>> we are grateful for being here this afternoon and a terrific book with this discussion made clear with a much better understanding a public figure who we think we know that has even more to him. . . . . of the university w york and founded by shelby white and the leon levy foundation in

2007. i want to thank shelby for her steadfast support for the biography center over all these years. it is her program that made this possible. please note the next event is coming up in two days on this thursday october 15th where victor and i will interview larry about his timely and important new biography of joseph mccarthy. tonight we are here to celebrate the publication of abe, abraham lincoln in his time a new biography by david reynolds. his book launch and the book has received early reviews and the publishers weekly and elsewhere and we encourage everyone to look it up on amazon or your own

local bookstore. david reynolds is a distinguished professor at the graduate center and the author of walt whitman's america a cultural biography, winner of the bancroft prize. his other books include beneath the american renaissance, john brown abolitionist and mighty year than the sword, uncle tom's cabin and the battle for america. he is a regular book reviewer for "the new york times" book review and "the wall street journal" in conversation with one of the leading historians of the 19th century america. slavery and freedom and interpretation of the old south. the radical and the republican frederick douglass, abraham

lincoln and the triumph of antislavery politics. his latest books freedom national, the destruction of slavery in the united states, 1861 to 1865. then a conversation for about 40 minutes, 45 minutes and then take questions for ten or 15 minutes. please click on the question box below in to type on the question and jim will be sure to get to as many as he can. we will try to end the program after about one hour. again, thanks to the leon levy foundation for hosting and foundinfunding these other even. jim i now turn the conversation over to you. thank you. >> thank you. i appreciate it and i'm happy to do this because first of all,

congratulations on your book david is one of my favorite cultural historians. david is one of my favorite historians in the civil war era and he brings to the study of cultural histories certain virtues that are not always present. first from high to low and everything in between.

david tends to always be sensitive to the conflict, the contradiction within american culture. he doesn't find a particular cultural attribute to say this is what american culture was like if there are racists, there are anti-racists. if there are egalitarian there are anti-egalitarian. there are religious conservatives and religious radicals and it's a great effect in all of the work including the kind of democratic acceptability that doesn't worry very much about the culture versus the local church and it doesn't care much about that distinction, not that there isn't such a

distinction. and i think it shapes the kind of subject about walt whitman and the democratic american democracy, or harriet beecher stone but also enormously popular book and finally for similar reasons he quotes around page 17 i think that all of those virtues show up in this book that he's given us.

the kind of biographies what they do generally is follow his life, sometimes his political context there's no biography of but they are kind of standard one volume. they do such a wonderful job, but there's the kind of classic single volume biography. and donald says in the preface

this is a biography from the point of view because he didn't have much connection in the society and culture and he was self educated. he was the ultimate self-made man and he entered the presidency the least prepared of any president that we have ever had. in a sense i guess i am taking the opposite point of view on. from the realm of experience from, and you mentioned this just now, from the very highest to the lowest until the very dogs believe in him. emerson had a certain way of writing that was like that. and he felt the same way about shakespeare, tomac. the scraps of old plays and he

transforms them into something new. lincoln early on was a fan of popular humor but he also memorized a poem and he didn't do this to impress people at cocktail parties. he did it because the passages meant something to him and once he read the passage a couple of times he had them memorized and so in the middle of the presidency he would break out with a long colloquy by hamlet or claudia or one of the great shakespeare tragedies. and even on april 9, 6 -- 1865 when he was surrendering to grant the and lincoln was on a boat going from virginia to

washington. he'd been visiting grant and everybody around him was cheering and it was wonderful and great. today we would have said mission accomplished. but i would rather talk about shakespeare and longfellow and he spent several hours discussing poetry. his mind was on the 750,000 americans who died in the civil war. that is where his mind was. it wasn't mission accomplished. he was thinking about those who had died. it's quite moving and that's part of where his democracy comes from in his ability to identify with people of all

classes and backgrounds. >> is the typical middle-class marriage or was it something different, it's an interesting section book let me ask a few questions about the general theme why abe and not abraham lincoln? >> he didn't like when people called him abe and he said i wouldn't have gotten elected without the image of honest abe.

he knew that in 1860 he became beloved among the people so it feeds into my idea in the book about the way that he identified with americans in the way that they saw him and left him so the people around him knew he only wanted to be called lincoln. he signed his name as though it is a tossup. or father abraham.

>> one of the things that ran through the books that i didn't see much about is the cultural difference between the puritans and you developed this in the sense of himself as well as the way people at the time would understand. can you tell us about that? >> people back then thought the civil war was about the age old difference between the puritans early on settled by the generation of puritans that were escaping persecution in england

and the cavaliers who were the supporters of royalty in england and when cromwell and others came to power, he was a puritan and they were fleeing to america and settled in the south so charles sumner to other people were basically saying it is a fight between new england, which included an anti-slavery standpoint by the way and including the institution of slavery. lincoln was aware but someone at the time said the great thing about president lincoln's he combines the puritan and

calvary. they came over in 1637 and he was a puritan and most of the descendents became baptist eventually but he runs back and on his mother's side he wasn't sure who his grandfather was but he was convinced that it was a virginia planter, a man of sort of aristocracy of the south so in the way that he associated the sense of honor this kind of southern sense of honor so he had this running through him even though he didn't want to identify with either side because a lot of people were saying i am more of a puritan background. he didn't choose to emphasize

the quaker background. it turns out only one of the great-grandmothers. but all his biographies said he was from a quaker background. they were accepted by the puritans and cavaliers. they were also pacifists even during the civil war they were conscientious if they didn't want to go to battle over old opinions so the quakers were okay with the south that they were also sort of beloved in the north and in fact they had been persecuted and hanged in the early new england but by this time they were in the middle of the atlantic states and pennsylvania and it was kind of a buffer between. and i explored in my book how lincoln kind of emphasizes that

aspect. >> there was a wonderful of years ago [inaudible] i'm surprised to see how many people at the time didn't understand but they understood they had a very -- they didn't like the image and they were not only felt images but they were stereotypes. how does each stereotype each other? >> i think that they can pretty easily even in our culture as back then become caricatures.

these were definitely caricatures. by the time of the 19th century when this was being talked about, both of the sections were to be dismissed in a stereotype. but that image overwhelmed a lot of people and they begin to believe it. a lot of people were saying that division can never be repaired because there will be nothing but hate forever between the puritan and the cavalier. it was ridiculous but it was widely accepted. >> and they saw the people that identified themselves as cavalier wouldn't see the puritans as -- [inaudible] also busybodies. >> moralistic, use to hang wages

and so forth and various also very materialistic. it's a party aristocratic. >> that's right. making other people labor for them and the cavaliers were on their porches drinking their mint juleps while enslaved people were working. >> that theme runs all the way through the book. surprising how widespread that was at the time. [inaudible] the difference between the puritan and the cavalier and

it's still there. >> it is to some degree. >> let me ask you another theme that shows up. it doesn't run all the way through but once it shows up it's there. it has to do with niagara falls. when i was a kid that loomed a bit larger than the culture them now. people would go on their honeymoon in the niagara falls but in the middle of 1950, niagara falls was a huge deal and a lot of people used it metaphorically, including lincoln himself. but there's an incident in 1858 that also at niagara falls becomes a metaphor people at the times used and also yo ucs tellg so tell us about that, how did

lincoln -- over maybe you could expand what niagara falls meant in the american colony. >> it was a great tourist attraction and when he went on the way home from washington -- he had been serving in congress and stopped at niagara falls and went to the great lakes to chicago and he lived in illinois. he stopped at niagara falls and was stunned by the spectacle. part of my book is influenced by the school of thought they call post-humanism and that means the effect that nature and things have on people and today even right now we are very much experiencing a post-human existence because we are speaking the way we do because i think covid, we are there's something out there people are

dealing with a thing called fire and then other times it is a hurricane or something. lincoln was immersed into the frontier a kind of savage nature he was overwhelmed by the power of it this spectacle has been here ever since adam. it's been here since ancient rome. it's been a constant throughout history so in a way he was expanded backward in time but

thinking of this thing in front of him and saying how immense it was. at that time as you mentioned, it was a nowadays part of my book is also about how he channeled so many rivers and streams and cultures and i am not saying he came but he became a channeling focus and anyway a tight rope walker came and put on a spectacle and he would push a wheelbarrow across niagara

falls and do flips and walk across the 4-foot distilled. why can't you make this an antislavery war from the beginning and if i were carrying the entire nation's future would he be yelling lean right, lean left, and though he would lobby it right in the middle. making the antislavery war of course he said if that we lose

kentucky we would lose everything. there were border states that still had enslaved people and yet they were loyal to new york. but he said we lose some of these states we are going to lose the war. so he had to stay in this tight rope sometimes the tight rope seems to be between and the need to build as they hold onto altogether a political coalition he was morally opposed to slavery and he once said i hate

slavery as much as any abolitionist. i am morally opposed to slavery, but sometimes in particular early on said things that today are quite conservative strategizing in illinois and so forth he had to sort of behavior little bit more conservatively that shows up now. there's no question we can preface that he himself had.

he grew up [inaudible] there's a difficult time separating and in the middle of the 19th century we can see that [inaudible] they make them want to talk about slavery and historians trip over this and one of the things you do or can do given

his place his views about race in the context of our culture. talk about the significance that you attribute to this. >> early on i mentioned he said a few conservative things and almost racist things in his debates with stephen douglas. but he was a thoroughgoing racist and frederick douglass did more harm than just about anybody. he kept forcing the issue and lincoln finally said he was speaking in illinois which at the time had a ball that went into effect in 1853 that was the

worst law of any state in the union, the so-called negro exclusion act which meant if you were a free african-american, you couldn't enter for more than ten days or else you would be fined and kicked out of the state. it was a terrible kind of environment. and you can cherry pick certain things there but later on during his presidency he became quite deeply respected and in springfield he lived in a neighborhood back in illinois he kept corresponding with several of them. at first he thought he was conservative on slavery and met him a couple of times o at the white house and was astounded and came out of this the thing

about sojourner truth she had a delightful time and martin we would call him beyond black lives matter he was like a black nationalist [inaudible] kneeling, can you think about

that and each of being paid for by each of the enslaved so on a personal level it is very close and grew to respect african-americans in the civil war the way they thought if you've seen the movie glory, you have a sense of the fourth wegner, but there were many other battles in which they thought were the same devotion and sometimes even more, sometimes even more self-sacrifice so he really, really admired that. he also relied to a great degree on petroleum of a popular humorist who was fighting the war on race on the cultural front, and he impersonated the opponents that were the conservative democrats back when

they were mainly conservative. at least on the issue of slavery. and so, he impersonated the conference and today it is hard for us to read this humor but all he was doing when he used that word and sit over and over again he was just impersonating these copperheads. people would laugh about this and a lot of people, several people said he was defeating slavery because he was so popular and lincoln would carry in his jacket he nasty paper, sketches and would pull them out and read them and he once said i will give up my presidency if i can just write like this guy. so, it shows how deep his hatred of racism was because he really

makes these copperheads look very, very ugly. and really disgusting. and it is almost as if saturday night live skit let's say against whoever political figure were accepted as a huge cultural force i think today we are so dispersed that it's hard to have the force so it is a little more dispersed today. most of the time when lincoln uses the word you he's describing it as nasty. he tends to use it in a way that is satirical by putting it in the mouth of his opponent.

it made me wonder when because lincoln was doing that already by the mid-to late 1850s. i'm not sure where you can get away with that right now because the cultures are different. >> when i first encountered them in the newspapers this person frankly felt so offensive. then i thought he is being funny. he is appalling and he was criticizing lincoln left and right but what happened is he

met him back in the 50s and i almost think that lincoln and his sort of satirical use of the word, impersonating him during the debate he might have actually influenced him in this sense because he had never written that before he had an interview with lincoln because he overheard several of the debates and would follow him around. he was a reporter at the time. they were discussing him at great length and detested stephen douglas. he heard lincoln impersonating and may be because it was like three years later he comes out

with the first sketch and one of the first ones is petroleum visits lincoln in the white house. so there's that kind of direct connection from the beginning. but it could be a case where he had a sense of humor anyway and used against him it might have prompted something. >> there is a minor strain in the political culture that does this and he belittles the idea nobody could be elected to expose the word.

nevertheless he's increasingly appalled by the explosion and particularly for him because he is in this space he does grow. when he was in the legislature he introduced a suffrage bill that would give the right to vote to all white men and exclude black men and yet as you note in your book at the end of his life he was the first to

endorse the right to grow. >> john wilkes booth was in the audience and he said i don't prefer to use the word citizenship. i'm going to put this man through. he was a white supremacist from maryland and so forth. but yes, he slowly i think did progress. i agree with you in that sense and others that he does progress and by 1864, he's already sending a letter in which he says i think that we should have at least limited suffrage.

back then african-american males and women didn't get the vote until 1920 but still, he was the first publicly to come out for, the first president. >> the other thing is that has been an important subject despite some of those remarks i do not now and never have supported, despite that, most especially in the 1850s what

he had to say right from the beginning i'm told all men are created equal and he says that over and over again. the right is my equal [inaudible] he says those things over and over again whereas you have to when people talk about him as a racist, they pick these pieces out that are clearly driven by the demagogic racism that has been thrown at him. >> and i put him in this culture in the 1850s because of the reason harriet beecher stowe uncle tom's cabin made such an impact, it was a fairly simple thing. it showed that enslaved people

were human beings with real feelings and a sense of humor and a love of music. to us that sounds very old-fashioned or something to think about that, but enslaved people were being treated as things, as property. all of this was supported by the pseudoscience of that era some of which were of a different species. paula genesis, there was some of that going on and it was all even religiously supported by. and lincoln comes right through

that in the speech and says these are humans. even to say that, he doesn't go on and on about it but he says that is my fundamental point of view and in a sense even though he progresses, he doesn't really move beyond that basic fundamental understanding of the humanity of enslaved people. >> before we see if there are any questions, how's you has yow changed over the years whereas you were writing this book? >> it did change a lot because i have read the the wonderful biographies by other people that because they are standard biographies that follow the

facts they were all very interesting and important i thought of that in a way he was like a star in the heavens, walt whitman wrote a poem saying that he would always be the western star in the landscape and that is the way that i view him as distant and kind of doing his own thing and i was surprised and thrilled by the fact that he was so incredibly involved. i try not to get too lost in the cultural digression. i like to bring it back to lincoln because he's at the center of the book and that was a wonderful surprise for me.

>> i couldn't place him and my interest was the relationships and the more it seemed it was a deeper politic. >> if i can give people a hint. >> let me ask one last question before we move on about lincoln's private life. you have what i think is a very sensitive and evenhanded view of

lincoln but you also have an interesting way of all the other hand it was difficult from the typical kind of marriage. in what ways was it different or represented? >> it was different in the sense that american culture back then was quite patriarchal. and women when they marry they give up their property, there was this in which by a way women gave up their independent identity and worked. women were absorbed into their husbands and that is the reason this happened to protest the co- overture and exclusion and so forth but mary todd lincoln

called herself a very domestic and took care of the kids and all that, but she she was very independent minded and wasn't afraid of expressing her political opinions and as parents we were kind of unusual because back then people in general punished their kids a lot, but they gave them quite a lot of latitude. they were limited to be sure about lincoln would be in his office and his boys would come in and upset and scatter the ashes. his partner said if his kids and his hat he would rub it on his boots and approve of it. he admitted but he said there's time enough for them.

let them have fun and enjoy themselves and one of the oldest ones turned out to be a rather stuffy man to others and unfortunately died. he was very mischievous but another unconventional thing was the fact that during the law years when they lived in springfield, lincoln was away for almost half of the year because he was on the circuit. back then the little towns didn't have lawyers so lincoln and a bunch of others had to go to these little towns about the size of connecticut so he was gone about 120 days a year so

there was a lot of unconventional spaces and in a way it sort of developed a sense of independence so quite unusual in many respects. >> there are some questions i will run through before we get. is there any evidence [inaudible] and there's no reason he would have even made the nomination until september so my sense is that it never came up. >> i will say that he had written in august a note saying

it kind of looks like i'm going to lose and he wrote a note to his cabinet and he sealed it in an envelope and said because at that time the war was going very badly and he said i just want to have a fair election and also a smooth transition. very much to my successor. he assumed he was going to lose. but no, we really don't know about the supreme court. >> another one, did he keep a diary of any kind, no unfortunately, he didn't. even the diligent.

>> the first time in my life i began to believe in guns because when i heard later that he was going to quit acting and retire, i thought i'm going to go buy a gun and say you are not allowed to retire. no, i was stunned and i loved it. it takes a little attitude here and there but i think that he did a great job. >> how would you describe his leadership style, big question. >> his leadership style was relaxed, casual but at the same

time could be very, very firm. at the beginning of the war just before the war broke out, six or seven people around him said we have to strike a compromise here. let them take this forward and he said no if they fire and he called up 75,000 troops. he kept another good thing about him he managed to negotiate with people even those who ended up very ineffective on the battlefield he managed to finesse that relationship so he could work his way through and he finally fired mcclellan.

but then he falls upon grand and his bulldogs so a lot of them sort through very wisely and to think about the strategies of war and you realize that it could no longer be fought with what he called squirt guns full of rosewater. sadly it had to be a hard war and grant and sherman were the two people he finally ends up with them and indeed and a few others like them. >> two things that strike me he

came into his relationship without putting his ego on the line. he didn't care as long as mcclellan would fight. >> someone at the beginning said you are going to hire him as your secretary of treasury. he feels so much more superior you can't believe it. he said really, that is exactly the kind of person i want around me. he didn't want personal loyalty.

lincoln didn't hold hard feelings. he ends up on the supreme court so even after he fires him and he knows all of that but he didn't hold any sense of personal disloyalty. under difficult circumstances, lincoln didn't care. the other thing he didn't get in the way of was ideology, and you do a nice job of showing how when the radical republicans were sort of demanding that he only hire antislavery generals, i hire those who will fight and win battles and i don't care if it is a democrat.

and if a radical general like let's say fremont can't do it, i'm going to fire him. >> even grand said before, i am not a lincoln man, in the lincoln douglas debates. grant was his favorite general. he got the job done. same with sherman. he was quite racist and filled frankly african-americans were better off as enslaved people. he was a wonderful general in georgia and carolina. he had amazing notes i have

heard. it's a wonderful letter. >> i wasn't sure. i didn't really believe in the strategy. i just want to go on the record of saying i was wrong and you were right. >> he said i was wrong, sorry. he really didn't let the ego get in his way.

let's take one last question. how would reconstruction have been different? >> now we get into the counterfactual history. i believe and i don't know if you agree with me, but he certainly would have handled it much better than andrew johnson did, much better and i believe he would have wanted to support the bureau and the idea of the 40 acres and a mule. he was a believer in free labor he would have tried to encourage the advance of the formerly enslaved people and when push came to shove he would have put his foot down firmly at that

point. what is your feeling about that? >> it's all counterfactual. there would have been a lot less drama between the white house and the president. he never expressed himself but just outside of the mainstream of the republican party politics. even sherman ordered everybody talk about it it's very clear this is a contingent land. you can't actually give the land

outright but i doubt if it was just all the people that would have gotten land. >> and he signed the homestead act that wasn't exactly a giveaway but to the enterprising people in the western territories and of course that was taken over by a lot of their railroads but still he had the concept and that was a metaphor for the advance. >> whether it would have changed very much is hard to say because they once wrote a little book and in passing he said sooner or later the federal government was

going to leave and control and get back to the majority so whether it would have turned out that different in the end is hard to say. he might have been president again but it might have stated more or less the same until then but less drama and no impeachment. whether it would have changed things at all is hard. ... >> with an alternative

scenario and with his long-standing belief there was majority in the south that was hostile? >> is not hard to imagine it would of had an easier time building that by racial coalition we are trying to build and that may have turned out. >> it may have made a difference maybe not in the ultimate long run we reach the end of time and thank you again congratulations again

thank you. good night. >> i got with me a wonderful author who has written a fantastic book.