so, first of all, edward, acorn

likes to remind his readers that the individuals participated in momentous events, didn't know how things would turn out. that is definitely the case. in his 2023 book, the lincoln miracle inside the republican convention, that changed history as he takes through the blow by blow action in back rooms and the wigwam at the 1860 republican national convention forum, attendees will also remember a similar you are their approach in acorns every drop of blood the momentous second inaugural of abraham lincoln, which was named one of the best books of 2020 by the economist magazine. this pulitzer prize finalist for commentary has also written two acclaimed books about 19th century baseball and american culture, 59 and 84 and the

summer of beer whiskey. so we'll have to have him talk at the cash bar later. joseph fornieri is american political story and a professor of political science at the rochester institute of technology and is an expert on the political ideology of abraham lincoln. he is the author of several books and articles on topics in lincoln's studies, including abraham lincoln, philosopher, statesman, abraham lincoln's political faith, as well as the edited books on the language of liberty, the political speeches and writings of abraham lincoln, lincoln's america, and lincoln's dream clashing political perspectives. do you write anything that doesn't have lincoln in the title? no. we appreciate that. and i will mention you, those of you who are here in attendance at the lincoln forum here in, gettysburg, that joseph fornieri is also a talented guitarist. and if you are lucky, you can sometimes catch an impromptu performance by professor

fournier in the windham bar after the festivities have ended for the day. it's a rumor. now we've got evidence. you're not. you're very good. ronald white is well known to both lincoln forum attendees and those with his publications on and civil war era topics. he is the author of two new york times bestselling presidential biographies lincoln a biography fee and american ulysses a life of ulysses grant, among other works. he's also the author of several additional books on abraham lincoln, including lincoln's speech, the second inaugural, the president a portrait of lincoln through his words and lincoln in private, what his most personal reflections tell us about our greatest american, our greatest president, most appropriately, a scholar of both the civil war era and theology. ron is most recently the biographer of another man of faith and intellectual achievement, a figure well known here in gettysburg, joshua

lawrence chamberlain, who is the subject of ron's most recent work on great fields. the life and unlikely heroism of joshua lawrence chamberlain, which he spoke about earlier today in harold holder's. i could probably just say his name and. leave it at that. but i won't. whether a first time attendee of the forum or a seasoned veteran, we all know harold as one of the country's leading authorities on, abraham lincoln and the political culture of the civil war era. he is a prolific writer and lecturer and a frequent television commentator for the six years between 2020 ten and 2016. harold served as the chairman of the lincoln bicentennial foundation following the previous decade of service as the co-chair of the u.s. abraham lincoln bicentennial commission. like our lincoln forum chairman, john white, based on his study output and public engagement, i'm not sure that our forum actually sleeps either. harold currently serves the john

f, jonathan f stanton, director of hunter college's roosevelt house public policy institute and has authored or coauthored or edited more than 50 books in. 2020. he published the presidents, the press the endless battle between the white house and the media from the founding fathers to fake news. his previous book on a similar theme was the award winning lincoln and the power of the press the war for public opinion, which won the gilder lehrman lincoln prize in 2015. among his many publications, lincoln harold has also written an important biography of lincoln memorial sculptor daniel chester, french in monument man the life and art of daniel chester french published in 2019. i could go on at some length about harold's history as lincoln scholar, his 23 years as senior vice president for public affairs at the metropolitan museum of art, or his previous with new york politics and politicians. but if you want to know more about harold at this point, i will say google him or talk to

his wonderful edith, who was harold's high school sweetheart. it is truly been my privilege to get to know both harold and during my time on the lincoln forum board. and finally, let me introduce your moderator. certainly not last, but certainly not least. i'm delighted to introduce as your moderator for this panel discussion my friend aaron carlson, mass. i first got to know aaron during tenure as the executive director of president lincoln's cottage in washington, d.c., where she spearheaded an innovative approach to the site as both a center of lincoln history and a venue which to examine issues relevant to both lincoln's time and our own. under aaron's leadership, the cottage became less of a museum of objects and more of a museum of ideas rooted in the place in which they took shape. president lincoln's cottage received awards for excellence during aaron's tenure, including a presidential medal. its international students

opposing program. 50 great places to work in washington d.c. and the best museum off of the mall for four years in a row and competing other museums in washington, d.c. that's an accomplish to get best museum off the mall. aaron joined the lincoln foundation as president and in 2021, where continues to do good work in the field. lincoln studies. most recently the foundation was awarded an emmy for the four part documentary warning signs. lincoln's response rising tensions in the 1850s, which also received a gold star held for best history series. so it is my honor and privilege to turn the podium over to my erin carlson mast who will guide the discussion on lincoln, the great communicator. thank you, michelle as you heard from her, this panel on lincoln and the great communicator represents an incredible of expertise in history,

philosophy, journalism, religion and more. we're very to have this group of experts who will delve into abraham lincoln's mostly public communication. in particular, we'll discuss his his philosophy, his abilities to leverage the press and to persuade. i think it's worth noting that. in c-span's most recent quadrennial ranking of u.s. presidents, which dozens experts weigh in on, abraham lincoln still first overall. but when it comes to public persuasion in particular, that category he consistently ranks number two or number. three behind a president, presidents named roosevelt every single time. so we can get into that a little bit as well. so i'll be posing questions, our panel and they will also be responding to one another. and then we will, of course, try to leave time for at the end. so, joe i'd like to begin with you. what does being a great communicator. why does a great communicator matter? and can you please explain

lincoln's view of the importance of public opinion? thank you so much. i'm honored to be here. and with these these great and colleagues and and thank you of course. consent of the governed is a crucial axiom of right. democracies based on consent and that that consent also depends upon persuasion and. lincoln said that that public is everything he who molds public opinion goes deeper than he who enacts policies. and so it's public that disposes. the the people in a republic to adopt policies or moves them in a particular direction.

and lincoln's greatness constituted in in part not only was based on his his greatness of action. but in deeds. but his greatness speech and. that is both in substance and style. i would i would argue that lincoln's greatness consists more than his command of the english language. it also involved his profound thought, the depth that he was able to convey the vision of the union that he was able convey and defend. and this is because lincoln's greatness consists as communicator, not only with affirming some noble vision of the union and the common good and a union based on the principles of the declaration of independence and the promise of universal freedom for all.

but it also means defend what lincoln called the ancient against justifications, slavery against moral indifference. right. all you have do is persuade the white population not to care about the monster, the injustice of slavery and the would have spread. and so it was lincoln's ability communicate this vision. and in with with great mastery effectiveness to use metaphor effectively, to use language effectively and also to profoundly convey a vision that would move the public towards defending and extending the principles of the. thank you, joe speaking of ancient texts, ron, can you illuminate how lincoln used reference to the bible to persuade the american public? thank you, aaron. yes, i think this is a

surprising aspect of lincoln. when i started my of lincoln. my academic colleagues said, don't get too excited. everybody quotes the bible. absolutely untrue. in the first 18 inaugural addresses, the bible was quoted only one time by john adams. so when lincoln's in the second inaugural address quotes, the bible four times, we're the question what is happening? and now we have witnesses were in the white house with him who discovered he read the bible in a regular way. did he read it only as a literary text that's also been suggested? no, i think he read it as a theological. so it's true in modern inaugural addresses that in the last paragraph it's sort of like and we need god's help too and everybody, the bible. but for lincoln, it's much fun, foundational that it's right in the center of his second inaugural address. and this says something about his understanding of the power of the bible, again, not as a literary text only, but as a

theological text. i think he's a very thoughtful interpret of the bible sticking with the second inaugural. ed, can you talk little bit about what lincoln was trying to accomplish in that speech? yes, i've i was a journalist for 41 years, and i selectman and state led just slaters and senators and governor and even presidents. and i can't imagine any other politician making a speech like this inaugural address. it's just so striking here. we are on the cusp of finally this terrible, unpopular war. and lincoln doesn't even take a victory. he doesn't even praise the union for courage and endurance. he says both sides were wrong, which is an amazing thing when you think of it. and he he appeals to the religious the christian faith,

which is probably only thing connecting the north, the south at that time. he appeals to their christian, their belief that god is involved in the activities of human beings and says that this this terrible war may be judgment on. the united states, for the great moral sin of slavery. and it's is just so striking to me how he how he does that he said of his speech he expects the second inaugural to wear as well, perhaps better than anything. i produced. but i believe it is not immediately popular. men are not flattered by being shown that there was there has been a difference of purpose between the almighty and them and that's what he's saying. he they thought people thought war would be over quickly. lincoln certainly thought that the moral strength was on the side of the union.

but it turns out this terrible war had to be fought and dragged out until. slavery was finally finally vanquished. and i think he's looking in the speech, he's looking beyond. he's looking beyond victory to to heal this nation after this terrible war. and he wants southern whites to feel like americans, not just the north. and that's we might think well, that's just so obvious but he was up against who wanted south to be even further punished by this war by the response to the war i mean, the harriet the great minister henry ward beecher, he struck a very different tone. lincoln just just few weeks after the second inaugural, when he was at the the dedication,

the re raising of the flag at fort sumter and is comments are just extraordinary. he says beecher place the whole guilt of the war upon. the ambitious, educated, plodding political leaders of the south. they have shed an ocean of blood. their day of trial and punishment would come the southern rebels, he said, be world aloft and plunged down forever and forever. in an retribution. now compare that to the tone of the the second inauguration and even on the afternoon of lincoln's death, congressman george washington julian met with fellow radical and he wrote in diary their hostility lincoln's policy of conciliation and contempt for his weakness were undisguised and the universal feeling among radical men here that his death is a godsend. hmm. yeah. so this the. the kind of emotion and he was dealing with. he was trying to really thread

needle between the anger of the north and the bitterness the south and yeah, it makes you think, wow, what would have happened if booth had not taken him out? thank you for that. and picking up on that idea and trying to read public sentiment. herald can you speak to how lincoln leverages the press both to understand public sentiment and to influence it? yeah, sure. and i want to echo joe's comments about how how extraordinary it is to have this group talking about lincoln's and communication ability. of course, we're talking about consummate stump speaker because he started public speaking on tree stumps after church, as ron has written. that's how developed his rhetorical skills by mesmerizing contemporary eyes, by memorizing sermons as he heard them, and then imitate them until his

father belted them. and they went back home. well, it's all it's fine to enchant audiences, but it takes you only so far and. it takes you exactly as far as a as a hearing audience. again, deferring to wonderful scholarship on there is a there's a listening audience and there's a reading audience and lincoln was a very effective public speaker. but he quickly came to realize as newspapers go from being weekly enterprise, his to biweekly edition to daily papers know save for sunday. there is a way to reach, you know, untold multiples of your hearing audience and that's when lincoln begins to make sure that speeches are either observed by reporters or in the case of the lincoln-douglas debates. and we i have to credit douglass for this douglass invited

stenographers hired by democratic newspapers to, quote, record. and, you know, i mean, take the minutes of the debates this was at the dawn of the court reporting era. and lincoln and his backers quickly hired chicago tribune, republican stenographers. and while there their transcripts don't match their close. and this was a way again of taking phenomenal, successful popular endeavors. some those debates had 20,000. i'm not going to say listeners, because i don't think everyone could hear, but attendees anyway. but reports in the chicago times, the chicago tribune increased audience exponentially. so this is how lincoln sort of combined that effort. and then, of course very quickly, he also had to learn that as he did with the debates

that that newspaper recordings and transcripts were perfect. the house the house divided address was improv effectively trance transcribed with lincoln's approval. he didn't even know that that it had happened and it took a century and don farren baker to figure out what paragraphs had been transposed. and so when lincoln goes to new york to deliver his cooper union address, he has a, you know, 1500 cheering enthused tastic republicans greet his speech rapturously. and then he goes to a dinner and it well first there is another 2 hours speech then he goes to dinner in his honor. and what does he do? he go home to sleep. he goes to the offices of the new york tribune. make sure that this time the typesetting of his speech is perfectly accurate and i'm sure he decided, i know you've all

seen reprints of the cooper union address, that last sentence, that last long sentence. let us have faith that wright makes might is in caps. that i'm sure, was lincoln's idea. and then just one quick nod to michelle's presence of of different versions of the of first inaugural address. he had that preprinted by the the republican paper in springfield thinking that this is it i've got a down in type it'll be. and then of course he he writes the subject to edits bye bye. at least seven people including seward, of course, and the famous last. but anyway, he's now using i could go on but there'll be other that's the beginning of the story. well and then joe, can you talk about other methods lincoln used to persuade or influence opinion. yeah. sorry. don't play.

hello. thank you. i think it's also important to to emphasize the role that the reason speech for lincoln as a as a communicator. right. and and kind of distinguishing early in his career his appeal to unpack and reason to the kind of demagogic emotion you know, appeals which are all too common in political discourse as well and lincoln lincoln through his appeal to logic in his argumentation, appeals to the better of our need, our nature. and we hope that you know is as as a republic where. we can still hear those voices, those those reasonable voices.

one of the and i know my my will talk about this and have written great stuff on it. lincoln lincoln used that he would publish to various you know, newspapers like the letter to horace which harold has done such a great job articulating and and in very important a very important letter to bold public opinion. and of course, is the the letter where he says, my paramount object is to save the union and kind of a reading of that seems to suggest that preserving the union is exclusive or mutually with with ending slavery. but a closer look at that well will reveal the connection between preserving the union and slavery.

so it was masterful in an in an era without you let's see mass media tv or images to reply in newspapers with own position like in the letter in a letter to horace greeley of herald. well, and i in addition to the conversations happening in the press, herald, i know you want to respond to that. i'd also you to speak about leaks, intentional and unintentional. okay. i just wanted to point out the those alleged letters, you know, made sure that the greeley was published in another newspaper while the letter in the mail because he was irritated at greeley for writing him to say, your policies are ridiculous when you're not using the opportunity to enlist black soldiers to fight to fight for the union. he was very tricky with with with public letters we heard

we've heard steve inskeep talk about the warning letter that really that was that was a speech. i mean, that i'm sorry, the conkling that was a speech. that was and i think lincoln was going to go to springfield, illinois. he decided he wasn't. and and that occasioned a leak. we all say that conkling was told to very slowly be very dramatic wonderful things in that letter. some of you say you will not fight free --. well, they seem to fight for you. refuse to rescind the emancipation and etc., etc. well, conkling leaked the letter before the speech. it was actually published in the washington newspapers before the scheduled event, and lincoln was. he wrote up the private letter to conkling and said, could you

do this? not only did you leak it, but you back to the days the house divided address you leaked it wrong. the paragraphs are messed up. i wrote this very well. he didn't say i wrote this very carefully, didn't pound his leg, but yeah. so lincoln is is bedeviled leaks of his of his of his public messages and like gee, what a surprise a president doesn't like having his stuff leaked. it's the one i did the president's of versus the press. it the complaint that goes from washington to joe biden. you know, don't don't leak it unless i leak it way i want to leak. and then i have it . that's a great expression that was not in use during the civil war. we to walk it back. and can you talk a little bit about lincoln's writing process and what people thought about the way he wrote? well, link, i was an english major and. i think lincoln may be america's

greatest literary stylist. i mean, he's just such a beautiful writer. i mean, you've got the resonance. the king james bible. you've got the read deep reading he did in shakespeare. but then you've also got these these phrases and very phrases and this this was like a radical innovation for the times. people were quite puzzled with this. i remember his july 4th address to congress, 1861, and a government editor sort of read lined his speech. he used the phrase sugar coated, and lincoln said, freeze. that word expressed precisely my idea. and i'm not to change it the time will never come in this country when people don't exactly what sugar coated means. but then you find these just these wildly critical reviews of

lincoln's and it's just wonderful stuff. the jersey city standard found his first inaugural address course colloquial, devoid ease and grace and bristling with and outrages against simplest rules of syntax and the times of london. i thought his gettysburg address added a ludicrous note to the ceremonies. anything more dull and commonplace wouldn't be easy to produce. oh, i want to pick up on ryan on the first inaugural address. ron it's often forgotten that william seward disapproved of the final paragraph in lincoln's first inaugural address. seward's applied to new final ones. in the paragraph, lincoln chose. how did he edit seward's words make his words so much more memorable? if i could just add a to what ed

has just said and offer a contrast to the way people write and speak today. in the 19th century, everybody they read out loud. i learned it took me a while to figure this thing out that lincoln always sounded the words out loud before he put them on the paper so that one of his secretaries said, as he was preparing one of his speeches, that lincoln spoke as if he was addressing thousand people privately, and he wanted to know how the words sounded. i am so against the modern speech writers who do that. what do you call the thing that they're reading from? lincoln understood the difference between. the written word and the spoken word, and we've forgotten the difference. i had to take a required speech course in high school. how many required speech courses? his grammar book was, halfway divided between this, is an extra credit question. declamation was the last half of the book public? all right.

to your question. lincoln, as was alluded to last night, but not fully, when did arrive in washington, astor as harold has said, he'd shown the first inaugural to a number of persons who had only offered a comment here, maybe a sentence, maybe word he gets to william home and says, sir, if you like, you may look at this. to his surprise, there was a knock on his door and there was frederick seward, seward's son. and he said, sir my father has read your address and here are seven pages of suggestion. it's 49 suggestions, of which lincoln accepted 27. so lincoln but they were all in red. they were all in red. that's right. thank you. so the last time i taught a seminar at ucla when the students turned in the papers, i said them. i wanted to see what happened. i said all of these papers are unacceptable. how many of you finished it? 2:00 in the morning. how many of you?

this was a first draft. you're smarter. that. so what we miss often is that lincoln was a phenomenal editor. let me just read a couple of lines from final paragraph. seward i close. now you what often lincoln would shorten, but this time he says, i am loathe to close. let me read the last paragraph which is famous to you. seward wrote the mystic chords which proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot pass through all the hearts and all the hearts in this broad continent, ours well yet again, harmonize in their ancient music, when breathed upon by the guardian nation of our angel of the nation. and lincoln must have thought, well, know you're a smart man, but let me try it this way. the chords of memory from every battlefield, patriot grave to every heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the union, when again touched. surely they will be by the

better angels of our nature. now, when lincoln finished the gettysburg address, the story is told. i can't vouch to say it's completely true that a woman said to william seward, who was there, sir, you must have write that address. and he said back to her, no, madam. only abraham lincoln could have written that address. excellent. by way, speaking of reading aloud on the morning, as the recollection went as he attended to his toilet, which i believe means he was getting dressed and shave. abraham lincoln subjected his son to a complete oral of the first inaugural address, so he was still practicing it, not by reading it to himself, but in fact by reading it aloud to his oldest son. harold did did process play into his editing process? and can you speak in general to lincoln's editing process.

how he how he worked through that and how he took charge of it, too. i mean, he are not many cross outs. those in the in the lincoln papers in those of his speeches that we still have manuscript of. and, of course, that's only 1860 plus because he lincoln didn't care about manuscripts when. he was done with them before he had a private. once they were published, the press, he was done. you know, he only cared about speaking and getting the speeches published in the newspapers. but then, fortunately, john nicolay creates a system for for which we're all grateful because, see, we see the results. you know, he's really good actor. let me give you one. one example. and this is the hardest kind of edit, at least the hardest for me that is cutting completely cutting the brilliant things i have to say. once i write something and an editor says, you know, it's really like 10% too long, i say, oh my god.

anyway, in, in than one document, including the letter to greeley. lincoln says things that we know. you know, if i could save the union by freeing all the slaves, i would do it. if i could save the union, by freeing those slaves, i would do it. if i could save the union by some and letting others alone, i would do that. the next thing he wrote was, broken eggs can never mended. now that's really clunky for lincoln. he you i've seen to least two other instances where he wrote broken eggs can never be mended and it's his kind of homey or homely. you say metaphor? both. he crossed it out of the greeley letter. he crossed it out every time he wrote it because it's just too clunky for lincoln. it doesn't fit. so he was a great self editor as well as editing. so it was a great something. joe, would you. oh and go ahead and just add he wasn't a great extent is speaker. he, he agonized over these

speeches he would take strips of paper he would write down thoughts and little strips of paper and then he pull them out and put them on his knee very meticulously, write these speeches it took it was like years of thought went into the second inaugural address. many things he had written and he did speak extemporaneously. often he tried to bow out and not do it, and then people would pressure. and after one speech in 1864, his wife mary responded to his. that was the worst i ever listened to in my life. how any man could get and deliver such remarks to an audience is more than i can understand. i wanted the earth to sink and let me go through. but did she like speech? thankfully. thankfully, i've never gotten response from my wife, so. yet? no. you and remember that here, you

know, 160 years ago tomorrow lincoln gets gettysburg and people pound on the, you know, will's house. what does the president have to say? he opens door, not the window. the door. and, you know, it says, i don't want to talk a person in my position needs to avoid foolish things. and then somebody yells back at him, if you can do it or whatever the the line back was and retreats into the wilts has to very seriously on this speech which according to legend he didn't very hard on and we know he did. yeah. go ahead run. well part of the legend and finally this came into my possession is this remarkable little book called, the perfect tribute by mary raymond shipman. andrews. she wrote it in 1906. she was a sentimental novelist and. she used to ask this question, but i stopped asking it because. it was too embarrassing. how many of you thought abraham lincoln wrote the gettysburg address on the train to

gettysburg? she's the one that put that into our minds. this little book sold 600,000 copies, published in 1906. it became required reading for high school students english. and she tells the story that he's sitting on train struggling. william seward opens up a carton of books and has some brown paper. and lincoln says, can i borrow the brown paper? and he writes, the second gettysburg address on the brown paper. and as she says and he knew it was a failure from the beginning. and for 50, 75 years, that was the story. what we're saying here together is no lincoln, never would have simply written something on the fly, on the way to. he was very careful, both his writing and his speaking. he re-edited and as ed suggested, over being willing and able to speak, this is what happened to put that no name and

in the american public. hopefully we don't believe that anymore. and by the way, it finally i you know, i'm not i'm not great on the decades between 1970 and now but it did inspire television movie in lincoln was played by who knows you you know or dennis weaver. joe can you speak a little bit to how that the the inability to speak very effectively extemporaneously was hindrance or hurt? lincoln his political career, how he overcame that. well he was a i think his is a trial lawyer. you know, he was i don't want to overemphasize that was that he was poor it it extemporaneous speaking but he you know he had the gift of firing on all

rhetorical cylinders you know aristotle speaks about the three great appeals of persuasion. one is ethos it's the credibility of your audience, the credibility of the speaker. the two is logos or reason speech and three is pathos. the sentiment feeling of the speaker. and in lincoln excelled at all these appeals. harold i think of the broken eggs is clunky, but it paints such a vivid picture of some irrevocable action of slavery is gone. and i think he did use just inelegant. yeah, inelegant. at least in a letter. but yeah. and not that opinion. these other metaphor, the inadequate metaphor of poor predation and contrasting. and in in in the erastus corning letter, the wily agitator

versus, the simple minded soldier boy, sugar coated rebellion. he was able i think he was given his own experience. he was able to use metaphors that that connected with the audience with with the public, but also to do so. you know, at the same time, profound philosophical justifications about self-government. but i think you really made a good point about the his his legal practice because he was not a legal scholar. he didn't do research. but he was supposedly we don't have we have but one trial record and that is, you know, kind of sketchy in the old fashioned sense of the word. but he was supposedly a spell binder of jury. so we knew he could speak extemporaneous. he didn't want to for the ages he wanted to be prepared for things, as he put it, that would go into history. that was his expression. so we do have just a few minutes left before.

we want to turn over to audience question so i'd final thoughts from each of our panelists. maybe, perhaps the best example of lincoln as a great communicator from each one of you. ron let's, start with you. well, i want to make the point that lincoln disappeared in two greatest speeches the gettysburg address and, the second inaugural. and then for you to contrast that with today's modern politicians in the gettysburg address, there is not one personal pronoun in the second inaugural. there are only two personal pronouns. lincoln goes out of his way not to talk about the i, the me in his addresses. he's talking about something beyond himself. the ideas of freedom. the ideas of democracy. that me is one of the greatness. greatness of his ability as public speaker. it's not. i, it's we. and it's united states. herald i would like to make one

point that hasn't been made as a kind of summation, and that is another reason lincoln's speeches were so effective during his presidency and period immediately before was that, they were so rare. lincoln did not speak every day. he didn't speak month gettysburg was a rarity. his the speech that mortified mary was a rarity. and in the months of his transition from president elect to the presidency, lincoln adapted, something we will never see again. public silence masterly inactivity, which is his way saying i have said all i need to say. read my debates with douglas. read the cooper union address. and i think his superior of silence made everything that came after not just one funny speeches at railroad stations along the inaugural journey, but

the first inaugural address, extreme, powerful and just just bring up a point we made about his speaking in court. those weren't extemporaneous either. he very meticulously studied the other sides position. and this was one of the real strengths of lincoln i think he he this uncanny ability to understand what the other side saying and to not blow it off or say, oh, they're, you know, they're full of it, whatever he would he would try to understa what they're saying what their best argument is. and then he would craft argument around that. but, you know, boy, in terms of his greatest be i shouldn't say this at gettysburg but i think his his second inaugural is greatest speech in american history to i want to emphasize lincoln's commitment to a

philosophical public opinion. and after cooper's after the cooper union address, when he when he goes to new and and he emphasizes that this country is based on public public sentiment is everything. and public sentiment must grounded upon a philosophical opinion that is isn't accordance with the truth of reality as opposed to an ideological distortion of reality. and the ideological distortion tries to strip african-americans their humanity or the sophisticate distortion that that claims to justify a state unilaterally withdrawing from the union in accordance with the constitution. the profundity of lincoln's mind, excellent thank you. with please join me in giving our panel a round of applause.

we have about 13 minutes left for questions. please step up to the microphone so that we can hear your questions. i think you. i'll try something here. and with the lincoln group of d.c., we read books on lincoln every month. we can't get enough. we've celebrated how many years of that, david? so many years. 20 years of of 51 years of lincoln. of reading books. we can't get enough of his text. what you were just saying, joe, about listening and and hearing the other side. that is something that we just we seem to be losing more and more of that ability. we never we didn't get a sense that he's listening to one group just not even hearing while he's formulating response. he really is taking that in can can we get some input on from your your take on how he's able

to just analyze that get into a soul and heart and depth of another entity another being to the point of being able to to let that in and then to respond. yeah, i think that was no, i think that's a great point. and is as distasteful as some of these. it certainly is is the pro-slavery theology as the pro-slavery philosophy, as southern justifications calhoun's justification for secession and nullification. i think they're absolutely crucial and understanding lincoln. and lincoln, lincoln's thought and in speeches don't emerge in a vacuum. they're really emerge as a concrete response to these to these challenges. right to these disorders. to what he referred to as is soft stress at a time.

but in the process of doing so, he said something that was enduring. so it's both and i think it's it's important that we we we keep that dialectic that we hear that side of the story. and you know as john stuart mill says that that even something in opinion is wrong or false. it it deepens the living truth within us to engage it. and i think so. and that's what this forum is all about, right? i mean, there is a diversity of opinions. and we were always engaging with opposite about this time period. dr. john will and lincoln group of d.c. we're a little bit about this before we had another president called the great communicator. of course ronald reagan, and we were talking about some of the similarities between, lincoln and reagan, the apparently they were like to tell stories and,

cabinet meetings and things like that. so can you think of anything similar between those two and with harold, also the other communicator, roosevelt and lincoln, since you're now a roosevelt guide, you, i just want to mention i have a friend who's very old man. now, but he was a member of the reagan cabinet. he said every single cabinet meeting reagan would open up with a joke and a self-deprecating joke. so that sounds me very much like lincoln. and he said that broke a lot of of of and stress and i think lincoln was very much along those lines. and they both come from america's heartland. they lincoln spent a lot of time working the circuit, meeting sorts of people. and he he endured so much failure in his life disappointment after. disappointment. and i think that and made him better able to relate to other

people in the struggles that they were going through. i'll just say on fdr and i'm not going to talk about his communications ability because we don't have time. but i will say that he wrote his gettysburg address on a train. fdr came here for the dedication of the peace memorial, and he did not get to speechwriters draft the train from hyde park to gettysburg. so we do have one get presidential gettysburg on the train that we can various cerf and kelly tillery philadelphia lawyer 90 of my relatives fought the confederacy, including nine who fought here at gettysburg. if the panel could do this, could you please address lincoln's failure to persuade aid those millions of southerners who do not own slaves and to counter the delusive power of the slave power. well, i'll just say that he.

i once told my editor i wanted to do a book on lincoln's ten greatest mistakes. and she said, oh my god, that's a idea. don't ever suggest that again. but i have it in my head. i think his overestimation of the union sentiment in in southern states, in slaveholding states was in explicar badly overgenerous and and, but i think he was also done in by the length of the transition. you know, he was he was powerful as to act. and his predecessor, the president, the sitting president who had a third of a year to go before he left, was unwilling to act, to enforce the prohibition secession. so his over over positiveness and buchanan's fecklessness i think contributes as much to the tragedy as anything like i would

say. but on the other side, there's a, you know, from rochester new york, there's frederick douglass, who sees his first inaugural address and, at least at the beginning of his administration, far too conciliatory. so it's it's it's dealing with those two vantage uses. right? the southern unionism but also the the of abolitionism, which think he thinks he's too conciliatory. yes, sir. peter, over here from gettysburg, is there so to ron white or of you, was there any evidence that link can used or considered any other religious texts to help in his formulation of, his religious feelings in his debates or. well, lincoln's second inaugural took people by surprise because they were not aware that he had

written about this two and a half years earlier. he wrote 111 notes to himself off that have been preserved have survived. one which was taken by john hay after lincoln's death. john hay gave it the title meditate on the divine will. it begins the will of god prevails in both contests. each side's claim to follow the will of god. both may be one must be wrong. so he was already thinking way. it was a very theological, very philosophical text. it becomes more flesh and blood in, the second inaugural. so he's already this way forward and i wondered what he might have said. gamblers in the street at the day of the second inaugural were betting that he would be elected for a third term and serve the way till 1873. so i have the feeling, knowing of his tutelage, phineas den's

more eagerly at the new york avenue presbyterian church. i've read his sermons. they're all about providence. lincoln, as a youth, was all about fatal. now he's talking about providence in the second inaugural. we would have heard more, but we didn't have the opportunity. and i would just add, is house divided speech that phrase is straight out of the new testament. so he's i'm sure besides the bible. right. oh, i'm sorry. yeah. oh, okay. yeah. thank you. hi. scott schrader, bloomington, indiana. you guys very well articulated. how much lincoln agonized over his speech as he thought about them, he prepared them. but when was done, there was published. he did with them, with one notable exception, the gettysburg address. he. no, i only said pre-presidential. he got right. oh, i'm sorry. yeah, but he did continue to edit that one. certainly what, what was different or. different in his mind about that. the medium led him to continue editing. what message he trying to send.

i think he was responding. you know, it's like lincoln's. he didn't say, i'm going to go set for the photographers today. because that wasn't what i supposedly immodest politicians. he waited to be important to the photographer by an artist by an admirer. the proliferation of gettysburg copies is in to requests for copies sell for various war charities. just as he disposed of copies, the emancipation proclamation, much to his family's regret when the principal copy in the chicago fire. but we in new york state got one. we got the preliminary proclamation. he was responding and the reason we have a final copy on which he wrote addressed at gettysburg is because the the penultimate copy was written both sides of a page. and his the people who had requested said, oh, no, we want to put it in an album so we can't have both sides of the page, so please do it again. and that's why we have the final

copy. so i think he was responding public demand and the emancipation proclamation donated to great northwestern sanitary fair raised more money than any donation to the fair, for which lincoln got a gold watch which he wore for the rest his life. and just quickly, as harold mentioned earlier, correctly, he would go to the publisher of the newspaper, correct the text. he added words under god in the gettysburg address, which was not in the text. he did not go and take that out in all the subsequent versions that he then gave to other people. right. he edited riverboat jay at the right at the cemetery and then kept it. thank you. all right, dan drinky, we can watch florida. i always had the sense that there was a not so veiled level of condescension that lincoln had to endure from his cabinet

members and those around him. and i like your opinion as to maybe that's why there was such discomfort with the things he wrote. and when he gave his speeches or rehearsed his speeches. because he was not of the political class. especially during his first term, i would just say he was underestimated by lots of people. yeah, but he had a you know, he came to washington in 1861 and one of his early meetings was with charles sumner, the harvard educated brahmin senator, or the living symbol, living martyr to abolitionism. and he was so happy that he was going to be an early meet me and greeter of lincoln because he was going to assert his intellectual dominance over backwoods guy who we never met. and when he left the meeting

allegedly confided he'd never anyone who had such intellectual as abraham lincoln did so he may have been he may have aroused people to underestimate him, but he was very confident in himself. and by april 1st of that first term, seward come to lincoln and said, that seems we have no policy. this is the criticism. and so he said i think it's up to me now to step forward to have a policy which was what secretaries state did, whether lincoln actually spoke to seward or wrote to seward, if it's all right with you. and then about four weeks later, seward to his wife, lincoln is the of all of us. lincoln is the best of all of us. so i'm told we have time for only one more question. sorry to. say. so my question. questions for in the beginning of the panel, we learn that lincoln is read second best presidential communicator with ken roosevelt being first. does roosevelt's advantage of

technology as radio. of his length time in office of. does that give him an advantage and therefore they should be reversed with lincoln on top. i'm only one vote in that poll, so and i always give them both a ten. but but yes, roosevelt has the advantage of being audible. we can hear his voice. we know that he mastered a new technology in radio only 28. fireside chats and my parents thought he was on radio every night because the power those messages the fan rallies grouped around those big radios. but you know the greatest presidential communicators are those who master communications technologies. lincoln understood that he had the power to see his words into print. and later his in his presidency to use the telegraph to get

messages out quickly. fdr had, which was network was brand new in 1930 233. president kennedy had brilliant advisors and television on and he was brilliant in his press conferences. the state department and, barack obama understood that was a new thing called the internet. and he, you know, had a web site which was the first. and donald trump understood twitter as a mechanism for reaching people. i think those were the top presidential communicators. excellent. well that's a that's a nonpartisan of presidential command. thank you all so much to our panelists and to all of for your wonderful questions. you managed to find.