after having lived these last few weeks relating to i completed more than 15 years ago, so i think you so much for having me here today. let me begin by describing the focus of the book that is growing fatter and fatter each year so that it will probably divided into stories. the first titled the team of rivaled the making of lincoln's white house that tells a story

over is suppressing nomination for the rival particularly the base through the elections for the transition where it comes into play the buchanan cabinet telling them what is going on in the buchanan cabinets through the inauguration through the famous april 1st memo where he essentially tells lincoln he will take charge of things if lincoln can't, and finally through his decision to reinforce against the advisers of the cabinet. the decision that begins the process of the mastery of this extraordinary tumultuous cabinets that serves the focal point of my story called abraham lincoln's white house. through the narrative of defense i have a comparative look at both of the inner and outer lives of this extraordinary group of figures, combing through their family papers, their letters, their official records, and what a great luxury it is the root so often to their families for the children they

wrote these passages at night in their diary how they have time to do so after worrying about the civil war during the day still remains a mystery to me but life is less distracted in those days. and i am hoping this competitive perspective will also have some insights into a number of issues in the field of the scholarship including the impact of loss of a parent at an early age and experience that lincoln shared with chase base and stanton. he lost his mother and chase was on the eight when he lost his father, stanton was 13, and while each of their lives was permanently contoured by the early death of their parent, the impact of oh-la-la depended on each man's tim grumet and the unique circumstances and their families. the comparative perspective also comment on the intensity of male friendships during this era. competitive attitudes not towards antislavery but towards issues of black equality and

black codes among of the northern politicians and the various levels of comprehension or the lack thereof regarding the depth of the threat posed by the southern secession for it and the different patterns of political oratory each used to express themselves during this period of time. but for today i would like to play with a very broad comparative question of how the structure of a leader's private life, his family life, affect the course of his ambition by examining the interaction of family and ambition and the lives of lincoln and his main contenders for the presidential nomination, seward, chase and bates. they are drawn to the private as well as public life and include chapters on the families of the subjects, but also the most unanswered question is how does that private life affect the public role and the action of the subject being studied? so let me offer some thoughts on that question by a comparative look at family lives and the

nature of ambition in seward, chase, bates and flanagan. at one end of the spectrum, at one end of the spectrum is chase who was driving ambition had no counterpoint in the fulfilling private life. at the event is bates who is healthy family life operated time and again as a brace on the reported ambition. lincoln a physician somewhere in between the two extremes, though both to speed. let me start with chase whose ambition with him in some ways to extraordinary success. the two elections with senator and terms of governor, secretary treasurer, chief justice of the supreme court, his ambition had been part of the may gap since his earliest years and the death of his father when he was only eight falling shortly after the failure in business forced him to exchange the warmth of a comfortable home for a boarding school headed by his brilliant but somewhat ceramica on goal

who bestowed or withdrew approval and affection solely on the basis of successful performance. and that success had to be continually displayed a punishment otherwise. yet even at his uncle's high standards hurt chase comedy spurred with him him an extremely large ambition even as a fledgling lawyer he got huge dreams she confided in his diary to reach the steps where the crowd temple shows complete as he said with deserved honor, eminent usefulness and crown of glory. i love the way they talk. so driving with this and vision that when she was only 28-years-old, his sister abigail confessed she almost trembled for him as she observed his desire to distinguished himself and his devoted missed the principles whose interest terminate in this life. but as his sister hoped the warm family life would replace the envision ms. luft their hopes

would be rebuffed by the phage that brought them to love and lose three wives. his first wife, an attractive young woman whom he left passionately died from complications of childbirth after only 18 months of marriage at the age of 21, 23. his grief was compounded by guilt for he was away on a business trip to philadelphia when she died having been assured by her doctors that she was on the road to recovery. the prospect of a little addition to my reputation could have tempted me away. for months afterwards, believing the doctor is this handled the situation, he blamed himself for her death. then the child upon whom all of the sections entered named kathryn in honor of her mother lived only five years dying of scarlet fever losing a child he told a friend was one of the heftiest calamities human experience can note. there were so many plans, she said with reference to her. he was looking forward to the

day she would be his counselor and friend. perhaps it is strange for him to think about a 5-year-old becoming the run of his household but nonetheless that's what chase was thinking but unfortunately he fell in love again to read the young woman eliza smith was only 20 when she gave birth to a daughter named cade after the two triet, for a few short years face the debate could chase of happiness in marriage sustained by a religious bond but after the birth and death of a second daughter, eliza was diagnosed with tuberculosis that took her life at the age of 25. i write weeping, he admitted to a friend. i have no life. kate has no mother and we are desolate to read the following year they married whose well-to-do father was a leader in cincinnati society and gave birth to two daughters who died at 12 months and two years later her mother followed her into the grave and she was only 44 years of the time but was never to

marry again. what misery this world is, she cried out. def has pursued me since i was 25-years-old. sometimes i feel as if i could give up, as if i must give up and then i rise and by press on and rise and press on heated finding and forward movement and external the achievement as a satisfaction that no other aspect of his life provided, his love for his daughters and especially for his older daughter who became a partner in his ambition even to the point of marrying a rich man who eventually made her life miserable in order to help foster her father's dreams for the presidency. it's interesting, john noted in the diary that the eve of her dazzling wedding which took place in the middle of a civil war i wonder if he's a relationship of this year it here but anyway, she was a very wealthy at the time and they went to a pledge with kate and she cried during the entire plan and he noted i wonder what made

poor kate so sad. later i felt that the fema was about a young woman that married for money rather than for love. sadly that decision did on her the rest of her life so at the time it was part of this extraordinary bond that she had with her father to read over the years comegys speefestival and vision entangled in a web of principal belief and personal vantage. after a life changing incident when he was still in his 20s, when he stood his ground against an organized mob that had broken into the shop where an abolitionist was being printed he dedicated himself to the black man's cause and became one of the giants of antislavery movement. but as his humanitarian reputation grew so did his political ambition as he moved from one part of the party to the letter seeking the disadvantage for himself as well as for his cause and aware that with each shift he betrayed old associates and forged a new set of enemies to be a contemporary observers noted while he was profoundly first in a man he was ignorant of men that he knew

little of human nature. his lack of a warm family life gave him nothing to fall back on what political defeat treated with little else to ground him he became obsessed with achieving the highest office in the land, the presidency. she was afflicted a contemporary leader with one of the worst cases of presidential fever he had ever seen. noted he continued to nurse the one ambition that he failed to achieve either in 1856 come 1864 come 68 or 72 so that it became a curse of his life making him duplicate the honors and powers that were actually did bestowed upon him to be if he became one of the most powerful secretaries of the treasury under lincoln he couldn't help but plot against him in 1864 in the hopes that he could select the nomination away from the chief. even when he became chief justice, he restlessly looked beyond which deceitfully danced before his days.

when touched by a paralytic stroke that in care of his speech she held a reception at his house for the purpose of convincing the political society that he was as physically fit as ever to be president only a few months later he died, his dream forever and fulfilled. now at the other end of the spectrum stood edward of missouri, another of his rivals for the nomination who became his attorney general. politics had beckoned early when he was still in his 20s with his election to the state convention that it ultimately framed the missouri constitution. two years later he was elected to the house where the people of the vroom political factions gravitated to him seeing in his column dignified demeanor a leader but could forge consensus on these issues. when his brother was elected governor two years later, his political opportunities widened but unbeknownst to him at the time, a critical turning point and his life took place when he

fell in love with julia and to occur for his wife. from then on and come home and family which included 17 children, nine of whom survived to read to them he dedicated his best energies even at the cost of his political success. having experience as a child the pain of his own family of 12 splitting apart when his father suffered economic difficulties making them to leave home he was determined to provide for his wife and family in ways that his father was unable to provide for him. though they won a seat in the congress three years after his marriage, his pleasure and his victory was quickly undermined by the thought of leaving home. even short after proved painful for him i've never found it so difficult he told her to keep up my spirit you and i never had such a restless and dissatisfied feeling run away from you. he wrote to her from the various

boarding houses to take his seat but confessed that he was in a melancholy mood. it isn't good for a man to be alone. a pleated on the vanity of cutting ambitions. the destiny of the nation come of anita's and mission might be worth the sacrifice that requires, but a mere seat in congress is a contemptible price for the happiness that we enjoy with each other. it was always your opinion, and now i know it to be true. to return home after his conventional term ended he found great happiness and home and family and in contrast to the introspective diary that he kept filled with limitations about inventions success and power the focus of the details of everyday life, the coming and going of his children, the progress of the garden, the colors of the flowers. his own political ambition was never completely extinguished, however. in 1847 he was chosen to make a concluding speech at their rivers and the convention in chicago organized to fight for

internal improvements for the rivers and harbors. it was an extraordinary affair said to be the largest convention in the united states prior to the civil war. among the thousands present or former and future governors, senators, cabinet officers come and the newly elected congressman from illinois, abraham lincoln. so powerful was the final speech they made at that convention which called for compromise on the slavery issue so that the material progress as a nation to continue, but it was like and buy a liter historian to the famous cross speech delivered by william jennings bryan in 1896. the basis of the same speech he became a leading prospect for the high political office. new york's political boss beg him to re-enter public life, but the firmly declined. once upon a time, he told them she had had noble aspirations to make his mind the mind of other men. but these desires are now gone. his habits formed and stiffened

to the standard of domestic life. the passions we are told, he continued, grow by with the feed and perhaps the converse is also true. i had no official food the past 20 years and i've lost my appetite for that sort of ailment. his results didn't diminish in the years ahead when in 1848 he was approached to run for vice president she replied that he was well weaned from the aspirations of his youth and with as much domestic happiness as man can reasonably hope for in the world, and when the president named him secretary of state, he stunned washington insiders by asking to be excused. but she was already 65-years-old and out of politics for decades when he was approached by a powerful group including frank, his son frank jr. and montgomery and horace greeley to run for the republican nomination in 1860 as a moderate candidate opposed to the abolitionists in the north and the proslavery fanatics of the south. he resisted mightily at first to

the condition is a passion, she wrote in his diary at once and insidious have to cheat a man out of his happiness. but gradually almost against his will, the desire for the highest offer in the land began to take command of the nature. the goal after all wasn't a seat in congress as the member but now the presidency of the united states. but after such a long time away from active politics, his political skills have diminished e-rate clumsily public letter describing the slavery and on the nativist questions that managed to lose support on both of the fervent antislavery side and on the native side. though she began to speak more frequently in public didn't have a political base which to draw more had he kept up with the current feeling in the country. they hope to position here in the middle of the republican party he was in fact too far to the right to become acceptable to republicans that were

anathema that could never forgive him for supporting the know nothing candidate in 1856 to read his of devotees come his dignified demeanor remained unquestioned as well as his character but he had chosen as he once said to be the captain of his own family shipped rather than the leader of the nation and then the nation called potentially in 1860 he was not prepared to answer that call. so now, let me turn to bates who, like chase, share an awareness of his talent when he was a young boy to do that 16 he had so far been inferior to none in his opinion to the of all the contenders for the republican nomination, she had been given the most promising start in life having grown up under the shelter of the well-to-do father and affectionate mother, through the help of the powerful political loss who became his mentor when he was still in his 20s, seward became the youngest member to enter the state senate where he is a leased out during

the two terms. he was only 33 when he persuaded him to run for governor as a member of the newly organized party to the though the democrats were heavily favored since the weekend just begun to organize, seward, the optimist, never having lost anything in his life before was devastated by his defeat and it caused him to reevaluate his ambition and his family life. the previous year he and his wife frances a. burleigh and well-educated woman with a passion and commitment to women's rights and the antislavery cause suffered a dramatic family crisis when she admitted that she had developed an intimate friendship with one of his colleagues in the state senate rita dove there was no indication of a physical relationship in that complex landscape of the victorian social relationships, the private conversations, intimate letters from a mutual self disclosure the perilous physical contact. after the loss of the governorship and of his wife, she began to reevaluate the imbalance in his life between

ambition and family, unable to sleep for days falling into one of his serious and few depressions in his life he confessed he now believed ambition was a demon leading him away from the only one who really loved him. he thought she has a woman had been a spoiled child of romance to think love could be at the center of life but now he wanted nothing more than two live for her and their children in a new and fulfilling life a. but if seward felt that a fit of the universe shifted as a deferred bates when he fell in love with julia, he was wrong. though the relationship was restored he grew restless for a more extensive life and two years later at 37 he ran again for governor and this time he won. he acknowledged his wife would have been happier if he lost, she was thrilled by his victory and after the two successful terms as governor he was elected twice to the senate where he became the most celebrated antislavery politician in the country, the man everyone

thought would win the republican nomination in 1860. his victory at government long separations from his wife and his family where she spent occasional weeks and months in albany and washington she suffered from a variety of ailments and much preferred her home in upstate new york where she was encircled by the warmth and protection of an extended family that included her father, sister and longtime family servants as well as her children. as a consequence, while seward and toward his wife and children he found himself frequently compelled to express affection to letters written late at night after a long day of work holding fast on to his pen, he once told her as if it were the power to summon her before him. seward was only partly right, however, in the acknowledgement his mother would have been happier in the defeat to the request for office for his career would provide her a platform of her own on which her intent of moral conviction and intellectual power could gain a wide audience. indeed throughout his life was

francis much like a lot of roosevelt whose defend her husband's backbone and encouraged his idealism pressing him to consider what should be done rather than what could be done. but in the end, while the idea gave seward great emotional stress, he did what he had to do to follow his ambition which led to a memorable career. i think one of my favorite moments is to picture him on may 18th 1860 s he is awaiting the news that he has been given the republican nomination at the chicago convention so certain was he that he would win and hundreds of people that walked to his home to the festivities that were set to begin once the news came. banners were stretched, restaurants were stocked with food, champagne uncorked, it can then driven to his house to be set off. perhaps the champagne was an ominous sign because rimmer in 1986 the world series between the red sox and the new york

mets we uncorked the champagne thinking we were going to win minutes before the ball went through his legs and of course be ending had a very different way of expressing itself and i will never forget my kids that for ten and nine seeing me cry at the moment saying i don't understand what's the matter. don't worry, they will win next year. i didn't have the heart to tell them the hadn't won and this might be the moment. after seward's devastating defeat that he claimed to leave public life making francis happy thinking she finally had him at home but she soon came to understand his need for action and to be in the middle of things and his patriotic zeal would bring him back into public life again and when lincoln asked him to go into this cabinet is the secretary of state accepted and became a great secretary of state. so with these behind us let me turn the comparative perspective on abraham lincoln. like seward and chase, lincoln's

ambitions are forged early in life even as a child historian douglas wilson has written ki duty with fresh from those around him, he was unusually gifted and had great potential. his ambition led him to memorize the stories he heard listening to his father took to the adults at night and then the next day the tree stump to entertain his juvenile friends. the invention led him to scour the countryside to books to read every spare moment and leave home where he worked as a clerk, postmaster, survey year to keep the body and soul together as he engaged in a systematic self improvement mastering english grammar, newspapers, history, determined to study law on his own. at the same time, politics had a deep hole on him when he ran for the state legislature at this d age of 23 he put out a statement which was a dream he would carry to his day to prove himself worthy to be held in great regard, to win the duration and

respect of every man is set to have a peculiar ambition to really have no other than that of being esteemed by my fellow man by rendering myself worthy to be held for i shall succeed in gratifying this invention is yet to be developed to respect can gradually through eight years in the state legislature where he championed a positive role for the government and building bridges, cutting to promote the new market economy which expanded opportunities of a self-made man and historian persuasively argued his passion and commitment to internal improvements was given strength by his conviction that all men should receive a full and increasing award for their labour so they might have the opportunity to rise in life and all these public works would give them more of that opportunity. lincoln hoped it was fair to be known as a reference to the new york governor hugh white and the opportunities for all new yorkers and that the permanent imprint on the state through his success in getting the

legislature to support the canal. but the stars turned against him in 1937 when a sustained recession hit the state bringing the expensive and the unfinished projects under attack as the economy continued to slide bill legislature called a halt to the project and the state fell into bankruptcy as one of the major proponents of the project lincoln received a major share of the blame the she managed to win a fourth term in the legislature in 1940 he pulled the least number of the votes among the candidates leading in part a decision to retire from the legislature after his term was completed. i would argue that this ambition contributed to this serious depression that enveloped in an january of 1841, the period of melancholy that has been subjected to analysis over the years. to be sure the immediate event that triggered the depression was a broken engagement. some have argued as time went by, lincoln must be set by doubt about the strength but his heart

wasn't going with his head. others suggested he felt love with yet another woman. while that may never be possible to know exactly what was going on in his head, i would suggest given his lifelong ambition to something memorable behind, that an even deeper source of his anxiety was the fear that a wife and family might undermine his concentration and purpose. instead of being a will to read late into the night, to master new subjects to grow the understanding of politics and law, she would be responsible for the life and happiness of a woman who had been accustomed to love and luxury. in the fear that a marriage might enter his career lincoln wasn't alone as legal historians of the period have argued the uncertainty involved in establishing the legal practice caused many to delay wedlock and applied to the law apply even more to politics. as the spirit continued to sink in the melancholy his friends removed sharp objects from his

room fearing he might commit suicide. they were departing from springfield and added to the sadness in a conversation both would remember as long as they lived he warned him if he didn't rally she would die. lincoln replied he was more than willing to die but that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived and that to connect his name with the yvette transpiring in the day at the generation to impress itself upon him it would be something to what we've done to the interest of his mant as what he desired to live for even minimal manifested this despair the strength of his ambition to accomplish something the withstand the test of time carry them forward. fueled by this is why your he gradually recovered from his depression and eventually summoned the courage to remove his commitment to mary todd. as it turned out the fear that marriage would hinder his ambition proved unfounded it on

the contrary in the years that followed bhatia he was able to for the first time enjoy the security and warmth of a family without having to sacrifice the long hours that he devoted to reading, studying, traveling and the leader in the political vineyards while the marriage was challenging and tumultuous it provided him with a harbor for which he could come and go as he pleased while continuing his lifelong quest to be an educated man. in many ways the adjustment to married life is harder for her who never had to do the chores in the house that she was compelled to do have an grumet in the mansion attended by slaves but gene baker has already told us so well what is more most historians would agree that far more troubling to the marriage than to the and just one of the hardship for the intervals he spent trillions on the circuit in the political and years three weeks to come out of weeks there, the sympathetic

biographer considered these the greatest hardship of their marriage to but i could have loved him more, mary said, if he had stayed at home more. some have suggested that these protracted sojourns were a deliberate attempt to construct the world for themselves outside his family given the judge davis who traveled with clinton on the circuit and didn't like mary didn't believe lincoln was domestically happy and the only domestic happiness he ever found was on the circuit. here he would be happy, and no other place to read william, who disliked mary even more than davis did, agreed lincoln's stayed on the circuit as long as he cut, longer than any of the other lawyers because his home was hell and absence from home was heaven, but i would argue it isn't necessary to imagination domestic help to understand why he spent time on the circuit. first and foremost riding the circuit and was an economic necessity as settled a lie.

while they could generate sufficient income from an extensive clientele and the growing cities of st. louis and columbus, lincoln and his fellow lawyers have to move around the state trying thousands of small cases to make a living. when the judge started out, he too road which he acknowledged in one of the letters to his wife saying lincoln would be engaged six weeks here before he gets home, just like old times. in the era when travel was small and arduous labor separated from their families for long periods of time. he was a breed of from francis as much if not more than they were separated from marriage yet no one questioned the death of his love for his wife and family. in part because the letters they wrote have survived allowing us to cross the boundaries of time and space and feel the emotional bond between the two. in contrast only a handful of letters exist between mary and abraham while they reveal the flirtation and teasing they represent only a short period in

their lives. the rest is lost to history either because they do not write off the war because they do not say what they wrote for some speculated mary put them in a bonfire when they left for washington to become president and first lady did in the vacuum created by the absence of the letters got some speculation abound. what is more for lincoln beyond providing income for his family, the circuit added some of the deepest needs of the personalities. the close contact between the lawyers that ate and drank as friends in the boarding house were said by one to be the melancholy nature. in these settings lincoln was invariably the center of attraction for no one could match the stream of stories to bed as his winding tales became more and more famous, crowds of villagers would await the arrival of every stop so they could join in the fun of listening to a master storyteller speak. everywhere he but he left behind a group of devoted followers, a band of brothers who had worked

for him day and night at the chicago convention and 1860's. nor is it necessary to imagine domestic unhappiness to understand that life on the circuit provided him the time and space he needed to supplement the lot of education which he profoundly regret and all of his life. during the nights and weekends he mastered the books and studied astronomy, political economy and philosophy while some of his friends believed that his marriage and have your palm he would have been satisfied as a country lawyer had he married a woman of more angelic temperament, he speculated he would have remained at home more and less inclined to mingle with people outside. in other words that the bond between lincoln and married in as strong as that between edward and juliet, surely it was not. lincoln might have become a domestic man directing his best energy to his wife and his to children. but the speculation in my judgment denies everything we know of lyndon's for the

ambition. and ambition that carried him against all odds to a successful lawyer to a brilliant politician to the presidency of the united states command in visiones we have seen that was our land when he was only 23-years-old the desire to be by fellow man by rendering himself worthy of their esteem. indeed even more important for lincoln that the congeniality of life on the circuit and the opportunity that it provide for continuing his lifelong education, but the fact that they gave him a chance to walk the streets in dozens of small towns compete at local taverns and come to know the designer, the fear and the whole of thousands of ordinary people in illinois, the people who would provide a loyal base of support in the years ahead when he returned to his first love, politics. but in the early 1850's when lincoln became back to the single term in congress, the time didn't seem immediately right for his public deeds. the slavery issue had been deceptively resolved by the compromise of 1850 and the period of reaction set in.

the karma from the newspapers and public platforms or replaced by the muted discourse persuading of the most antislavery men to turn their attention to other less controversial is used and in the interval between 1850 and 1854, lincoln concentrate on the practice of law as he put it with greater earnest than ever before. but the wheel of history turns in mysterious ways. when lincoln was only 28-years-old to get in a steep in which he lamented his generation didn't face the same historical challenges that confronted the founding fathers. the giant oaks, he called them, who built the political system and have become immortalized in the rivers and streams come he feared since the glory had already been harvested, nothing was left for his generation except for the modest ambition, the governor's chair and even the presidency without larger purpose. as it happened, even in the mid

50's moved in a way that lincoln couldn't have foreseen when he saw the field of glory had been harvested by the leaders for the passage of the kansas nebraska act in 1854, which ultimately led to the birth of the republican party by a weakening the north to a new threat they did previously believed to be freed from slavery, lincoln and his generation would face a historical challenge that even surpass that faced by his revolutionary forebears the fight against the expansion of slavery was a purpose to which he had been looking for for years and is soon became clear as he began to speak out on the issue that he possessed a voice of conviction, pell grant integrity and like any other tree still he suffered losses before he achieved victories losing the race is an 85 and 1888. after losing the first race to lyman trumbull he seemed to suffer a temporary collapse of coca and silence among the papers he admitted how much it

hurt to compare his progress with that of his rifle. 20 years earlier when they were both young even then he said we were both ambitious. i perhaps quite as much so as he with me the race has been a failure with him and one of success. his name fills the nation and it isn't unknown. i have no content for the high eminence that he has reached so that the oppressed species might have shared with me in the elevation. i would rather stand on that evidence and where the crown that the verb pressed the prowl. at this juncture some have suggested he does stand by his wife's believe that he was destined for glory and they had great future that awaited him and his friend recalled the shared the fire, the well, the partner they observed when he was being courted by many she told a friend who had married i

would rather marry a good man of mind that they hope and a bright prospect ahead, fame and power than to marry all of the houses in the world. in the era when she admitted that it was on lady liked to be interested in politics, she in contrast to julia supported her husband's political ambition every step along the way. and all of this is true. yet while she strengthened the will of the difficult moments, there is no evidence that she played a substantive role in shaping the political view as to francis. moreover i would argue that the fired of lincoln's and visiones so consuming that even if mary had been reluctant for them to enter politics he wouldn't have abandoned his political dreams. so intense that his conviction that he was born for some important labor were work as his friend phased it even after the defeat for the senate seats, he found himself engaged again in the struggle over slavery that led to the great historic dimension of chicago where she

emerged as the nominee over the father. for generations, historians have debated the various reasons that led to lincoln's surprising victory. some have attributed to the fact that he lived in a critical state in the republicans needed to win and the fact that the convention was held in chicago or the strength and local support could add weight to the candidacy. others focused on his availability, the fact that he stood in the center of the party he was less radical, less conservative, less offensive and more acceptable to the german americans. still others are due to the team in chicago fought better than anyone else developing the best strategy making the right promises that the right time. all of these factors played a role but as historians rightly argued, the factory can be explained only in small part by the partisan galleries and the bargaining managers when one looks at the political skills of

the sheet the republican party and the like held it together and made it his leader and one looks at the nature of the ambitions in the 50's free of pettiness and overindulgence it can be seen that without knowing that lincoln was preparing himself admirably for the role that awaited him. but the comparative analysis but i have been engaged in for these last five years i but like to believe makes it possible to look of the stories of all of the main contenders as suggesting an even broader argument that achieves success to an entire range of human qualities and life experiences that separated them from his rivals early on and provided him with profound advantages that were not recognized at the time that is a long and i hope fascinating story for yet and other day if you will have me back. for now i would like to close by skipping ahead to that day that clinton can sign the emancipation proclamation for ever carrying his name into history. not long after the signing he talked with his old friend,

joshua, and recalled the early conversation during the crippling depression 1941, saying welcome old friend, maybe at last my fondest dream have been realized, in other words with this signing he hoped that his story would be told long after he died. so let us end this journey of speculation about the interaction between ambition and family with praise to the were the invention of carry lincoln from their log cabin an isolated area of kentucky to the highest forms of power where he became one of the greatest presidents for ever in blazoned in our memory in ways he never could have dreamed when he was a young man. i still have a long way to go but as you know better than i, it is a luxury to live with abraham lincoln just as it was an honor to live for years with franklin and eleanor roosevelt. indeed the older of gotten the more i realize what an extraordinary privileges to have spent my life as a biographer living in one's mind with such large and fascinating characters in contrast to my experience of

president johnson i will not have the opportunity of some debate could spending hours as i did with president johnson after having been chosen by now i've met some in trepidation as a white house intern for johnson but that was the white house fellowship of the fabulous program that what me to spend a year in washington and in and go and help them throughout the rest of the life. it was an unforgettable experience to have spent those hours with the line of finance to the victor of a thousand conquest and he promptly defeated in the end of dollying in virtual exile on his ranch. during that steep i now realized he opened up to me in ways he never would have had i known him at the height of his power sharing in his memory and his white mayors can read it to be sure i shall never enjoy conversations late at night or before the breaking of dawn, never enjoyed rambling up and down the road talking hours after hours. but in the place of district contact i am enjoying the

privilege of immersing myself in the richest body of historical literature on any single subject as responsible so let me end by saying that i am thrilled to be joining the ranks of the scholars and i hope that my books will be a contribution to the great body of work that already exists thank you for letting me focus my heart and soul today and that i really care about as a historian trying to master the autobiography so i can assure my passion for history with others allowing me to believe the past remains within every single one of us the people of fluff in our family and figures we have respected in our history really can move on so long as we tell and retell the stories of their lives which is what i intend to do so long as i possibly can and for letting me sure that with you today, i think you from the bottom of my heart.

thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> all right. we have a few minutes for questions. the first one, which comes from the audience here in the auditorium is how do you contrast the presidential contenders relationship to the church and we've got? >> how do i contrast the presidential relationships to the church and to god? one of the things i have looked at actually is the expressed

belief in the hereafter that some of them had or perhaps that lincoln was unsure of. when ann rutledge dhaka did is said that when he was asked about that don't you believe somehow that there will be something afterward, he said no, i'm afraid i don't. and people who've studied this suggested that looking at all of the spoken words and written words there is no suggestion he believed in god that he believed for sure that there was a year after and went to great lengths with some of his fellow colleagues. with the thought of losing team to leave to them believed what he did in his life of the experiences you have like he had a second wife who would talk about it when you finally got to the hereafter he would spend the rest of your time reviewing the things that happened in your life in fact memory was simply a way of allowing all those things to be recalled later.

i began to wonder how he was going to do it with all these different wives and children, but nonetheless he knew somehow he believed deeply they would not only be a life hereafter but a place where he would know who she was. he would say i will know who she is and we will live our lives together. when one of his little daughters died at the age of nine, she spoke to the surrounding circle before she died and told them not to fear because she was certain she would be going on and she would meet them when she got there and he believed that was true and gave him the strength to get through that difficulty. his first wife mary died and was devastated. they went about the house screaming and kept the nightgown by the bed that night and insisted on burying her in the bridal dress and actually sat down and wrote a 78 page letter to the sun that was the only one or 2-years-old the scrubbing of

the romantic letters the to what it strange and everything about the intimate relationship during the son would never know the other in case he were to dhaka and for years afterwards, he was convinced every though mary was religious and would get to heaven that he was not religious enough to ever meet her there and was haunted by that thought until one day he went after the lecture hall much like this one and somehow she told a friend you will be where i am and then somehow that set up and down to thinking maybe he would be there to get seward was more uncertain, i believe, when his wife died one of the things that happened at the end of the civil war, which is an extraordinary thing to contemplate as you probably all know, seward was an attempted cessation the same light as lyndon when the man came and he not only got seward in bed with a broken jaw but got his son that was unconscious his

son and the secretary said verdes francis was very fragile to begin with, and she wrote at the time her heart was somehow broken into and she didn't know what to do these men she loved so much were buying and eventually they both recovered and then she wrote an assignment i found in the paper saying i never before believed in by curious suffering but somehow my husband and some are getting better i feel that i am dying as a result. and two months later, she did die. so there was a sense in which the impact of this whole thing took itself out on her. a year later the only daughter at the time who kept a diary wanted so much to be a writer and kept a diary that is fabulous in the civil war saying she would never marry her, she could be a writer, she too dhaka a cheerleader but at that point somebody wrote to seward saying you must have some faith things will be all right early on, and said i wish i did.

but i simply do not. so i think when you think about that dodd becomes an extraordinary figure to many of these people and the morrill gets them to the civil war the most important god comes to them, that need to leave something behind to be remembered reminds me of the greek concept that its reputation of what you do on earth provide your life thereafter, and it seems to me that he shared that more than he did sharing the belief that there would be assured after where they could talk with the ones they love and remember what might be loved and share those experiences. it's something that i've only began to study the bid is a fascinating topic and i would love to hear from them. >> do you have time for one -- >> push yes. >> okay. if lincoln had -- this is a counterfactual question -- if he had married and rutledge and

they had had a long and happy marriage, what he had become president? >> i mean it is a great counterfactual. one that you really need to think about. that's why this comparative approach is so much fun for me. i keep reading the line comparing this person and this person that it allows you to think not flat against lincoln which is hard to do with so much wonderful stuff not only against him but about him, so much stuff written about him. i think that i would still argue even as he had married anne rutledge, if she had become an later said a word of the wife for him, that that desire, that in addition wouldn't have been satisfied by a wife and children. surely it would have stopped on the edges that the experienced early on, and perhaps the let link and know that perhaps they might have made it possible to become content but i don't think

so. if the ambition and the first place wasn't as steep obviously as lincoln so if he had been so fulfilled within vision comes on how he would have worked it out in a way to try to balance it as much as he left his wife and children. this is made me realize even more sometimes you think the only people that become high political leaders are those who are either lucky enough for talented reform debate to make the decision to do it but more and more realize that what it takes to make that drive has to be so deep inside you, because you are taking away as this turns out in the system even more from the other balances in your life, and many potential leaders might be sitting here, might be outside and the ones we have, they have a choice that they did long ago that the privacy, that the daily life would provide is more important to them than that envisioned that in vision is so deep and it is very good and the vision that

i doubt very much a marriage with anne ret which would have prevented him from trying to move forward publicly. estimate how the death of willie lincoln any action 62 affected lincoln, and about how the holding a seance in the white house. do you have anything to say about that? >> i think what happened with the death of willie lincoln, it showed in some ways the two different paths that mary and abraham or moving on once they got into the white house because. because the white house they have been somewhat partners in the political ambition. she had been helpful, she loved to talk about politics even though he was on a lot of the time they have the children to share and they have this political life together. once they became president, however, there was very little she could share with them. in the sense of the time he

spent with them and the relaxation time with them, the intimacy that he exchanged even to the point is holding friends when they were waiting for the telegram to come to read the had a difficult time in the white house being a woman having not found what she wanted to do, making those decisions about making the white house beautiful that letter to criticism but there was no easy way for her to have an easy time in the white house any way but when will he died i think that she had nothing to pull her back. she had the structure of daily life and the decisions to put him back in the terrific loss of moly who was in some ways the little lincoln. at some points mary held some seances in the white house that she was presumably able to make contact with lee and her earlier son eddie and gave her some comfort. one gets the sense if they worried about her it would give

comfort that he didn't stop her from doing this but in the way of the work we have to add the enormous words about her growing instability and she became an extraordinary burden and would have been able to give the positive strength of the i think maybe she had given early in their lives. you have to look at the moment and she becomes in some ways a different person. and he come despite having been subjected to these periods of melancholy before, periods of depression, it is no evidence that he ever became the social even after the death showing the structure was there and that he had fulfilled that ambition meant that he could keep going and working and have this extraordinary challenge and that he kept moving forward while she spiral of to the side. one of the saddest conversations they had a right before he died he tells her we have had initial time together and so much of the last year's we must try to be

happier now knowing it's reached a point they would win but of course they never had a chance to enjoy that happiness. so it seems to me that there is so much animus about the whole question of the marriage and all that i feel trying to understand how difficult it was for them in a lot of ways especially for mary once that child died and she had nothing to fall back on obviously she wasn't able to transfer that and it is difficult from that point on. making his extraordinary ability to make those decisions to keep making those extraordinary speeches and move ahead even more memorable when he has those extraordinary profit burdensome that point on. >> this will be the last question. what can you tell about steven spielberg's plans to make a movie based on your book?

>> since he probably was finished with the movie before i was finished with book, he haven't even as it finished a part of this book that would be a team of rivals making lincoln's whitehouse which i am hoping to be done maybe to be held at the earliest of next summer our next call come and then only start lincoln's white house, and his movie will be mostly focused on things like lincoln's white house or presidency. so, you know, i will be hopefully consenting with him on it, but i have a feeling that if he moves as quickly as he generally moves that my book will be not the basis in the sense that will not be. but i am still writing and enjoying the process greatly and at least the first part will be made a part of the movie before it becomes the movie. but, she is a good man and i hope that he will do a good job. i know that he has been scared

of lincoln for a long time and he will draw on other sources besides my unfinished work and will do as well as he can with lincoln because he really wants to. >> please thank doris kearns goodwin. >> thank you very much. [applause]

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