for competition rules, tips and new information on how to get started, visit the website on student cam.org. hello, everyone.on and well, including to the visitors and viewers from c-span. i am jim kelly, director of the center on global security analysis. we are proud to be cosponsoring this webinar.

this is part of our centennial centennialseries celebrating 10f purpose driven education and of course in conjunction with. please enter your questions by typing them in the q-and-a section near the top of the screen. you will be addressing as many questions as possible and after the presentation. question. as a participant in today's webinar you will be entered into a raffle. now i would like to turn over to david, president of the museum enof american finance who will introduce the speaker. >> thank you, jim. it's always great to be backs with you.

the first time i introduced him he had written ten books which was impressive. the second time, he was up ande now we are up to 19 books so congratulations on that. this book timely. congress is currently debating an infrastructure bill and john ponders several times going out of the book. there's 1,000 columns, and pothers like "the new york times," "the wall street journal," most importantly of course are magazines, financial history and an article based on the book will be out. you have.

cnn, cnbc, msnbc to bbs. during his childhood he visited recent. there are several appendices and one is a review. >> thank you so much for the kind and generous. thanks to the great sponsors from the school of business, center for global security and analysis and i will see.

i hope that it will be a revealing new book. it starts in 1828. from the ohio river down to mississippi and new orleans. on the way, he discovers two things. he sees that people who are enslaved do not have the same economic opportunities to advance their own stations and he also sees the importance of transporting goods to markets and having access to those marketsse no matter where you le so if you are a rural farmer no

matter where in the country, you don't have to go through this labyrinth of what was then the interstate system on the nations large rivers to get their. this young man was abraham lincoln. he took another trip out of springfield illinois. it's a really important here because that is when the canal opened. that gave new york city which became of course one of the greatest ports in the world access to the markets into the great lakes at the time chicago wasn't even a city it was a swampy trading post, very inaccessible because the only way of getting down to the mississippi river was through an ugly port. two explorers said there should

be a canal because if you connect the chicago river and new york city you can get to new orleans and the mississippi and on to the crescent city so that was one of the first impressions that young abraham lincoln had. the nation was growing in the 1830s and it was a time we don't study a whole lot because we mostly skip from the revolution to the civil war. there was a lot in between and one of the reasons i wrote the book is because i wanted to know how did our country develop. what did we need to do to get to where we are today. and eventually, what do we need to do to get deeper into the future into the more equitable present. so what was really important about that it was a very

huckleberry then trip that changed his thinking and the way he said things in public. when he ran for the general assembly, he's in springfield still in his 20sie and he failed at running two stores and tried surveying, was splitting wood and doing anything to make ends meet. a partner in a store left them high and dry and he had to pay off those debts. he did all this while being very curious about the world and about the markets and economics and the things that would transform not only his life, but the life of all rural americans and even people in the cities, so he proposed something very interesting. gthe first thing he said as we e

need to develop a canal which would have facilitated access to the markets in new orleans and further south and also later it would connect chicago to the illinois river. it'shi about 96 miles, and as a third thing which actually was pooh-poohed at the time because everybody thought it was going to be way too expensive connect the whole state to the markets at the time and that railroad was going to be called the illinois central. so he worked with a fellow named stephen douglas whose great amrival throughout life and politics to get this done, the illinois legislation passed to thispassive infrastructure pland then probably it was undercapitalized. the canal had to take some time off because they didn't have the

money to hire irish laborers to get paid almost nothing to dig by hand but that was something that had to be done in order to open up chicago and the rest of illinois to the markets. lincoln saw this earlier and campaign and was successful this should be done. he wanted to put the rural farmers and anybody that wasn't living there. you build the infrastructure to get you there. so, lincoln was fairly successful as a young assembly man but what was more important is that he -- if you build infrastructure it would create economic progress.

this was fundamental to the view of the world and henry clay was a wig, abraham lincoln was an early way to get and they were very muchea into building infrastructure and tariffs would play with this and they did this ats the time they called it the era of good feelings. i'm never quite sure why they called it that, but the biggest thing at that time was to build the canals all over the country to connect the major river systems which were interstates then. of course the railroads took off in the following decade in the 1840s and what happened when lincoln first proposed his little canal out of springfield was that he knew that any place

where the canal was at a conjunction with another river system in this case the illinois, than a lot of commerce and development with takeoff and this is very little known but he was an urban planner. he planned a town at the intersection of this canal called lake huron and of course it was never built. i saw the plans and doing the research and something i'd never known about lincoln and then of course you go down to become a lawyer to make a little bit more money and he was a very successful lawyer and kind of dropped out of politics until 1854. now in the interim, america is growing at a rapid pace. the canal opens up 1848. what happens? it creates a major city on the other end of it.

chicago. the population growth is so explosive becomes the fastest growing city in the world at the turn-of-the-century and that was facilitated by this idea along with stephen douglas even more importantly the illinois central railroad was built to supplement what was going up and down the canalshe becomes the longest railroad in the world by 1850 and eventually goes from the northwest tip of illinois all the way to new orleans but none after the civil war. it becomes a major transit ground for the troop during the civil war so keep those two

things in mind. these are two immense developments in the history ofd. the country its globalization in a very small sense but in a very growing sense. we know what lincoln says. the house divided speech, lincoln douglas debates but i started going into some of the material and found something very interesting that he said literally in the first debate with h stephen douglas 1858 he s running for senator at the time against douglas. douglas had controlled the illinois democratic party and at that time senators were not directly elected by the state legislature so he became the senator so what happened was

lincoln in talking about slavery made another argument and this was during the first debate. he said every man has a right to earn his own and i'm paraphrasing but. to be on an equal footing with everyone. so this is his view of economic progress that you have a right to offer your labor for pay, you have the opportunity to ascend the economic ladder. how do you avoid being this back woodsman all of your life. this is part of the american system that we have kind of grown up to learn but there's more to it than that. this is another side plot in the whole story that really during

his i wouldn't call it exile with his estrangement from politics which lasts roughly from the time he leaves the general assembly to roughly 1854 when douglas passes the nebraska act allowing for expansion of slavery in the western territories. lincoln comes to this realization that you know, what is really important here other than ending slavery is that we still need to pay attention to infrastructure. 1847 has only turned in the house of representatives. he actually gives one of his longest speeches ever on infrastructure why is it important to have the ports and canals and railroads? what does it mean to the health for the future of the nation? lincoln thought it was respectful. and in neglecting this huge

national issue and keep in mind that up until many of the founding fathers and southerners thought the federal funding was unconstitutional. james munro himself said in an annual a message even before i liked the idea. we should be building things like that but it's not in the constitution so that was used as an argument against the funding of infrastructure for decades before the civil war. so, lincoln is elected in 1860 there's a secession of the southern states. lincoln has to go into washington by secret route because the assassination plot. he gets there and the -- what he

had embedded in some of the very basic messages were very foundational ideas on raising the votes and economic progress. first of all. he was one of the first republicans. the republican party doesn't come along until the party. and they are for the transcontinental railroad and lincoln having represented the illinois central as a lawyer knew the importance of it so he favors that and in one of the annual messages at the state of the union speech he mentions a whole bunch of other things. he's the first president to do

the message from san francisco. he loves telegraphs. he spent a lot of time in the telegraph room getting dispatches from the various battles. first years of the war it went very badly for the union. of course lincoln. most of them are the better generals it turns out are the railroad engineers who became generals and a leader become active in the kind of railroad building so here's what is even remarkable. at the height of the civil war there's bloodshed with over life and inng their the camps to various diseases. they have no idea what's going on because it doesn't until.

using disinfectants and some of the camps and he doesn't even know about germs. he just hears about it. i saw an archive where he's. to find new ways of communicating and getting us to where we need to be. the biggest number of scoops that he signs into law are fundamental. the homestead act that allows people basically free land out west. the moral act.

the following year was 1862. the following year he also passes the national banking act. and this is for the first time it establishes. during the war come the union, the gdp increases. it's a very small tax. it was the first tax repealed. that was a very important level of development so all this happens during the civil war. there is a horrible battle.

here's the most amazing part of the story that lincoln's view of economic progress that is building infrastructure, raising all votes really comes out of another part of his psyche. in 1847, he'd actually invented a boat. he in 1848 he traveled down the illinois michigan canal. so lincoln is the only president who is patented that event inventor. he had this in the back of his mind. thinking how do we use technology and really do the things we are really good at.

those are the principal things i've discovered but again, the legacy liveshe on. he inspired a whole new generation of progressive politicians, thinkers. in the national east to west route goes all the way to san francisco and was named after him and inspired by him. i was just born off of the lincoln highway. the hospital where i was born no longer exists, but it was called the cross roads of america and of course there's lincoln all over my state and on the license plate so. especially if i'm in the midwest

or the west, in 1919 dwight eisenhower takes. from one coast to the other and it comes with the real undeniable conclusion that they are just awful. some of them. from that time on, people were saying how do we pay for this, how do we do this. the first idea was lincoln. it was that it should be privately financed. we could raise the money to do this. henry ford says often. you are not going to do this with private money and i'm not

going to contribute. you arete going to need federal money to do this. they don't raise enough money. they get some subscribers includingg. eisenhower becomes president in 1956 and the interstate highway act and creates the largest network of highways on the planet. i tried inflation adjustment for today'str dollars. now we face $6 trillion and of course there's a proposal for the 2 trillion-dollar american$6 jobs plan by president biden and then we are looking at that now. telling stories about the people behind these ideas and the

principle here is very powerful that you do need to make these investments. this is how. from coast-to-coast there's a lot of things we need to do. and i would be happy to take questions. good at that lincoln really personified was this idea that innovation would not only lift our economic station for entrepreneurship, this new technology but also lift their spirits that this is aspirational. we still truly believe this new invention or this new idea is going to change the world. that is what i think makes us

americans and that's part of the path forward. one of the reasons i wrote this book and i have to tell you one last sort of anecdote about it. i wrote backwards i started out with the era and the pandemic we are in now. i lost two friends i know lots of people who lost friends and my condolences if you knew somebody who perished in this ugly thing. but it revealed something about better social infrastructure better educational infrastructure roads, bridges, tunnels, railroads. all of these things that come out of a huge infrastructure. it also builds their >> and their confidence and gives us something to hope for.

it is aspirational. and with that i would love to take your questions. there's a whole bunch of stories in the book it was a pure joy to write living in the land of lincoln and people ask me how long did it take you to write this? i said well all my life. this is an ongoing story and help all of you will contribute to this effort to realize what we need to do. and we are back to jim i think. >> yes thank you very much john. just to start us off, before i even ask a question let's encourage everyone to please enter your own questions in the q&a box. and keep going on that basis. the tariff was a main source of income back then, do think lincoln would be in favor of higher tariffs today say on china? >> i think the whole tariff

formula proved to be not enough to do what we needed to do in terms of infrastructure. this is the whole argument during the 19th century tariffs were used to fund some infrastructure. but it was not enough. is it a good way to finance these things? i will leave that to the historians, to the financial analyst. i would think what we do need is a broad-based sustainable way of financing this. whether it's public-private or through bonds or through carbon taxes so many proposals we get that discussion going you don't invest in your house, need to replace the heating the air conditioning all of these things wear out. if you don't do that you're looking at problems.

so the house is our nation and it does need to be fixed, and upgraded, put a new technology we need to address climate change, all of these things. so we do need and that is the current argument, how do we do this had refinance? >> mention innovator in chief. secondly lesser known story was a duel challenge believe it or not that lincoln had. and a little bit about that for the audience but again most people are not aware of those. >> whether to really good stories. they both happen at different times. but the inventors story was that for lincoln to get to washington he had to take this god awful route come through the great lakes, through the erie canal, down the hudson

river and sometimes each of the overland routes. and often when he was on a vote in the great lakes it would get stuck and they would have to pry the vote loose with the physical labor. sweet came up with this idea, literally designed it on the ship where he had these polls pretty wish i had a picture of it, would lift it up and they had these inflatable buoys that would float the vote up higher. it was a really clever invention he made a model of it. he had a friend construct to produce now in the system smithsonian it was a beautiful looking craft. not built as far as i know. be on the model stage. nobody used it there is probably not that much need for it. the dual challenge was lincoln had some issues with depression. one of his sweethearts died,

that was ann rutledge. madly in love with her she dies and he is bereft. he gets very depressed. there is a mary owens before he meets mary todd who was very sprightly intelligent, politically savvy. new henry clay. grew up with that whole culture and that louisville, kentucky. : : : >> . >> that that's what happened.

he did not fight the dual if we would have lost lincoln i cannot imagine what this country would be like. good question. thank you. >> if you could one thing to spend infrastructure money on what would it be quick. >> that's easy for me. that would be healthcare. because one of the things i discovered in writing the book backwards is there are massive inequities in terms of healthcare coverage with communities of color and the rest of the country. it is very and evenly divided in a county north of the city we have a plethora of really good hospitals but the south side of chicago is not the case there struggling to stay opens why was been the many to say how do they have a

broad-based plan everybody gets decent basic healthcare. we need to come up with something as the covid crisis exposes these inequities. it was horrible because some people didn't have access or go into the hospital they were afraid they could not pay for it. this is part of the social infrastructure argument lincoln would have embraced by the equal treatment clause at the very least we should treat everybody fairly and equally. of course they haven't and that's what they need to talk about talking about infrastructure. >> with lincoln be in favor of a line item veto to keep out

of the infrastructure bill? >> i don't think he would've looked at that specifically he was a big picture thinker. the continental railroad how big of a picture was that? that spurned the robber baron era and murdering them and putting them on reservations there is a lot of bad things that happened because of expansionist economic policies no doubt but how can you see that? i don't know what he would have thought to be honest about a line item veto but the question of his time wasn't government waste but not spending enough money on what mattered to the greatest number of people. that is a tough four night will pass on that but i think

he would have looked at it eventually he was very open-minded to new ideas. >> lincoln and frederick douglass knew each other well tell us about their rapport and how that relationship valued policies. >> and murdering parlance i thank you been friends and enemies. from what i could tell he welcomed douglas into the white house. of course douglas was an accomplished thinker and speaker and abolitionist. he wrote two autobiographies. he is amazing he opens the whole issue of slavery and economic equality and what we need to do. there's probably no better person if you want to understand and to read frederick douglass.

that douglas was very critical of lincoln in the early years what we would consider to be a fairly regular basis at the white house. but the list and feel he was doing enough the emancipation proclamation did not end slavery and totality. so that is one interpretation freeing on the other side all the pieces that needed to fall like equal education and funding infrastructure for every community, that word come later but coming later in the 18 eighties advocating for equal rights.

and i think and has done more than any other president to advance equality i don't think too many historians were disagree to inspire the 14th and 15th amendment and of course the great civil rights legislation in the sixties. but both men would agree there's more work that needs to be done. to make our lincoln convince folks that broadband is the new canal system? >> i don't think he would hesitate. so when he received the first telegraph messages buyer president. and his invention since the 18

forties and was really struggling to say it is global communications instead of pony express and the slow route you are sending messages that the speed of light. and link above the idea. besides being in the telegraph room in the white house sending and receiving messages broadband everywhere. i think he would have loved the idea. >> if any of those ideas would

apply. >> here's the great back story. and 1862 to establish the land grant colleges that we know state universities today. the first iteration they could sell it or farm it or produced in common that was the concept of the landgrab. not a direct subsidy as we know today and the principal means in the 19th century for doing something big the federal government didn't have the income for one thing and then the states rights arguments they should be doing this first. they did have the ability to raise the capital and a lot of investments was foreign investment. the transcontinental railroad

so lincoln was a focus on education because of the shortfalls of the area only one year formal education and the rest was self learned he became a lawyer and he studied integrate reader. he was into math and all sorts of subjects so he would've embrace the idea of expanding the educational system one of many and there were other extensions of that in the 20th century establish universities and historically black colleges came out of that. native american colleges came out of that in subsequent iterations i think he would have loved. and the vermont senator

originally proposed land-grant universities who knew lincoln as a young man and proposed the whole idea of the industrial university teaching two basic things of agriculture so he had this idea for decades to try to get it passed 1858 but then it was be towed and then became law under lincoln but he was very well aware of turner he had a massive visitor at the white house during the civil war he was a famous abolitionist and ironically in the same town where he got his start with the fake college system and

things like that. >> what do you believe president lincoln word have achieved if he was able to serve his second term? >> that is the most essential question to ask today. the low hanging fruit is he would've completed reconstruction if he had lived longer he would not abandon not in the 18 seventies that led to the horrible jim crow era and lynchings and awful times in our history. lincoln what have followed through and witness the passage of the 13th 14th and 15th amendment and taking it a step further to ensure there was political equality with complete voting rights and generally we credit him for being the inspiration

of the great society programs come civil rights of the sixties, i think he would be able to see that through and add to it. he was definitely the soul of all of those laws. >> i'm curious how do you explain or interpret the transition between the canal system and the rail system? how long does that take and what are the stages of development? >> that's a fascinating question. and it didn't really take long in terms of history because what needed to happen for railroads to take off they had to mass-produce rail, they had to cut a lot of trees and to create the technology to

extend rail over a long distance. and with that came improvements in the steam engine, braking systems, a lot of the business was centered in chicago with the ironic fact of history that the pullman car company was one of chicago's biggest industries. from its inception and literally had to build all of these cars out of would. lincoln travel then pullman cars in his son who became a lawyer was president of the pullman company for a while. there is a horrible strike. so that was an important part. with every story there is incremental events how do you have a better real better steel or better iron? from the steel mills of chicago and pittsburgh and

cleveland they all contributed with the advancement of the technology go from the canal of 18 thirties or 18 forties with the spikes and the golden spike is driven into the transcontinental railroad. a lot of interesting things happen they had to reinvent how they build bridges for the iron era of most were made out of wood. in fact this is one great story lincoln was defending a company from rock island illinois and needed to get across the river and at that time right at the end of the steamboat era so they had a

right to the river and no upstart technology and no railroad across the river so there is an incident where the steamboat either crashed or lost control and hit the bridge. since it was made of wood it burned to the ground. so the steamboat owner who underinsured his ship sues the bridge company in bring on lincoln as the attorney to represent the bridge company and he makes an interesting argument he doesn't win a case it was a hung jury but eventually it is one with a compelling statement this isn't just a bridge it is an impediment to commerce or trade it is a public amenity it links chicago and the east and the country across the mississippi they belong to the public we should build more they are not stopping commerce or people from discovering land in the west we need it.

was an important case about a whole chapter on it and i was just so fascinated how he was with the public good of infrastructure. >> hr 40 possibly in front of congress dealing with reparations for descendents of slaves what would lincoln think of that quick. >> i think he would think thoughtfully. it is a complex subject we have to address those inequities in all systems education, healthcare, and the fact there is the environmental justice issue that toxic plants and refineries built in communities of color. there's a whole list of things i think lincoln would have

fundamentally addressed because it spoke to his sense of fairness that equality is based on the ability to take advantage of an opportunity and if you are held back for whatever reason, it should be addressed. i think he would've talk to frederick douglass about it or booker t. washington and all the people who talk about it today. i think he would've looked how do we do this? >> how were the canals financed? there was some speculation in the stock market so explain how this was financed. >> this is one of the interesting stories of

american finance when they financed they floated some bonds which were horribly inadequate. for those sections of the canal which in management theory probably not a good idea in today's age you hire one contractor. for the contract out for bid and in the best bidder gets the job. and they send notices out to ireland to say to promise the poor irish guys doing to be a navigator? that's what they called them a navigator digging it by hand. so at first it was an

undercapitalized project then they got foreign financing and then to build the canals of course the land-grant system is basically you get the land and you find the money to build it some money was raised for the transcontinental railroad mostly bonds but a lot of foreign investment. and it was a reverse while then so how do we enjoy a nature in the middle of the city? what does that mean had we

produce our own energy or cleaner air and water and stuff like that? how do you localize that? what i discussed in the book is climate change affects everything and certainly effects of infrastructure we have to build bridges higher in redesign water system.

and it says interesting as anybody else

>> we don't completely understand them and we won't but it's important to see what he saw and feel what he felt and to aspire to a better country. still a worthy goal in a moral principle that we can't abandon it is wonderful to

have you back with wall street legends thank you very much. >> i will be bac

a steinbeck the naturalist. interested in human nature. it's a horror potboiler which is why i think readers would find it more interesting than a more typical steinbeck. booktv will continue to bring two new programs and publishing news. you can also watch all of our past programs anytime booktv.org. >> good afternoon, everybody and welcome to a house divided coming to you from abraham lincoln book shop in chicago. my name is bjorn skaptason and i will be the administrative for this program. the book went on to talk about today is "lincoln in private" by