and future of the cosmos. and on c-span 3, marking the anniversary of mayflower's trip and rules of self-governing by the settlers. that's starting 8 p.m. tonight on c-span's networks. >> listen to c-span's podcast, the weekly. we're talking to political scientist robert browning who looks at the lame duck sessions to tackle big ticket legislation. find it on c-span weekly where you get your podcasts. >> good evening, and a warm welcome to another biography event. i hope everyone is staying safe and wearing masks, and reading many biographies. my name is ckai bird and i'm the

director of lien on levy center, hosted by the graduate center of the university of new york and founded by the levy foundation. i want to thank shelby for her steadfast support of the center these years. it's her vision that made this program possible. please note our next event is coming up in two days on this thursday, october 15th, where victor navasski and i will interview about an important biography on joseph mccarthy. tonight we're here to celebrate the publication of "abe", a new biography by david reynolds.

"abe" is just out and this is his book launch and the book has received starred early reviews in kircus and publishers weekly and elsewhere, so we encourage everyone to look it up on amazon or preferably your own local independent bookstore. david reynolds is a distinguished professor at cuny's graduate center, walt whitman's america, a cultural biography, winner of ben croft prize. and renaissance, john brown abolitionist and mightier than the sword, uncle tom's cabin and the battle for america. he is a regular book reviewer or the new york review of books, the new york times book review and the wall street journal. david will be in conversation with james oaks, one of the leading historians of 19th

century america. james' pioneering works include the ruling race, 1982. slavery and freedom and then interpretation of the old south. the radical and the republican, frederi frederick douglas, abraham lincoln and the triumph slavery politics and the latest book, freedom national, the destruction of slavery in the united states, 1861-1865. today we'll have a conversation for 40, 45 minutes and take questions for 10 or 15 minutes. please click on the question box below in your-- to type in your question. and jim will be sure to get to as many of you as he can. we will try to end this program after about one hour. at 7:00 eastern time. again, thanks to the leon levy foundation for funding this and

all of our other events. jim oaks. i now turn the conversation over to you. thank you. >> thank you, kai. thank you, david for asking me to do this. i really appreciate it and i'm happy to do this because, first of all, congratulations on your book. it's a terrific book. >> thank you very much. >> congratulations on the reviews. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. they've been terrific, also. david is one of my favorite cultural historians. it looks like i'm -- you're good. >> yeah. >> it looks like i lost-- >> no, no, you're fine. you're fine. >> david is one of my favorite historians of the civil war era and the period and he brings to-- because he brings to this study of cultural history certain virtues that aren't always

present among cultural historians. first is a genuinely, awesomely encyc encyclo pedia knowledge which he brings to bear and shows in various books. one of the effects of that knowledge, that vast knowledge of american cultural history is that david tends -- as always been sensitive to the conflicts and contradictions within american culture. he doesn't tend to find a particular cultural attribute and say this is what american culture was like. if there are racists, there are anti-racists. if there are egalitarians, there are anti-egalitarians. all the way through there are religious conservatives and religious radicals and he brings that sensibility there, also, and it shows to great effect in all of his work

including in his latest book. and finally, associated with that is a kind of democratic sensibility about culture that doesn't worry very much about high culture, versus low culture and doesn't care too much about that distinction, not that there isn't such, and it's -- and i think shapes the kind of books he writes. the kind of subjects he chooses to write about. walt whitman, the democratic code of american democracy and stow, and a genuine literary value, but also, enormously popular. an enormously popular book and finally found-- finally "abe", which i think impacted for similar reasons. he quotes around 718. and he quotes for praising

lincoln to being attuned to all aspects of american culture, opera and shakespeare to frontier humor, religious senseabilities of the age and the like. and i think that all of those virtues show up in this marvellous book that he's given us. so, let me begin by asking you a fairly simple question, what is the difference between cultural biography of lincoln and the kind of biographies, the best biographies by richard callerdean or michael burlingame? >> that's a great question. there have been some marvellous biographies, superb biographies of lincoln. what they do generally, they follow his life. sometimes his political context. there's a political biography by blumenthal that's excellent. but they're kind of standard,

one volume -- i mean, michael burlingame did such a wonderful job, but the david donald kind of classic single volume biography and donald says in his preface, this is a biography from lincoln's point of view because he didn't really have too much connection to the society and culture of his era. he was self-educated. he was the ultimate self-made man and donald even says that he enters the presidency, the least prepared of any president that we've ever had and in a sense, i guess, i'm taking really the opposite point of view. i'm taking the emersonion point of view and emmerson says that lincoln stands alone for the experience. and you mentioned. the very

highest to the lowest, until the very dogs believe in him. you know, emmerson had a certain way of writing that was like that and emmerson felt the same way about shakespeare, too. he says that shakespeare uses the scraps of all plays and lousy dramas and transforms them into something new. and lincoln, early on, was a big fan of popular humor, sometimes rather dirty humor, or whatever, but he also memb memorized very long poem and he didn't do that to impress people at cocktail parties, oh, listen to the latest poem i memorized. he did it because these passages meant something to him and once he read a passage a couple of times, he had it memorized and right in the middle of his presidency, he would break out with a long sill littsoliloquy by one of th

shakespearean tragedies. by 1865 when lee was surrendering at apmattox, everyone around was cheering, isn't that wonderful and great, today we would have said mission accomplished in a big banner, but lincoln said i'd rather talk about shakespeare, rather talk about longfellow. they'd say what? he spent several hours discussing poetry from shakespeare and longfellow and others about death. in his mind, was really on the 750,000 americans who died in the civil war. that's where his mind was. and it wasn't, hey, mission accomplished or i'm the greatest or whatever like that. i'm the leader here. he was thinking about those who

had died. and you know, it's quite moving and i think that's part of where his democracy comes from and his ability to identify, with really people of all, you know, all classes and all backgrounds. backgrounds. >> so the book is chockful of these interesting sides to help us understand lincoln sometimes how he fits into the culture and somehow how he departs. marriage, was there marriage, typical middle class marriage or was it some ways different, an interesting section on the origi origins, in god we trust, things like that. and let me ask you about the general themes, but let me start with the simpler ones.

why abe? why not abraham lincoln? >> that's a good question. he didn't like the name abe, he didn't like when people called him abe yet, i wouldn't have been elected without the image of honest abe or uncle abe or old abe. he knew that in 1860, that's really-- he became beloved among the people as abe. so, it kind of feeds into my whole idea, in the book, about the way he identified with average americans and the way they saw him and loved him. and so that-- the people around him knew that he only wanted to be called lincoln. not even mr. president or abraham or anything like that. he signed himself a. lincoln as though he was kind of-- it's a tossup what you call. so he signed his name a. lincoln, but abe was his identification with the common

person back then. >> honest abe or father abraham, right? >> father abraham, yeah, that was another one, but there were a lot of nicknames for him. >> right. >> so, yeah. >> all right. so, one of the things that runs all the way through the book, i hadn't thought too much about, is that the cultural difference between the puritans and the cavaliers and you developed in in lincoln's own sense of himself, as well as the culture at large, as well as the way people at the time were understood in terms of-- can you tell us all about that? >> yeah. a lot of people back then really thought the civil war

was about the age-old difference between the new england puritans, new england early on had been settled by a generation of puritans who were escaping persecution in england and-- on one hand and the cavaliers, who were the supporters of royalty in england and when cromwell and others came to power, cromwell was a puritan, they were fleeing to america and they settled in the south. so everyone-- charles sumner to a lot of other people were saying it's basically a fight between new england, which included in anti-slavery standpoint, by the way, and the cavalier which believed in a hierarchy and institutions and including the institution of slavery. and lincoln was aware of a

puritan in cavalier, but someone at the time said the great thing about president lincoln, he combines the puritan and cavalier and i kind of explain that in my book because his earliest ancestor on his father side side, samuel lincoln came whoever and was a puritan and most of his descendents were puritans and to baptist eventually and on his mother's side there was illegitimacy in the background. he wasn't sure who his grandfather was, but he was sort of convinced it was a virginia planter. a man of sort of aristocracies of the south, that kind of thing. so, in a way, he associated with the sense of honor that this kind of southern sense of honor. so he had both the puritan and

the cavalier running through him, even though he didn't want to identify either, with either side because a lot of people were saying, i'm more of a puritan background and i'm more of a cavalier. in fact, he chose to emphasize his quaker background. turns out only one of his great-grandmothers was quaker, rebecca flowers, but all of his biographies said he was from quaker background. quakers were accepted by the puritans and the cavaliers, kind after buffer. you would think that the cavaliers would hate the quakers because they were anti-slavery. but, no, the quakers were passivists. even during the civil war, they didn't want to go to battle over slavery, even though they were morally opposed to slavery. the quakers were in the south, but beloved in the north. early on they had been persecuted and they'd been

hanged in early new england, but by this time they're settled in the mid atlantic states and pennsylvania and there was a buffer between the puritan and cavalier and i explore in my book how lincoln emphasizes that aspect in his background. >> and people at the time-- well, i shouldn't be surprised because william taylor wrote a wonderful book years ago. cavalier and yankee, and i was surprised to see how many people at the time did understand, but it wasn't just that new england understood themselves to be puritans. they didn't like the cavalier image, so they were not only self-images, they were actually stereotypes of each other's. and how each section

stereotypes the other. >> i think that stereotypes can pretty easily, even in our culture as back then, mushroom and become caricatures. those were definitely caricatures. and book sections were too polyglot to be dismissed, but the i am package overwhelmed a lot of people and they began to believe it and a lot of people were saying, well, the division between the north and the south can never be repaired because there will be nothing, but hate forever between the puritan and the cavalier, it was kind of a ridiculous point of view, but it was widely accepted. you know. >> and the cavaliers saw that the people identified themselves as cavaliers, and what is seen as the puritan--

>> that kind of-- but also, also, busy bodies, nosey, you know. >> very intrusive. trying. >> moralistic. >> moralistic, prudish, they used to hang quakers and burn witches and hang witches and so forth and very-- also very materialistic, the yankee, and kind of lowly, lowly, you know, lowly people. >> right. >> and-- >> and the puritans, from the cavaliers, is haughty, aristocratic, anti-democratic. >> that's right. and idle, and making other people labor for them, enslaved people were laboring for them, and the cavaliers were on their porches, verandas, and drinking their mint julips while enslaved people were working. >> right, right. so that theme runs through the

book. surprising how widespread that was at the time. i actually just this afternoon, i picked up a book by-- grady mcwinny, he has a short history on the civil war framed as the difference between the puritans and the cavaliers, and the book is still there, it's still there. >> it is to some degree, yeah. >> to some degree. >> so, 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. and it has to do with niagara falls. and i remember when i was a kid, niagara falls loomed larger in the culture than it does now. and people went on their honeymoon to niagara falls. in the beginning of the sentry, niagara falls was a huge deal and a lot of people used it,

metaphorically including lincoln. and that people used as a metaphor and that is telling. how did lincoln-- neighbor you could explain what niagara falls meant to the american culture, what it meant to lincoln. >> well, it was a great tourist attraction and when lincoln went there on the way home from washington, he had been serving in congress, and he stopped over at niagara falls and then went over the great lakes back to chicago and then to-- he lived in illinois. and he stopped over at niagara falls. he was stunned by the spectacle and part of my book is influenced by a school of thought called post humanism. that means the effect that nature and things, non-human

things have on people, and today, even right now, we're very much experiencing a posthuman existence because we're speaking the way we do because of a thing, covid. where there's something out there in california and some people are dealing with a thing, it's called fire. and they are other times, you know, it's a hurricane, or something. i used to live in california and once in a while there was an earthquake. you know, something outside of us. and lincoln was immersed from the very, very beginning in thi thing-ness in nature, in a one-room log cabin on the frontier. he totally lived off the forest and kind of savaged nature. and when he sees the niagara falls, he's overwhelmed by the power of it and thinks of it in a posthuman way.

this spectacle has been here ever since adam if we can believe in adam. it's been here since ancient rome, all the civilizations and human beings, this has been a constant throughout history, but in a way he was expanding backward in time and thinking of this thing in front of him niagara fall and saying how immense it was and made him think of the people coming to view it. at that time, as you mentioned, it was a real-- now days i'm not sure it's that much of a tourist attraction, but back then a hume thing -- huge thing for people to come and thinking of the rivers that ran into it and would channel and part of my book how he channeled so many rivers and streams of culture and i'm not saying he became niagara, but he became a channelling focus. anyway, eight years-- 10 years later in 1858. 1859,

a tightrope walker named blondon, he was french, he put on a spectacle crossing niagara falls many times on a tightrope, tightrope, no net. and he would push a wheelbarrow across. he would carry a man on his book across niagara falls, he would do flips. he walked across on four foot stilts. he was incredible, but lincoln said that's me. several times he compared himself to blondon right in the middle. why? because he was living in such a divided time that he knew, the worst thing this he could do was to pour more glean gasoline on the flame of division to step off that tightrope. and people would say why can't you make this a more anti-slavery war from the very beginning. he said look, if i were blondon and carrying the entire nation's future in my wheelbarrow would you be

yelling lean left, lean right, lean this way. jump up, jump down. no, you would allow me to keep right in the middle here because this is the best way to do it and preserve the union. and one reason why he didn't make it more of an anti-slavery war he said if we lose kentucky we're going to lose everything. there were border states who still had enslaved people. ... seems to be between deep moral conviction that slavery was wrong and the need to build and then hold onto altogether a political coalition that had a lot of people who didn't share

his anti-slavery sentiment. sometimes it's between morality and strategy. >> exactly. he was very morally opposed to slavery and he once said i hate slavery as much as in the abolitionist, doesn't matter, i hate it. i am morally opposed to slavery, but he sometimes particularly early on, set thinks that today sound quite conservative and backward but he was struggling to get ahead politically and strategizing particularly in illinois early on and so forth and even during his presidency sometimes. he had to sort of behavior more conservatively than he actually felt morally and inwardly. >> right, right. that shows up now in the way people talk about lincoln mostly

-- [inaudible] there's no question i don't think any historian can service the question that he hated slavery, that he himself has said i've always hated slavery. i have always hated it. and he grew up as we know in -- you as part of -- [inaudible] we have no reason to doubt, not to take him at his word but race is a different thing. nowadays people have a difficult time separating slavery from race. in the middle of the 19th century one of the things lincoln and the republicans were actively trying to do was say this question of race aside,, it's about slavery, the issue of slavery. frederick douglass kept wanting

to talk about race. lincoln wanted to talk about slavery. but historians trip over this, and one of the things that you do and can do, given the kind of -- that so few people can do is place his views about race in the context of our culture. why don't you talk about that a little bit, and in particular the kind of, the significant you attribute to this. >> well, early on i mentioned earlier that he said if you kind of conservative things and almost racist things in his debate with stephen douglas. douglas was thoroughgoing racist, and frederick douglass said that stephen douglas did more harm to african-american

people and just about anybody. he kept on for all these debates he kept on forcing the issue. lincoln, he was speaking in illinois which of the time had this law that went into effect in 1853 that frederick douglass called the worst black law of any state in the union. the so-called negro exclusion act which if you are free african-american you couldn't enter from within ten days or else you would be fined and kicked out of the state. it was a terrible environment, and you can cherry picked certain things there but then later on during his presidency he really gains quite deep respect and affection even in springfield he lived in the neighborhood, this was back in illinois, and neighborhood that was full of african-americans. he became friendly to than any kept corresponding corresponding with several of them while he was in the white house. while he was in the white house

he, frederick douglass who was at first, at first thought he was quite conservative on slavery met him a couple of times in the white house and but it was astounded. he came out of this saying this is the least prejudiced white person i think i've ever met. the same thing with sojourner truth. she was an older african-american feminist and she said before i die i want to meet this guy, this president abraham lincoln. she had a delightful time with him and felt very, very close to him. martin delaney who was, we were calling beyond black lives matter commutes like a black nationalist, really very militant. he became at the end of the war, well, lincoln appointed him the highest appointed army officer -- he didn't get to serve very much because of what was almost

over but he became rather close to lincoln and when lincoln died he cried for like half a day. he was just totally devastated, martin delaney was. he proposed a monument to lincoln that would be an african-american women kneeling -- and can you think of that? not even a monument of lincoln himself, just a woman with 4 million tears coming out of her eyes in each tier being paid for a penny from each of the enslaved 4 million enslaved people. on a personal level he was very, very close and he also grew to respect african-americans in the civil war the way they fought. if you seen the movie glory, you have since of the fort wagner battle but there were many other which they fought with the same devotion, , sometimes even more, sometimes even more energy and self-sacrifice than white people did. he really, really, really admired that. but he also relied to a great

degree on a popular humorist who was fighting the war on race on the cultural front, and he impersonated the copperheads who were the opponents, the conservative democrats. back then the democrats were mainly conservative. at least on the issue of slavery and race. he impersonated the copperheads and today it's hard for us to read this humor because it's full of the n-word but all he was doing when you use that word and used over and over again was just mining or impersonating these racist copperheads. people would laugh about this and a lot of people, several people said nasby was just as great a force as sherman or grant indicating slavery because he was so popular. lincoln would carry in his

jacket the nasby papers, the sketches by nasby and would pull them out and read them and he once said i will give up my presence if i could just write like this guy. it shows how deep his hatred of racism was because nasby really makes these copperheads look very, very ugly and really disgusting. it's almost as though saturday night live skits, let's say against whoever, a political figure, were accepted as a huge cultural force. i think today we are so dispersed in our culture it's hard to have one, a single humorist or something at the force, and nasby who was this real bestseller back then. it's a little more dispersed today but still same idea. >> it may be think of something that at seem to me most of the

time when lincoln uses the n-word, he's doing what you're describing nasby, using it satirical but putting in the mouth of his opponents. and it may be wonder when did nasby biting the stuff? because lincoln was doing that already mid to late 1850s, but it's true. -- undermine the racist argument is by caricaturing it and stereotyping it, that means it sounds in a way it's almost like mel brooks but i'm not sure he can get away with that today because the culture are different right now. >> it's a different culture. when i first encountered nasby competition in the newspapers because i read a lot of old newspapers, this person frankly is very disgusting, so offensive

i can't read this. then i suddenly -- this guy is being funny. i said, yeah, he is disgusting, totally appalling. i suddenly realized, and he was criticizing lincoln left and right, but what happens, his real name was david ross locke, his real name, nasby was just a new cigna. locke had met lincoln back in the '50s and animals think that lincoln in his sort of as you say satirical use of that word sort of impersonating stephen douglas during the debates might have influenced nasby in the sense because nasby had never written that -- i mean lock, lock it never written that way before and he had a long interview with lincoln because he overheard some of the debaten around. he was a reporter, reporter at that time. embedded in his hotel room and there were discussing stephen

douglas at great length, and locke detested stephen douglas. we don't be surprised that he heard a lincoln and maybe, because it's like two years later, that he comes up with the first nasby sketch, and the first nasby sketch come one of the first ones is petroleum visits lincoln in the white house. there's that direct connection from the ferry very beginning. but yeah, it could be a case where i think lincoln twitter sense of humor anyway and used his humor against douglas might have prompted something. >> there is a minor strain in anti-slavery political culture that does that. there's the famous exchange on the senate floor between william seward, the leading republican of the day, and stephen douglas in which everyone knew stephen douglas, they were both angling

for the presidency in 1860, and he says to douglas, the idea he could also be elected president on the grounds that no one could be elected president dispels the word negro with two g's. nevertheless, we are attacking we can as you special in the late 1850s, increasingly appalled by the explosion of demagogic racism and particularly for him because he's in illinois facing someone who is arguably the most influential racist. unlike what we can say about lincoln's views about slavery which were hostile from the very beginning, he does grow. >> i think he does grow. >> on the issue of race, right? when he was in the legislature in the 1830s he introduced the

suffrage bill that would give the right to vote to all white men and exclude blacks, and yet as you note correctly in your book, he at the end of his life was very last -- , the first president to publicly endorse giving blacks the right to vote, right? >> yeah, and he has grown a lot. sadly of course john wilkes booth was in the audience and he says, that means, use inward, i don't prefer to use, citizenship, i'm going to put this band through. >> and that's the last -- >> three days later he killed him, yeah. booth was a white supremacist from maryland and so forth. but yeah, i mean, slowly, i

think he did progress. i agree with you. i agree with eric phone or in that sense and certain others that he does gress. by 1864 he's already sending a letter in which he says i think we should have at least limited suffrage over african americans, but back then african-american males because women did not get the vote until 1920. but still he was really the first publicly to address -- come out, first president, yeah. >> the other thing i think, stick on the subject visits important subject especially for today, despite some of those remarks you mentioned in the one in charleston were he said i have not and do not now and never have supported blacks serving on juries or voting, the

worst statement ever made, despite that most of what lincoln had to say about race especially in the 1850s when he becomes -- [inaudible] and he makes the leap back to politics -- most what he had to say about race was egalitarian. right from the beginning. if the negro is a man, all men are greater equal. he says it over and over again. and the right -- a black woman is my equal and even douglas is equal of any living in. whereas when people talk about it as a racist, they pick these one or two quotations out that are clearly driven by the incredibly demagogic racism that is being thrown at him by stephen douglas.

>> yeah. and i put them in this culture in 1850s because the reason that 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, with family feelings, with religious feelings, with a sense of humor, with a love for music. today to us that sounds very old-fashioned or something to think about that, but enslaved people were being treated as things, as property. legally they were properly. there were not really human beings and all of this was supported by the pseudoscience the ethnographic pseudoscience of that era which some of which said that african people were of a different species and so forth.

>> paulie genesis. >> there was some of that going on and it was all kind of pseudo-scientifically and even religiously supported by supposedly the curse of ham in the bible and all of that stuff. lincoln catchment to that in the peoria speech, these are humans. enslaved people our fellow human beings. even to say that, even to go on and on about but he says that's my fundamental point of view. and in a sense even though he progresses, he doesn't really move beyond the basic fundamental understanding of the humanity of enslaved people and black people. >> let me ask you for receipt there's any questions, has review of lincoln changed over the years? did it change as you were

writing this book? >> it did change a lot because i had read the wonderful biographies by other people, because they are what i call standard biographies, they follow his life, facts, all very interesting and important, i really thought that in a way he was like a star in the heavens. walt whitman wrote a poem saying that lincoln will always be the western star in the landscape, and that's the way i view, and of distant antenna doing his own thing. i was surprised and thrilled by the fact that he was so incredibly involved in his culture. what i try to do in my book is we've it like a tapestry. i try not to get too lost in the cultural digression i like to always bring it back to lincoln because he's really at the

center of my book and so that was a wonderful surprise for me, really was. >> i had a similar sense when i first started thinking about lincoln, i had this like you said he was out there but i couldn't place them. my interest was in his relations -- anti-slavery and anti-slavery politics, and the more i studied him the more it seemed to me he was embedded in what turned out to be an much deeper, richer culture, anti-slavery, politics and anti-slavery, then i had ever -- >> yeah, and if i can give people a can't, you in your forthcoming book you anchor him very, very deeply in anti-slavery anti-slavery constitutional point of view and wonderful way. >> i could go on. well, let me ask one must question before we go to questions.

about lincoln's private life. you have what i think is a very sensitive, evenhanded view of lincoln marriage, marrying mary todd. but you also have a very interesting way of on the one hand, saying -- [inaudible] on the other hand, was also very different, typical kind of marriage. what ways was it different or -- >> right, well, it was different in the sense of that american culture back then was quite patriarchal and women when they married they gave up their property. there was this thing called -- by which in a way women gave up their independent identity and

women were absorbed into their husbands, and that's part of the reason why seneca falls convention happens in 1842 to protect the exclusion of women and so forth. mary todd lincoln was in the sense domesticate she called herself very domestic and she took care of the kids and all of that, but she's very independent-minded and she was not afraid of expressing her political opinion. and as parents they were kind of unusual because they didn't come back and people in general punish the kids a lot but he really gave the kids quite a lot of latitude. there were certain limits to be sure, but lincoln would be in his law office and his boys would come in and upset the ink pens and scatter the ashes and break the fans. his law partner said if his kids, and use the s word, shatt

in his hat, lincoln would rub it on his boots and he would approve of it, you know, with love it. he admitted, but he said there's time enough for them to get pokey and old and everything. let them have on. let them enjoy themselves. one of the oldest ones he used to be a prankster turned out to be rather a stuffy man come he became quite pokey to others, unfortunately died, willie died while lincoln was in the white house, and had died at age 18, but had with three mischievous and use coming during cabinet meetings and climate lincoln's shoulders and everything like that. but another very unconventional thing was the fact that during the law years when you lived in springfield, lincoln was away for almost half of the year because he was on the law

circuit. back then the little towns did not have lawyers to link it at a bunch of other lawyers had to go to these little towns, about the size of connecticut, the circuit. so he's gone about 120 days a year a year so that was a bottle unconventional. big spaces in their togetherness and in in a way it's sort of develop a sense of independence on the part of mary todd lincoln, and even on the part of abe lincoln. so yeah, quite unusual in many respects. >> so that is some questions. some of them either you or i could answer very quickly so i will just went through this before we get to the -- one is, this comes up, isn't any evidence that link and october 186412 let -- [inaudible]

>> now. >> there's a reason he would have even made a nomination until december, so my sense is that it never came up. >> no, no, no, it didn't come up. i will say that he had written in august for the september he had written a note saying, , kid of looks like i'm going to lose, and he wrote a note to his cabinet and he put it and he sealed in an envelope and he said it appears, because at that time the war was going very badly. i just want to have a fair election but also a smooth transition, to my successor. he assumed his going to lose. but no, we really don't know about the supreme court thing. >> right. another one. did he keep a diary of any kind? no, unfortunately, he didn't keep a diary. even the diligent researches

have not found a diary. his one, here's one. what is your opinion of daniel day-lewis portrayal? >> well, it's the first time in my life i begin to believe in guns, because when i heard later that he was going to quit acting and retire, i am going to get -- i'm going to go by again and say you are not allowed to retire. no, , i was stunned. i loved it. the film, , okay, it takes a little latitude here and there. we all know that but no, i think you did a really great job. >> same thing. i never would imagine someone could portray lincoln speed is don't worry, i don't really believe in guns.

>> this one, how would you describe lincoln's leadership style? that's a big question that lots of people have. >> his leadership style was relaxed, casual but at the same time could be very, very firm. extremely firm. at the beginning of the war, just before the war broke out six or seven people around you said we have to strike a compromise here. let them take fort pickens and button take this for any said no, if they fire on fort sumter, it's war, and they fired on fort sumter and he called the 75,000 troops. it was war. he kept another good thing about him was that he managed to negotiate with people on kind of a friendly level, even people like mcclellan who ended up

being very, very ineffective on the battlefield. he managed to finance the relationship enough so he could work his way through his generals, and he finally fires mcclellan. he hires burnside. he doesn't work out. he hires hooker. he doesn't work out but then he likes upon grant and grant is his bulldog. he allowed himself to sort of sort through very wisely his generals and to think about strategies of war and he realized war could no longer be fought with what he called squirt guns full of rosewater. sadly, it had to be a hard war. it had to be a hard war, and grant and sherman with the two people and finally ends up with them and they indeed, and a few other generals like them, under them, finish off the civil war. i think he did a great job. and also finances cabinet pretty

well also as doris kearns goodwin notes in king of rivals. >> two things that struck begin as reading your book, he came into his relationship with other people -- [inaudible] without putting his ego on the line. with mcclellan, for example. mcclellan was horrible to him but he didn't care mcclellan was nasty and said awful things about him behind his back, as long as mcclellan would fight. >> and even his cabinet salmon chase all felt secure to him. some of the beginning of the war said you are going to hire salmon chase as your secretary of the treasury? listen, president lincoln, he feels so much more superior to you, you can't believe it. he says, oh, really?

that's exactly the kind of person i want around me. he didn't want personal loyalty. salmon chase was incredibly progressive and i mean and this one as well because he tried to supplant lincoln. and get lincoln didn't hold hard feelings. he's one who ultimately ends up on the supreme court after the election. so even after he fires salmon chase, and he knows that salmon chase try to replace him in 1860, he knows all about but he didn't hold any sense of personal disloyalty. >> as long as chase was doing a good job and he was doing a good job, and a very difficult, under very difficult circumstances, lincoln didn't care about the ego stuff. the other thing he didn't bring, that get in the way is ideology. you do a nice job of showing how when the radical republicans were sort of demanding that he

only hire anti-slavery generals, he was, , look, no, i hired generals, what i want an agenda for someone who will fight and win battles. they fight and win battles i don't care if it's a democrat. i don't care if it's even a copperhead. i care, and if a radical general like let's say fremont can't do it, i'm going to fire him. >> exactly. i mean, even grant had said before, i am not a lincoln man, in the lincoln-douglas debates and so forth. and yet grant was like his favorite general. he got the job done. and same with sherman. sherman was frankly quite racist and he thought frankly african-americans were better off as enslaved people.

and yet sherman, you know, whatever, he was a wonderful general in georgia and the carolinas. >> there's a a couple of really remarkable notes that he writes, general. he writes amazing notes when he hires -- i have heard in ways -- >> you want to be a dictator. >> more accurate, that you called for a dictator. only generals who win battles can be dictators. i will risk -- you when battles and i will -- and wonderful letter. >> and yet he hires hooker saying i want to be a dictator. >> right, right. the one he writes to grant after vick. >> when he says look, i wasn't sure you could do this, i didn't really in the strategy. i just want to go on the record as saying that i was wrong and you are right. >> yeah, he says i was wrong, i

was wrong, sorry, i was wrong. he really didn't let ego get in his way. >> right, or ideology. that's crucial to understanding. so let's take one last question because this is a big one and people like us always get this question. how would reconstruction have been different? >> well, now we get into counterfactual history. my belief, my belief, and jim, i don't know if you agree with me, look, he certainly would've handled it much better than andrew johnson did, much better. and i believe that he would've wanted to support the freedmen's bureau and support the idea of 40 acres and a mule. he was such a believer in free labor. i think he would've tried to encourage the advance of

formally enslaved people, their advancement both politically and economically. i think when push came to shove when you had the resurgence of these white supremacist groups i think he would have put his foot down fairly firmly at that point back. i firmly believe that. what you're is your feeling ab, jim? >> well, it's as you say it's all counterfactual. obviously they would've been a lot less drama between the white house and the president because whatever, whatever lincoln's racial views, he was not a a hard-core racist the way andrew johnson was, as you said. i don't know about the 40 acres and a mule. he never expressed himself in favor of land redistribution and it was a little bit outside the mainstream of the republican party politics.

even that sherman or that everybody talks about, if you read the order carefully is very clear this is a contingent, you know, contingent grants of land. he can't actually give the land outright. >> right, right. >> but i doubt if he would've done what johnson did and just peremptorily -- on the lincoln all the people of god and man he had signed the homestead act which wasn't exactly a giveaway of land but almost a giveaway of land to enterprising people who were going to the western territories and settling, now of course i was taken over by a lot of the railroads and that we do have later on, but still he had the concept i think him to write, probably 40 acres and a mule was probably too much and that was like a metaphor just i was using for the advance of the formerly enslaved people. >> right, right. whether in the long run whether

it would have changed bring much it's hard to say because john hope franklin once wrote in a little book on -- just in passing he said sooner or later, sooner or later the federal government was going to leave the south and control the south was going to get back to white electoral majorities. so whether it would've turned out all that different in the end is hard to say because eventually he may have been president again -- but it might have stayed more or less the same until then, again with less drama and no impeachment. but my that would've changed things at all it's hard for me -- >> i think the best could of happened is he would've said, set a good example. >> right. >> but this resurgence, the

ultimate redemption of the southerners and all of that and the disengagement of the federal government and so forth, i think that would've happened and maybe jim crow would've been a few years shorter or something, i'm not sure. >> let me give you an alternative scenario. given his common touch, given his long-standing belief that there was a majority in the south that was hostile, it's not hard for me to imagine that the republican party would've had an easier time with him as president willing that biracial coalition the republicans were trying to build after the war ended and that may have turned out -- >> may have made a difference. certainly in the longer run back then. maybe not in the ultimate long

run. >> right. >> in the early 20th century and birth of the nation and all that stuff. >> this has been great. we've reached the end of our time, and i want to thank you again for ask me to do this. >> thank you. and i hope all the viewers, my book is on amazon and, you know. >> right. it is terrific. congratulations again on this wonderful achievement. >> thank you so much. it's been great. >> thanks a lot, david. good night. >> good night. >> she misused deputy director of the program on extremism at george washington university talked about the threat posed by americans supported isis. is a portion of that discussion. >> isis have a message and a product, the so-called caliphate flipped a switch for american homegrown violent extremists and they were drawn to that idea. so you did see a push on that aspect of it. the difference between al-qaeda and isis is not on the

message and the product but the people. isis had the ability and time and space to reach out systematically to americans and groom them over the course of weeks and months to commit attacks. think of the case up in upstate new york where a man in raqqa was reaching out to another man with mental health issues about the need to commit an attack at a nightclub in upstate new york. this is an individual who i think without sue donnie probably would've gone in a different way, where as al-qaeda is put the message out, a a megaphone effect, thrw it out and hope it sticks. these guys were much more of a one-on-one intervention tried to push a message and action. >> to watch the rest of this program visit our website booktv.org, use the search box to look for the author's name of the title of his book homegrown.

>> weeknights this month we feature booktv programs to preview what's available at the weekend on c-span2. tonight as part of our 2020 year end review we focus on books about science. >> enjoy booktv this week and every weekend on c-span2. >> 61 million americans have some form of disability but yet where in in less than 3% of fim and tv shows and about majority of those roles are portrayed by non-disabled actors. ultimately estimate with a disability we want to see ourselves represented the

consultant will he not only seeing ourselves represented but it's going to help destigmatize disability, and representation in general gets society used to everybody and ultimately and makes the world a more inclusive place. >> actor nic novicki founded the easter seals disability film challenge in response to seeing disabilities underrepresented in front of and behind the camera. sunday night on q&a he will talk about his this year's entries d winning films. nic novicki at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. >> welcomes dwight d eisenhower president of the united states of america. [applause]