiving a stream of visitors in a room at the state capitol. He was bored. Bored badly, Herndon reported. But the crisis had begun. The crack up of the Democratic party that made Lincoln's election inevitable was the most obvious sign. Dawn on election day was greeted in Springfield by the firing of a cannon. Awakening citizens to their duty, defiled of the courthouse opposite the capitol, the sole polling place in town. Lincoln spent the day in the governor's office with a view from the window of the voters coming and going. Chatting with visitors until he noticed a thinning of the line across the street, strolled over to vote, tore off the top part of the ballot containing the presidential choice with his name on it to show he had not immodestly voted for himself and returned to his perch after five minutes. By nightfall he retreated to the telegraph office with a few friends to watch the ticker. Lincoln felt relaxed enough to have dinner. He was wandering to Watson's saloon taken over by the ladies for the occasion. His entrance was greeted by their voices in unison. How do you do, Mr. President? Just as he was about to eat, a runner rushed in with a telegram showing a diminished Democratic vote in New York City. The last hope of the Democrats to win New York and throw the election into the House of Representatives. The throng burst into song were the Lincoln boys. Ain't you glad you joined the Republicans? Lincoln walked over to the telegraph office receiving results throughout the night. Near dawn he said he'd guess he'd go home now. He found Mary asleep. He tried to wake her. Mary, Mary, we are elected. Lincoln won with less than 40% of the vote. He received not a single vote in 10 southern states. The Republican party having been kept off the ballot. For the first time in a presidential election, the invincibility of the South on the issue of slavery was broken. A president pledged against its expansion would soon be at the helm of the executive branch invested with the power of federal patronage. The ability to appoint federal judges and justices of the Supreme Court and command of the armed forces. The day after the election, the stars and stripes over the federal buildings were lowered across South Carolina. And state right flags, a red star and a white background and palmetto state flags were hoisted in its place. On December 20, in Charleston, the delegates of the secession convention assembled in the South Carolina Institute Hall, thereafter known as secession hall, where months earlier the Democratic party had broken apart to sign the document of secession. The ultimate clause denounced the election of a man to the high office of the president of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is not to be entrusted with the administration or the common government because he has declared that that government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. Abraham Lincoln's fiery trial was about to begin. And I hope so are your questions. Thank you. There are microphones on each side. Just a couple of quick observations and then a question. I lived in Minnesota when an equal number of Democrats and Republicans were elected to the state house of representatives. And I can assure you that a house divided against itself cannot sit either. And I think the last time when you were here to present your second book, you said the publishers had limited you to four volumes. Apparently you got one more. Maybe I misremembered that. They had said that, but apparently these books, as I have said, are like hamsters at night. And they just, I wake up in the morning and they tell me there's another one. Well, I welcome a fifth, but I think if you hold it to that, you're probably lucky that Lincoln got shot. A question. My wife is. A question. Do you think if the convention had been held in New York or Cincinnati or St. Louis, that Lincoln would have been nominated? It's possible he may not have been. Chicago was the ideal city for Lincoln. They, the Illinois Republican Party was gave free railroad passes to members of the party to come to Chicago and flood the town. And then one of my favorite characters, Jesse Fell, who was David Davis' law partner, and who was a man who founded the city of Normal, Illinois, founded the university there, Illinois State University, and was the great grandfather of Eli Stevenson. Counterfitted tickets. And they packed the hall. And so that the Lincoln Routers occupied the place and were louder than the Seward Routers, many of whom were excluded from entering the hall because the seats had already been occupied. You mentioned that slavery split both the Republican and Democratic Party in the 1860s. Do you see a similar split happening in today's politics that would be happening in both the Republican and Democratic parties? I don't see a unifying principle like that one that caused the party's division back then. Well, there's nothing quite like that. And I don't want to get into a, you know, in depundetry about the current parties here. But certainly there are large divisions in the Republican Party that are deeper than is apparent in the few people who have decided to challenge Donald Trump for the presidency, mostly very minor characters. And there are apparent differences in the Democratic Party that this Thursday will be openly debated. But there's nothing like the slavery issue that split the parties. On that question, though, I would say that Lincoln felt that the parties had changed identities. And he had always reminded him of a story. And it reminded him of the story of two drunk men at night who fought their way into each other's coats. And he said that, you know, the Republicans had fought their way into Jefferson's principles and taken them away from the Democrats. He said, Jefferson was a slave owner, but he was the author of the Declaration of Independence. And we now have that. And they, to the extent that they uphold slavery, they have given up their legacy. And something like that has happened over a long period of time to our current parties. And they have really transformed their identities over decades and possibly culminating in a clash we may see in the next election. Thank you. During the months of October and November 1860, is there correspondence between Lincoln and Douglas? And did Lincoln's view of Douglas change during that period? Excellent question. I don't believe that there is communication between Lincoln and Douglas, but Lincoln is certainly aware of what Douglas is doing. Lincoln is not campaigning at all. He is completely silent. He's not even running what was called a front porch campaign, giving speeches on his front porch. He's silent. But Douglas has decided that he has lost the election. And it's not considered to be proper to campaign, but he decides he's going to campaign. But what he's going to campaign for is against disunion, against secession. And he goes south to Alabama and delivers speeches telling them they cannot secede. Because he knows what happened to him. He knows who did it. And he feels that the country is about to come apart. Later, when Lincoln is elected and president-elect and he comes in as staying at the Willard before he occupies the White House, Douglas meets with him and says he doesn't believe that Lincoln understands the full dimensions of what's going on because he doesn't know these men who are pulling the country apart. And I do. I encounter them and they destroy me. And then Douglas dies like that. At a very young age of cirrhosis of the liver and cancer, probably from alcoholism. Thank you. What deals, if any, did Judge Davis and his group make to help Lincoln win the nomination? Well, there are those who say they didn't really make firm deals. But Pennsylvania went for and all these places had their reasons for supporting Lincoln because they were wary of Seward and thought he might not win. And they thought that Lincoln was a better candidate with a greater appeal to a broader range of voters. That said, Pennsylvania went for Lincoln and Simon Cameron, its leading Republican politician, got a cabinet post. And the same thing happened with Indiana. And those were the two key states to move. And that was the result of nonstop midnight negotiations between David Davis and his group and the leaders of the Pennsylvania and Indiana delegations. And Lincoln was not directly involved. He is receiving telegrams from people that are part of this group. He is in Springfield. And David Davis takes it unto himself to make the deals. Later, Lincoln names him to the Supreme Court. Thank you very much.