[Music] good afternoon welcome to the third week of the American presidency our series of conversations with noted historians Scholars and journalists about the people in events that have defined the most important elected office in the work our program is brought to you by the Lyon B Johnson Presidential Library the University of Texas oer lifelong learning Institute and Humanities Texas I am Phil Barnes and is my privileged to chair the UT all Sage enrichment committee Mark Lawrence the director of the LBJ Presidential Library had himself a widely respected and published historian is again the host of our conversations as a member of the audience you may participate in the Q&A segment of our program by using the chat function to write and submit questions our Q&A host today is Mark's colleague and our friend Sarah McCracken of the LBJ Library as we noted earlier in this year 2024 we will hold our 60th presidential election since the first in 1788 Although our constitution makes no provision for political parties the two-party system emerged in the nation's early years until the election of 1832 political parties nominated candidates through caucuses held in state legis legislators for in the US Congress but since that year our major parties have held national conventions to choose their standard bearers every four years and those 19th and early 20th century conventions had no primaries for electing deleg delegates as we have today those conventions brought together delegates from each state with the power broker and politicians and political bosses and influencers and a lot of the national press and local press promoting the nomination of a favorite presidential candidate more than 40,000 people from all over the country descended on Chicago in the spring of 1860 with more than 5,000 of them crowded into the wig wall a massive wooden Arena built especially for the Republican convention the 1860 Republican convention that nominated Abraham Lincoln is fascinating a story as well as a defining moment in US history Our Guest today is the prizewinning journalist Edward aor author of twoim books about Abraham Lincoln including his celebrated the Lincoln Miracle indeed we learned this week that the Lincoln Miracle has won the 224 Lincoln Institute book prize now that's in addition the Lincoln fora book prize and the Lincoln group of New York's Award of achievement so a special congratulations to add for this extraordinary and special recognition of this extraordinary and special work the Lincoln Miracle is the work of an experienced journalist whose writing brings history alive the arthor takes us through Lincoln's road to the nomination giving us insights into Lincoln the man the universal respect with which he was held by his colleagues and the gift he had for getting along with nearly everyone always acting graciously even toward his political opponents Lincoln's unassuming and friendly matter perhaps masking a quiet but intense ambition to become president of the United States yet on the central issue of the day he was uncompromising eloquent in his moral Clarity and persuasive on the evils of slavery even with these considerable political skills without a careful calculating and effective team working the convention on his behalf a team organized by his friend the Illinois Circuit Judge David Davis Lincoln would never have been nominated prevailing over among others Governor William Seward of New York who going into the convention was the overwhelming favorite the three days of the Republican Convention held in Chicago was certainly pivotal and one of the pivotal elections in American history so we welcome today for today's interview Edward Anor the author of the Lincoln Miracle inside the Republican convention That Changed History and now to Mark Lawrence well thank you so much Phil and welcome everyone great to have you back for today's program which takes us back to the 19th century for the first time in our series to more specifically the election of 1860 and surely when the subject is pivotal elections in American history few of them stand out in quite the way that the 1860 election did um and honestly we could not have a a better guest with us today than Ed aorn to talk about this uh this pivotal moment in American history uh a subject that he knows so well from his wonderful book The Lincoln Miracle Ed welcome it's wonderful to have you oh Mark it's so great to be here and thanks uh to Phil too for those very kind remarks thank you Ed let me let me start out with a question that I'm I'm betting you've gotten a fair amount uh not just in connection with your most recent book but maybe over over the course of the last many years since you turned uh to writing about Abraham Lincoln Lincoln has to be one of the figures about whom more in you know Inc has been spilled over the years than any other maybe he's at the top of the list in terms of the attention he has has drawn um why another book on Abraham Lincoln and specifically why the 1860 convention what do we learn about Lincoln from looking at that specific moment well actually Mark I'm told there have uh 19,000 books about Abraham Lincoln published and that's more than any other human being than Jesus Christ so that's quite a a daunting uh field um my Approach is to do sort of a micro hisory approach where I look at a very short period And I try to bring Lincoln to Life by looking at that short period so this this book is about one week uh it's about uh Lincoln going Lincoln's men going into this convention and securing the nomination when he was an absolute absolutely nobody expected him to be the nominee at the start and it's uh I think it's a fascinating story it tells you about uh how lucky we are at times in American history that that miracles do occur and uh so that's that was my approach to it Miracle is obviously a a strong word right right there in your in your title uh tell me about the the choice of that word to capture the significance of this moment yeah well some of the people who attended that convention thought it was a miracle in retrospect because they they thought these delegates you know they nominated Lincoln but they had no idea of the man they had nominated they didn't know his peculiar strengths nobody would know that until the Civil War and he had to lead this country through just four terrible awful years when it could have easily gone under um so I think that's a miracle also the way the convention proceeded I think Seward William Seward from New York was uh poised to win the nomination on uh the second night of the convention uh he had won all these test votes that day at the convention and everybody thought you know there's no serious competitor to him that had Arisen and they were all ready to vote when uh the the podium announced well we don't have the tally sheets ready yet um that'll be about five minutes and the delegates were there we're hungry uh we're going to just uh adjourn for the night and that's when Lincoln's met to work and actually toppled the thing and secured the nomination for Lincoln so I I think in many ways it's a miracle I mean look at this Lincoln came out of nowhere where yeah uh he had the per perfect Ser I mean the whole series of things fell into place perfectly to make this possible not all of them under Lincoln's control so that's uh that's why I think it's something of a miracle that this happened yeah I think if there's one thing I took away it's the the sheer contingency of that yeah of that of that moment um you mention the the thing about the tally sheets but tell us a little more about some of the improbable you know ducks that lined up in just the right Row for Lincoln to get the nomination right well uh Seward went into this thing as the dominant favorite of the party he he was the founder and father of the Republican Party most popular with the base of anybody uh he had uh his his campaign manager thorlo weed had sent him overseas uh where he sort of put on the finishing touches of his preparation for the president prescy he met with world leaders with Queen Victoria with Emperor Napoleon III with Pope p uh and so he was really being prepared for the presidency he had he had not run in 1856 because uh his manager thura weed thought the part's not strong enough you're GNA lose so we should save you for 1860 When the Party's strong enough and you can win the presidency so everything was was uh lined up for Seward and um there were also other things happening uh but Su Seward was uh the strongest candidate going in but there were qualms about him because uh I don't know if I can get into all this history but John Brown uh who was the famous abolitionist he had uh uh stormed into a federal Armory in uh 1859 and he had tried to arm slaves with weapons to uh to Stage a a bloody Insurrection and this he was stopped but this terrified voters all over the country they thought all the slavery talk was creating an impossible strain on on the political system so people going into this convention the the professional politicians were a little nervous about having Seward at the top of the ticket because he would scare off swing voters so all that played into it too it was also concerns about Seward because he was so friendly with immigrants and a part of the Republican base uh was not friendly to immigrants they were from the former Know Nothing party which didn't like immigrants so uh these things made people sort of wary about Seward and the casting around for an alternative um go ahead go ahead anded obviously I want to um take you deeper into this incredible cast of characters that you write about so effectively but before we get back to Lincoln and Seward and and some of the others I'd love to ask you about let's um talk just for a moment about the general political landscape of 1860 just to remind all of us of the the intensity of that moment the significance of this moment when slavery sectional conflict the possibility of Civil War was was very much in the air paint a picture of of the larger backdrop against which the convention took place yeah there were enormous political strains and pressures over slavery um the Democrats had been able to win repeated uh presidential elections because they were the party that would essentially keep the country from breaking apart uh they had a support in the South and the north um for that reason but the the Democrats had sort of overplayed their hand they had become very corrupt the southern Democrats had become incredibly arrogant from the perspective of Northern Democrats and Northern voters uh a senator from Massachusetts Charles suner had been clubbed down almost to death in the Senate by a uh uh representative from South Carolina I mean these were things that were just horrifying Ing and shocking the nation and voters in the north were increasingly thinking we're not going to be pushed around anymore by the south on this issue there has to be some limit to slavery and this is something that the Republicans were hoping to appeal to in 1860 and uh get carried through but the the pressures were so great they actually split the Democratic party about a a week before the Republican convention they they couldn't nominate um they they couldn't come up with a platform that would appeal to both Southern and Northern delegates and they couldn't uh nominate a candidate Stephen Douglas was the most the guy who would run against Lincoln for the Senate and and one in 1858 uh he was the most popular of the democratic candidates but they didn't have enough votes to push him over the top so they had actually adjourned their convention without uh picking a candidate for president and they had to come back at a later time so the Republicans gathering in Chicago in 1860 thought we have a very good strong chance to win the presidency so we we shouldn't blow this and and you mentioned of course that you know Lincoln was a long shot uh going into the convention in 1860 but in a way it seems to me one of the more remarkable things about this story is that Lincoln was even part of the conversation giv given his political career and the trajectory of of of of his uh of his career uh up until that point review the the story with us if you would just for for a moment was it that Lincoln was actually a contender if only a minor Contender it seemed going into the convention yeah uh Lincoln had we we tend to think of history that things that happened had to be inevitable they really weren't l went into this convention as a very minor figure uh he had he had lost two runs for the US Senate uh and he had not held political office for more than a decade uh his executive experience was pretty much limited to running a two-man law office I mean he these were are not qualifications for the presidency but what he had was he was the favorite son candidate of ill Illinois which was a very important swing state actually crucially important to the Republicans so that gave him a certain stature at the convention um and people were talking about well maybe he could be vice president to Seward or something he could be on the ticket as that and and when when Lincoln's men arrived at the convention uh the Saturday before the convention started they started to detect oh my God there's all this sort of nervousness about Seward and people are casting around for an alternative here we've got Lincoln he's got this great story we can tell about him being born in a log cabin and self-made man had had no education but he rose up and he became uh so strong that he was able to debate uh stepen Douglas famously in 1858 so so they started to tell his story at the convention and uh as people cast around for some alternative to Seward suddenly he was in the mix and those debates with Stephen Douglas it seems to me were absolutely essential and one of the stories that you reminded me of or frankly may have told me for the first time is that those those debates were were uh published right and that that there were a bit of a publishing phenomenon in the uh the years I'll say leading up to the 1860 con vention is it fair to put a lot of importance on that particular moment in in Lincoln's viability as or his visibility maybe I should say as a candidate well that gave him a stature he otherwise would not have had because Douglas was one of the most vicious and Powerful Debaters in the country I mean he would Pummel his opponents verbally and Lincoln had sort of backed him into backed him into a corner several times during these debates and so so these debates because Douglas was such a leading political figure in the country these debates were sort of written down and published in newspapers around the country um so that gave Lincoln a certain stature he otherwise wouldn't have had and Lincoln made a point of uh clipping all these newspaper accounts of his debates and putting them into a a folder and then uh getting them published in uh early 1860 basically I think that the Republicans were publishing these debates to knock down Douglas but they also gave Lincoln a certain stature too so he was sort of suddenly in the mix in Chicago now there were other alternatives to Seward clearly and as you as you detail in in your book remind us of who some of those other contenders were and why Lincoln became the compromised candidate uh rather than let's say A Bates or a salmon P Chase or or options that were also buying for the nomination sammon P Chase was one of the options he was a very strong opponent of slavery from Ohio very brave man smart man but totally uh egocentric and he was just smitten with the presidential bug and he had no sort of perspective and Ohio which was the state he was from was split so it wasn't totally behind him so he he didn't emerge as as really one of the top candidates the guy who was considered the strongest opponent to Seward going into the convention was this man named Edward Bates from the slave state of Missouri and Bates was somebody who was a former wig he was very conservative he thought all this talk about slavery wasn't doing uh anyone any good and it would it would lead to chaos and and the destruction of the country so he was uh very popular with sort of the conservatives at the convention but he had been associated with the no nothing party which I mentioned was this anti-immigrant party and the Germans German Americans just wouldn't abide him and they were a very small percentage of the Republican base but they were enough to swing elections in many northern states so they decided to have their own National Convention the same week as the Republican convention right down the street from The Wigwam and that was intended to send a signal don't you dare nominate Edward Bates or we will Bolt from the party and so they were the delegates were sort of terrified to to go with Bates and all that left it open to somebody like Lincoln I mean I I call this the miracle because all these things sort of slotted into place perfectly if these rep if these German Americans who were very fond of Seward hadn't been there that week I Bates could well have been nominated yeah fascinating and you know another um wonderful feature of your book is the uh stories that you tell about the political operators the kind of second tier figures who in this election as in so many American elections are absolutely essential to reckon with in understanding what what happened um tell us a little bit about the thurow weeds the Horus GES and and and others who David Davis Lincoln's campaign manager right the these figures who may not be household names but really were pulling strings and working it seems very hard behind the scenes to promote their uh their man uh talk about talk about the roles these these figures played well thurlo weed was Seward's manager and he he was an uh Albany New York newspaper editor these newspaper editors in the 19th century weren't content with reporting or commenting on news they wanted to make it themselves so he had become a sort of a key figure in the wig party and then the Republican party after the wigs faded away and he could make or break Senate candidates presidential candidates he had become so powerful and influential and he was a really sharp political operator so he had set his sites for for many years decades I think on on getting SE the presidency so he's the one who was in the I should mention the candidates in those days didn't show up at the convention themselves they left it to their managers and actually Lincoln was thinking of going to the 18 60 convention he told a friend uh I'm not enough of a candidate to I'm too much of a candidate to go but I'm not enough to stay home so he he he got uh he finally decided not to go which was very wise of him so anyways weed weed uh had the most money he had the mo he had a machine he brought thousands of Seward supporters with him by train to Chicago and they filled the wig w up and they screamed for Seward and created this sort of impression of this irresistible strength and they would March in parades out on the street during the convention uh just sending a signal sewards sewards the man uh now the other people Horus gy you mentioned he's probably most famous for saying Go West Young man he was another newspaper editor he used to be an ally of um Seward and weed but he had been turn o turned over when he tried to become lieutenant governor of New York Seward and weed thought he was too flaky to be uh lieutenant governor so they had given it to the editor of the New York Times so so Horus gy who was the most influential newspaper and the editor in the country he went to the convention and spent the week talking to delegates you can't nominate Seward he will lose and he really stuck the knife in SE back um which is another thing that played into Lincoln's hands that Lincoln didn't really control the other David Davis was um this judge in Illinois and he would travel from courtroom to courtroom um on a circuit uh six months of the year and Lincoln was somebody who joined him and worked as a lawyer in all these Court where houses people would go up you know that day and hire him to represent them as their lawyer and and so they had got to know each other quite well uh Davis was a very self-confident sort of bossy guy who who uh took charge of things and got things done so he showed up in Chicago for Lincoln and and the campaign was so poorly organized they hadn't even uh arranged to have a room for their headquarters in the hotel so Davis had to bribe a family to leave and uh set up shop put up a sign on there and didn't sleep for the next week he nobody made him Lincoln's manager nobody appointed him Lincoln didn't he just uh somebody needs to be in charge here and it'll be me and that was pure David Davis so that's how he uh took charge that week and got uh got the thing done so sticking with da with David Davis just for a moment um how did he and and others with whom he worked make the case for Lincoln what were they doing behind the scenes to sell Lincoln and win over uh you know wavering delegates or you know make the case for him as the ideal compromised candidate well you know one of the things that really struck me researching this book um from the start was wow these these delegates here here we had a country in crisis hurdling towards God knows what and they didn't try to choose a president based on who would make the best leader or who the best experience the whole thing was about who would get the most votes and get the most Republicans into office around the country and that was the sort of the sole Criterion so Seward was kind of scary to the swing voters so the case they made was oh Lincoln Lincoln's a former wig he's from the south so he won't scare swing voters as much as Seward would um he's very strong on slavery so he'll appeal to the base and he's got this great personal story where he grew up in a log cabin and he was already known as the rail splitter because he had split thousands of rails uh and so he was a work working man he he who had lifted himself and that was you know this was the era of uh ratio aler and stuff Americans in this Democratic Society they loved uh rags to Rich's stories and Lincoln sort of personified that so that was the case they made he would he would uh have the best chance of tracting Voters not scaring off swing voters and uh you know he he he was not as threatening to the anti-immigrant folks as Seward I mean uh some people thought Lincoln was a form was a no nothing which is totally wrong he was he was absolutely opposed to the no nothing party uh but he didn't scare people as much as seart so this was the the case they made it wasn't that Lincoln was a a brilliant man or a h a wonderful writer or he had the dogged determination to lead this country through a crisis it was he would get the most votes and yeah I I think you you point out if I if I recall correctly that for all the Integrity for all the kind of genuiness of that that story of the guy who grew up in the Log Cabin Lincoln's team was not above you know making promises about cabinet appointments or you know patronage to use the the all important word in 19th century American politics were they out there making promises about you know who would get what job I I love this part of the convention because uh they they competed with the best of them uh in terms of uh trying to bribe people with job with government jobs um Lincoln on Thursday night uh Lincoln Lincoln sent a uh document to them saying uh make no deals in my name and they were all crestfallen thinking you know how can we advance him to the nomination without making deals and uh David Davis took one look at that uh document it said Lincoln ain't here we'll have to go go ahead as if uh we hadn't heard from him and he'll just have to ratify what we do so they started really uh making deals for the cabinet uh they they put a guy from Indiana onto the cabinet his interior secretary they made the biggest deal they made was with um Pennsylvania there was a machine politician named Simon Cameron who was uh really he was a very corrupt character and they promised him the the treasury Department if uh he went went along and in Pennsylvania as it turned off on Friday switched it switched over to Lincoln on the third ballot and that was uh that made all the difference and so it's quite striking there there's been a debate over the years whether they really made these deals and some people said they didn't uh but I think the evidence is overwhelming they did and this is this is how politics is played you you you uh have to make promises Lincoln Lincoln to be fair was very concerned about deals being made in his name because the Republican party was this incredibly scattered party that where people didn't agree on anything except they hated the Democrats so he Lincoln knew if he would if he won the nomination he would have to reach out to every segment of this party and and be very careful in uh selecting these people for positions so everyone got a share of the pie and they didn't the party didn't fall apart and uh they had but his his allies had to remind him uh During the period uh uh during the uh later on when he was elected and was choosing cabinet positions they had to remind them of the deals made in Chicago and uh actually they they promised apparently promised more uh they promised the same positions to multiple delegations and uh somebody later as asked Davis uh well you must have prevaricated huh and and Davis said prevaricated prevaricated we lied like hell so that was uh that was David Davis and meanwhile while all this is going on Lincoln is back in Springfield kind of biing his time how did he spend those those what had to have been fairly stressful days for him oh they nerve-wracking times and he he went to his office he played he played handball ball to uh to relieve his stress um I always wished it was baseball you know cuz that's the American game and I wrote two baseball books but it was handball and uh he would he would uh you know get get messages from people telegrams from his people but he PR really had to leave it in their hands and he had very artfully instructed them going into the convention what to do uh he was a brilliant political strategist he said just don't offend anybody you know don't knock any of the other candidates just say if if you know your beloved doesn't make it uh please look at us as the second best choice and that was a really strong strategy it's such a striking image of this lanky Abraham Lincoln playing handball yes back in the the streets of Springfield while all this this is going on but let's go let's talk a little more about Abraham Lincoln the the star of the show what here's someone you know as we've already discussed who's been written about endlessly what did you discover about Abraham Lincoln that maybe surprised you or um you know that that jumped out at you by by virtue of the focus that you took in this book well it's just his his stubbornness his how he didn't he wouldn't let defeat stop him over and over and over again I mean newspapers commented that you know he had suffered so many defeats that would have killed an ordinary man but but he somehow he had been so accustomed to suffering and loss in his life that he was able to keep forging on and it's very striking he he uh he was absolutely devastated after he lost the um election to Steven Douglas in 1858 and he's he uh he said well that's it for me in politics uh you know I'm finished but maybe people will remember me for what I said in those debates of course uh if he had not won this nomination Lincoln would be a forgotten figure I think in American history which is amazing when you think of it but he very doggedly kept on you know you learn things about Lincoln just studying his his past I mean I think he was deeply traumatized as a child when he lost his mother when he was N9 years old to this sort of freak illness she drank the milk of this cow who had eaten that that had eaten a poisonous plant and it's I mean what are the odds of that and and he just he was so devastated by that he lost his sister so he's he was very depressed during his life very very uh and he sort of had the two modes people said he was either depressed or he was telling a story and his whole face lit up and he just was overjoyed at making people laugh and this is a a very strange character he's not he's he's he doesn't open his heart to anyone he's very self enclosed he's in this terrible marriage with a with an abusive spouse but she's the one who believes in him and pushes him onto the presidency yeah so there's all these different of Lincoln um but the thing that really pushed Lincoln as I mentioned was he had this Rock Solid support from Illinois and uh that was earned over Decades of him going from town to town people like respected his intelligence they respected his sense of fairness they thought this guy uh is really remarkable he won't yeah he won't betray us and Lincoln even even Lincoln just kept on trying and trying I mean his law partner said his uh his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest and he he was deeply ambitious but he also profoundly cared about moving this country Away Away From Slavery putting it on a path to slavery's destru Ultimate Destruction he wasn't an abolitionist he didn't want to kill slavy immediately because he thought it would destroy the country but he he kept on working with the party trying to get them to focus on one issue which is stopping the spread of slavery and then all these minor Petty disagreements try to set those aside and uh he was really strong that way so a lot of Americans seem to have responded to this array of characteristics that that Lincoln brought to the table one I just want to ask you about is the sense of humor something that you you really you really highlight you know was was that sort of on display publicly for for people to see you know was that part of his his appeal not just to his circle of friends but you know to the electorate more generally yeah he would tell jokes all over the place and uh people some people loved them for it some people thought it was outrageous I mean uh there was a reporter named hry Villard who was a uh German American uh and he thought Lincoln's great except for these horrible dirty stories he tells he's uh this really brings down his character drags down his character but linoln just he you know David Davis I think or or Hearn and his law partner said Lincoln would have to tell these stories or his heart would break he was so overcome with stress and disappointment throughout his life that he told these stories to sort of ward off disappointment and the stories uh also functioned a different I mean people love hearing stories they love hearing jokes so they liked him for that but he also was able to sort of calm down political disagreements and feelings of bitterness by telling a funny joke that sort of got to the point of the disagreements without insulting the person and he's he's almost like Jesus by telling Parables uh he he gets to the point in very uh in a very memorable Way by telling jokes about it so um that I think that helped his career quite quite amazingly talk a little more about Lincoln's attitude toward the all-important issue of slavery how would you characterize his stance uh around the time of of the convention well he was he was a liberal in terms of where America stood at the time but he was really a moderate he um he he believed slavery had to continue in the states where it existed under the Constitution and he believed any attempt to threaten the southern states with removing slavery would precipitate Civil War or secession or really drag the country down and you so he he thought what we have to do is stop slavery from spreading to the territories uh make it clear it had to end here and he beli that's something the founders had done themselves when they uh they passed something the Northwest Ordinance which banned slavery from a large portion of the the northern Midwest and uh so that was his position he he thought he was in you know that the Democrats tried to Pres that the Republicans these horrible radicals but he said this is a position the founders took and he famously said this nation's going to be uh all slave or all free A house divided against itself cannot stand he believe that the slave the money and the power behind slavery was getting so extreme that it would threaten the freedom of everyone uh and he was very concerned about that he really thought the country would go all slavery uh or all free and he wanted it to be free he was appalled that he believed uh so strongly in the American founding and the ideals of the Declaration that was his load star and he and he uh he thought this slavery presented itself to the world as making a mockery of the founding principles of freedom and so he want he desperately wanted this country to to make a moral statement slavery is wrong and prevent it from spreading and move on from there and eventually he thought it would die just because it morally couldn't survive in a country founded on principles of Freedom yeah yeah it seems to me you make such an important and interesting point in suggesting that Lincoln was really in some ways a conservative right hardly the radical that opponent sometimes claimed because he was the one who was hearkening back to the founding principles especially in the Declaration exactly as you say yes but but of course the South viewed them as just a lacko because they said that you shouldn't even be discussing slavery that presents a threat to our whole constitutional republic so they're very strong now what about what about Seward um you've given us a little bit of ins it about Seward but let's go back to him and talk a little more about what was it that made him such a formidable figure um going into 1860 he was uh smart he was articulate he said things people remembered that stuck in people's minds he spoke of an irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery which is pretty much what Lincoln said but uh Seward's comment got all over the newspapers Lincoln's house divided speech was much L covered around the country and Seward was considered you know this this Brave articulate uh forceful man who who would uh was fighting slavery as hard as anybody in the political system I mean he wasn't an outright abolitionist like Lincoln he didn't he didn't want to tear it down where it existed but so he was considered uh really the leading figure in the country and he was from New York which was then the most populous and Powerful State um you know Lincoln was a little out of the way in Illinois so uh Seward was a very strong figure in the party revered people people Mo you know when he cut back from his European tour people mobbed him I described this in the book and they they you know just begged him to run for president and uh he intended to do that one of the reasons I love talking about these pivotal elections in American history is that there's always this really interesting counterfactual and there's a kind of unfair question in some ways to to to lob at a historian like you but let me let me try it anyway what would have happened if Seward had been the nominee how would the story be different um through the 1860s with President Seward yeah I I I have a lot of admiration for Seward but one reason I call this the Lincoln Mar was because if I believe if Lincoln had not been nominated I believe anyone else had been nominated at that convention this country would have broken apart I don't think Seward had the unique set of skills Lincoln had to deal with um that crisis I mean who else but Lincoln could keep this country together through the Civil War which was just an unbelievably tragic situation I mean 750,000 people died uh people were just horrified Amer but Lincoln had these incredible skills he had an ability to speak to the people in in this ringing language that that nobody else possessed he had the sort of ability to handle disappointment and defeat that other would have broken other people uh he had this real sense of pragmatism what he could achieve what he couldn't he was able to deal with difficult people unlike anybody else I guess from his marriage he got a lot of training he um just a billion things that he he was uniquely well suited to get this country through that crisis he also you know one of the great things he was was he was this he plugged into the political Fe feelings of the American people better than anyone else in that era he would he would make time every day to meet with people coming into the White House off the street and he he did that as president-elect too he had uh regular meeting open meetings at the uh State House when he was president-elect and uh people could just come in and talk to him and these are the ways he he figured out well this is how people feel he had he had uh political advisor all around the country writing to him constantly and he really knew exactly when for instance to push for emancipation uh when he could get away with it and when he couldn't and uh I don't think these other candidates would have had this kind of uh I mean really brilliant ability to to figure out a timetable for doing these things your your book of course deals um in a very detailed compelling way with the convention those few days in Chicago but just to round out the story here Ed take us forward to the election itself was it more or less a sure thing that whoever the Republican nominee was was going to win because of Divisions in the Democratic party is is that a fair generalization well it's it's never a sure thing in politics as you know it's uh the Democrats did end up splitting between north and south and that really was the direct uh path to secession uh they they nominated a southern candidate John Breer Rich they nominated a northern candidate uh Stephen Douglas and so Lincoln was fighting and there was a wi sort of the remnants of the wig party uh created a new party called the union party and they um they backed another candidate so Lincoln was running around against three candidates and you could say well the Democrats destroyed themselves by splitting up but actually if you even add the Democratic votes together as one candidate Lincoln still would have won the election he would have won the Electoral College because he was so strong in the north and this is what really terrified the South that political power had shifted to the north and they no longer could could control the government and they thought their whole way way of life was threatened so uh and but Lincoln did Lincoln won convincingly in the Electoral College but because of the split he was he had the lowest percentage of the popular vote to this day only 39% of uh the votes went to him and that was more than any other candidate but it was the least in our history yeah so you got understand Lincoln entered the presidency as this sort of uh minority uh president and he had to really rally people to support him yeah including of course famously people in his own party so I want to ask you as we as we uh get close to the end of our time together here about how Lincoln dealt with this formidable array of contenders who thought they in many cases were better qualified to be president president then Abraham Lincoln you know much has been made of this idea of the Team of Rivals right so some of these folks found themselves find found their way into Lincoln's cabinet including none other than Seward himself how did Lincoln deal with them and maybe just as importantly how did they deal with Lincoln yeah well Seward Chase Bates all these people um entered the cabinet and they they disagreed with each other they disagreed with Lincoln uh you know there was a famous portrait of the cabinet painted uh about the Emancipation Proclamation and uh Mary Lincoln took a look at it and said oh the happy family which very sarcastically because they were all at each other's throats the whole during his whole presidency linol Lincoln had this ability to deal with people uh and put them in his their place without insulting them it's it's just extraordinary I mean Seward's the classic case Seward thought thought you know the Seward people thought how can they nominate this uneducated buffoon to be president uh over me I mean he was he was the former Governor of New York US senator and so uh he entered the he he refused to meet with Lincoln finally he grudgingly met with Lincoln on a train uh during the campaign but he he really entered Lincoln made him Secretary of State which was the top cabinet position and Seward entered thinking I'm going to run this this administration because Lincoln's so weak and uh it turned out he very quickly came to understand Lincoln was the best of them all he was an incredible ex chief executive and he wrote to his wife uh in June 1861 he's the best of us all and I think that says so much about Seward and Lincoln Seward was willing to put aside his e go to serve Lincoln once he understood how good Lincoln was and Lincoln didn't take offense at Seward's initial efforts to topple him he uh he turned Seward into his greatest Ally and his greatest advisor during the war and Seward ended up being absolutely essential to Lincoln's WN ability to win that war and I think that says so much about both men yeah and a very important SEC Secretary of State yes um I let me pause just for one moment to remind people in our audience to please uh put your questions into the uh Q&A function at the bottom of your Zoom screen and I'll turn things over to the Q&A in just one minute but Ed let me just pose one more question to you before I uh yield the floor here you've made a couple of Fairly off-hand uh comments connecting the events of 1860 to the present era of American politics what are the what are the lessons what are the implications of the story that you tell them we would be uh well advised to bear in mind as we head into our own pivotal election year well I mean uh one thing Lincoln showed was don't don't judge a book by its cover necessarily you gota uh sometimes these candidates you expect them to be buffoons but they turn out to be something other than that so the other thing is that you can always there's always a miracle I mean this not always but in American history just when things seem dark as something like Lincoln emerges all during the Revolutionary War there were just terrible defeats and disasters and then these these almost miraculous changes helped Propel the country to Victory so this you can always hope there's always hope up there even however Bleak it seems and I think Lincoln also makes the case that this country is founded on on freedom it's founded on the ability of the people to decide their fate so that's what we should always stick to um and we should try to to create a country in which uh the people are sovereign and uh and in which the Declaration is sort of our Guiding Light everybody should be treated equal and we're all uh we all have uh Divine rights that no government can take away so I I would hope uh the lesson of Lincoln uh would would uh leave us with that beautifully put Ed aorn thank you so much I have so enjoyed this conversation with you congratulations again on the Lincoln Miracle inside the Republican convention That Changed History a really fantastic read Ed I'm going to uh drop off and uh reluctantly seed the floor to Sarah McCracken who will uh throw a few more questions at you that come from the audience so thanks again everyone for being here really appreciate it hello Ed hello Sarah been fascinating so far and um grateful to get to ask you some questions on behalf of our audience here today the first one is how did his campaign signal how he would later govern as president well the uh you know that the platform of the party was a crucial thing back in those days and there was a lot of attent you know people don't care about it now but there was tons of attention paid to that and the platform was essentially created around uh uh approaches Lincoln wanted to take especially limiting the spread of slavery and that's EXA the um that was the key point in the platform he felt he had to defend this President and uh that created the whole Terror in the South and the the movement for secession which actually happened before even took office a number of states seceded in the South um so that was in and you know there's a lot of marching in the country by a group called The Wide awakes which were young men who sort of almost paramilitary figures but They Carried uh torches flaming torches and marched at night and they said it's you know we've got to have a change in this country the young people have to take over a new approach and that uh sustained Lincoln through the election too there's another question uh a related question how or about slavery how did Lincoln come around on the issue of slavery from one who only opposed expanding slavery in newly formed States but didn't propose abolishing slavery in southern states to someone who would eventually sign that Emancipation Proclamation well he he was driven to that position by the War I mean he was he was president of a country that had split up and the the North had to conquer the South in order to preserve the union um and as the war went on it became clearer and clearer this wasn't going to happen unless uh slavery was was directly attacked the only way to save the union was to free the slaves and actually enlist former slaves in the Union Army and Lincoln said Lincoln uh did this at the last possible moment I think uh because it was so politically unpopular but he absolutely needed this as a weapon of the war and that's how he justified it uh so he he issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863 and that freed the slaves uh in this in the areas where they were in Rebellion against the United States and of course you could say well that doesn't free anyone but it it did send a message throughout the world and to the South uh that this war is now a war for Freedom or slavery and uh slaves escaped and joined the union ranks and they turned the tide of the war I'm I'm convinced over 100,000 black soldiers they were incredibly important in winning that war so I don't know if that answers it but it's uh it was definitely a war necessity it was Lincoln hoped Lincoln thought the only way to keep the country together was to reassure the South uh that we would not attack slavery but when it became so apparent this war was going to go on uh he had to resort to that measure and uh it was a war measure and he absolutely insisted that they were forever free once they were uh emancipated and he uh that was the real reason he was desperate to be reelected he wanted to keep that promise um this is a question from Anita she says Deja Vu with vicious partisanship tearing apart America the fierce battles raging over racism and slavery but concerns about racism and the shame of slavery seem to forget or ignore our history of Oppression of the Native or indigenous peoples in this country what would Lincoln say well Lincoln thought the treatment of Native Americans was as bad as slavery so he would uh he he thought it was a basically a terrible thing but he this was not at the this was not the front burner during the Civil War I mean he he was slavery and uh the war effort itself were what he was uh deeply concerned with so he did not really um I mean there's there's issues involving his role in in uh allowing the execution of some Native Americans to go forward but that wasn't really a central U concern of his during that war we have a couple of questions about Mary Todd Lincoln I know you referenced her briefly and her um her influence on Lincoln tell us a little bit more about her and how she might be compared to other presidential wives who are a force in their husband's political careers she she's a very interesting character because I I think their very troubled relationship actually led to him spending six months out on the road uh when he was a lawyer and that built his political support so if he had had a uh perfectly happy home situation he might not have gone out and become so political the other thing was she believed in him more than anybody she she thought he'd be president someday very early on and uh he told a reporter in 1858 that you know I I you know it took me a long time to to uh accept that I could be a a really first level Senator and he said my wife thinks I'm suitable for the presidency and he said imagine a sucker like me for president he just burst out laughing but she did believe in him she she pushed him forward she wouldn't let him go back he he was thinking of uh going back into the legislature he was actually elected to go back in the legis State Legislature and she said no you've been a congressman you've got to move forward you've got to be a senator or you've got to be president and even during this convention there was talk of Lincoln being vice president and uh there was a I write about this in the book a little they they had a dinner in in supper in Springfield with a friend and they were talking about this and she said you're not you're not accepting the vice president so you have to be president so she was she was really pushed him forward he wouldn't have been president without her I believe but she was also a lot of trouble I mean as as president he had great difficulty because she was doing semi corrupt things um and she had real emotional problems and that made it very difficult for him as president so it's and of course she's the one of the most tragic figures of all time she lost two children uh in childhood she lost a third as a teenager and she saw her husband shot to shot in front of her so you know I've have a lot of sympathy for Mary Todd Lincoln thank you um you talked about patronage um what were the principal motives driving thurow weed and his tireless support for Seward and judge Davis in his herculan effort to nominate Lincoln was it shared values access to power friendship personal gain other uh I think in the case of both of them I mean thorlo weed was famously uh interested in in uh patronage and building political alliances and getting power and so forth but I think he genuinely beli Seward was one of the great men in American history and he had spent his whole career basically uh supporting Seward and moving him forward as first as governor and then as Senator um and I think Davis similarly believed Lincoln uh was a great man who who deserved the presidency and they both I think they both acted in Chicago not so much for personal patronage but to use patronage is a weapon to get their guy uh into the White House um someone ask what was Lincoln's role in the selection of his Vice President Lincoln's this is so interesting about 19th century conventions Lincoln's role was Zero he had nothing to do with Hannibal Hamlin chosen as vice president what happened was uh Lincoln had been nominated and the uh New York faction which was very important in the Republican party was just devastated and they thought this this this uh convention is a joke I mean how dare they nominate this rail splitter over Seward so they were just furious and the rest of the party thought oh God we got to play Kate New York to bring this party together so we can win in November um and they first tried to enlist some New Yorkers to be uh vice president and they all refused they said we're we're not going to put our stamp of approval on this ridiculous convention so finally they went with this guy from Maine who was a Seward supporter he was a former Democrat Lincoln was a former wig so that provided some balance he was Senator in Washington Lincoln was an outsider so sort of an Insider Outsider uh he was from the East Lincoln was from the Midwest so that sort of provided some balance and uh people were just shocked though because they had never heard of Hannibal Hamlin even though he was a US senator I mean very few few people had heard of him and uh he found out about it in Washington he was playing cards that night and some there was banging on his door and he opened the door and they said uh congratulations Mr Vice President he said what are you talking about and they said uh oh you've been nominated vice president for the Republican party and he said but I don't want the job and they had to sort of pressure him to take it uh and he he was Lincoln's uh vice president during the first term we might have been better off if he was vice president during the second term but Andrew Johnson was but Lincoln had nothing to do with it so wild this question is from an she asks protective tariffs helped the Northern Industries but hurt Southern exports uh that was also an economic cause of the Civil War what was the Republican party's position on this yeah L Lincoln uh was that that was one of the things Lincoln sent his supporters uh into the convention with saying well I'll go along with Mo moderate tariffs but don't push this issue it shouldn't be a central issue but it was a central issue to sort of the the mid middle States like Pennsylvania especially and so the de the Republicans passed a tariff uh just sort of but it was wishy-washy language in in the uh in the platform but that was a very contentious issue with the South and that's one of the reasons the South uh very greatly feared a Republican president because they had lost lost their power to control Congress uh the Republicans and the North had become more powerful than the South and they were very afraid that they their whole economy would be gradually crushed by Northern tariffs so that was you know was one of the issues of the campaign but it wasn't one that Lincoln was very concerned about he was always concerned about slavery he thought that was the key issue thank you um this question is did Lincoln in reality have a quiet burning ambition for the presidency that was maybe masked by his self-effacing folksy manner that's a great question I think so I think he was very ambitious I mean he I think he didn't quite perceive himself as presidential material until very late in the process but he kept pushing forward he kept uh he pushed the party into a position where it was focusing on the issue he thought was most important which was the territorial question um and he's he conf you know it's very strange he never really announced for the presidency he uh but he told the a senator from Illinois uh very early in 1860 well the taste is in my mouth a little and that's that was essentially his announcement for the presidency uh and he uh but I think he really had a burning ambition to I mean to to have as much political power as possible to fight the slavery question um and he uh he clearly greatly desired to be president when uh when this came down but he you know he so strange he doesn't show emotion when you know like he didn't jump around and yay carry on when he was uh when he found out he was nominated president he just said oh I gotta go home there's a little lady there who wants to hear this news and that's and that was about as uh excited as he got you or Mark mentioned at the top that there are more than 19,000 books written about Lincoln um are there any others you would recommend for further reading and and feel free to talk tell us about your other book on Lincoln as well oh boy well my other my other book is a every drop of blood which is about the second inauguration and basically it's 24 hours in the life of Lincoln in the nation around that that speech you know it was this famous speech with with uh malice toward none with charity for all and I so I look at different people who were intersecting with them that day Walt Whitman was covering it for the New York Times and Frederick Douglas the great black leader was standing there listening to the speech and later discussed it with Lincoln at the White House and and John wils Booth was there stalking Lincoln and I think planned to kill him that day but he didn't succeed so there's all so I I talk about the uh you know the terrible suffering of the Civil War through the through the uh prism of that one day and uh that that did very well I think people like that book um so many great Lincoln books I probably would offend everybody but my one of my heroes is this guy Douglas Wilson who's won the Lincoln rise twice he's written a number of just absolutely suburb books about l and and there's so many others I'm probably going to offend All My Friends by not not pulling them up off the top of my head um it's it's this real Bounty of books about Lincoln just because my God it's I it's such a privilege to spend time with them I've spent like the last six years day and night with Lincoln talking about him or reading about him or reading what he had written and I just feel so privileged to have had this experience well thank you um we do have a few more questions but I know our time is running out so I will hand it back over to Phil Barnes but appreciate your interesting discussion on Lincoln and the and the Republican convention thank you so much Sarah oh and that was just a wonderful wonderful afternoon thank you congratulations again on such a marvelous book I thank you Mark and sharah again for such good work many of us in the audience are supporters of humanities Texas and are members of UT or friends of the LBJ Library if not please check us out each of these organizations offers a wide variety of outstanding in-person and virtual programs information about these organizations and how to contact them is highlighted on our closing slides and thank you all for tuning in we will be back next Thursday February 1 at 4M for a conversation with historian Nancy Beck young the author of two sons of the Southwest Lyndon Johnson Barry goldw in the 1964 battle between liberalism and conservatism I hope to see you next time and goodbye for now
