visit our entire schedule and have it eemd to you by pressing the e-mail alert button. you're looking at "the atlant atlantic" special issue on the civil war. also includes some contemporary works including an introduction by president obama. the magazine covers the run-up to the civil war, the war itself and the after war period. some of the writers feature great, mark twain, nathanial hawthor hawthorne, ralph weigh dough emerson. joining us is the editor, james and editor scott. thank you for joining us. before we delve into the issue iftsd, the co-member rative issue, let's talk about the atlantic. "the atlantic" has a great

history. how does abolition and the abolitionist movement play into the founding of the magazine. >> we had a wonderful time putting this issue together because we love these pieces and gave us an opportunity to connect with the founding of the magazine. started in 1857 in boston. the magazine was basically created by a group of writers who came together with two fundamental purposes. one was to capture what they saw as an emerging american voice in letters. the other, including their own voices, and was to abolish slavery. they were very committed to abolitionists. in 1857 this is a very radical idea still. they were interested in promoting the founding of the magazine what they called the american idea. they didn't exactly define what they meant but they regarded

slavery as anti-ethical to the idea and a terrible blot on the union. >> in james' opening comments in the magazine he mentions the articles originally were published none anonymously. why was that? >> authorship wasn't as much as it is now, but just to add to something that james said, the magazine was founded to espouse and develop the american idea. 1857, less than 100-year-old country, always looking back at our shoulder over europe. what is the american distinctive voice? we talk about partisanship of politics and realized everything published would have more with no party or clique. this is something we try to

embody today. we are of no party or clique, all ideological persuasions except where it concerns slavery. in doing research for -- compiling this collection of essay ises we discovered our first staff political writer actually quit because the founding editor kept -- anything he wrote, the editor would end up inserting a couple of passages, arguing for the abolition of slavery. >> that's a good point to leap off into the creation of this c commemorative. what was it like to go back in the archives -- >> you addressed a common misperception. magazine sage is my senior staj stossel but i worked closely

with her, my senior and myself have been associated with the magazine for many years and my sister sage has a familiarity with the archives. we knew there were very few publications. in fact, you know, probably you can count on three fingers the number of magazines that exist today that were still -- that were published in 1857. for us to be able -- this is one of the things that feels special and important to us. going back to 1857 we're actually able to -- you know, "time" magazine, "new yorker," many great publications weren't there on the ground publishing real time reported stories. so, it was a real sort of labor of love. and great fun to go back and we had to be fairly rigorous and sometimes make painful decisions about what to excise and not include because you can only include so much in a magazine of

this size. we went back and looked at the entire scope of things we published on the civil war and tried to pick, you know, what are the best and most interesting and a representative sampling that tells a narrative story across the four years of the war and beyond. >> the hard part was deciding what not to include. there was one moment where we found ourselves dropping walt whitman from the issue. scott and i looked at each other and it was a moment likes, are we not -- we have an opportunity to publish walt whit mn and we're not going to publish him? >> you sa you this coming with the 150th? >> we've been preparing for this for a long time. >> we should say, we had a wonderful collaboration with the national gallery in putting this issue together. we used photography, art from the port rat gallery for the issue. we've had a great partnership with them.

>> let's start with a photograph of abraham lincoln that's next to the introduction by president obama. how did the president become involved in the issue and was it coincidental he chose to refer to this photograph in his comments or were you planning to use this as the front cover all along? >> we planned to use this as the cover after they showed us this alexander gardner photo of lincoln. it's a -- i think, it's a stunning photograph, port rat taken very late, right before lincoln was assassinated. gardner worked with a large, giant negative. after he took this picture of lincoln he removed the negative and dropped it and cracked it. there's a crack running through his forehead. he reassembled the plate and pulled one print off it, which is this photograph which hangs in the national gallery.

we were hopeful the president might want to contribute something to this issue. so we did intend to make it the cover all along and sent him a copy via the press office and just asked for his meditation on this picture, what does it make him think of. >> the president talked about how he's in moments of having to make difficult decisions, he'll look at port raraits and pull h words for inspiration and solace. when you read through the issue, obviously what lincoln was

dealing with with the potential dissolution of the union and issues like prosecuting a major war that was the most lethal as far as american casualties but the decision-making and about, you know, how aggressively to push emancipation, it was a goal he greatly desired, but he had to be thinking about politics of losing his backers in the north and in some ways there are parallels. >> let's stay with lincoln and some pieces, recollections of lincoln, and he writes several pieces about his offense -- taking offense at the nature of president lincoln's crude jokes. >> one of president obama's observations about the photograph is that it compels you to see past the icons of the

man and the strain the war had taken. there was a flesh and blood person behind this. what i think we both love about that piece is that he does give you the man in full. henry vallard was an ap reporter who covered the lincoln/douglas debate. he got to know link con on the stump when lincoln was an unknown one-term congressman from illinois who had come back to run for senate. and compete with douglas. and he sounds every bit the hard bitten veteran, jaded, political reporter, bake attitude as you heard one debate, you've heard them all. his attitude toward lincoln, he says lincoln caused him humiliati humiliation. he told dirty jokes. he lied to get people out of his office. lincoln was running -- was arguing for the peser vags of the union but if you pushed him,

he wouldn't give a straight answer. >> that's one of the great things about seeing history unfold in real time from the perspective of the journalists who were there. from the perspective of 150 years later lincoln is on this enormous pedestal and day to day, he was having to engage in the petty diplomacy and petty flogging that politicians are today. i love the vallard portrait. >> with a great deal of clarity. >> as james says, he he's offended and repeatedly says this guy is the president of the united states and has this propensity for making dirty jokes and seems unbecoming of a president. >> he acknowledges -- he says, he turns out to be one of the great leaders in adversity. completely misjudged him.

>> there is a quote where he's talking about lincoln as a state legislator aspiring to become congressman or senator. my wife keeps thinking i could be president of the united states. can you believe a biumpkin like me? >> what scott described, it's just a wonderful anecdote. he describes getting caught with lincoln in a rain storm and sheltering in an abandoned freight car. he's just sitting with the man. he has no notion he could ever be president of the united states. hearing lincoln laugh at the idea -- this is his wife's ambition. i suspect lincoln is spinning vallard in that moment saying, my wife thinks i could be president. i have no ambition myself. it's another way, as scott says, you have this sense of just how

plastic this moment was in american history. the nation was being formed and also history could have gone in very, very different directions. and how modern so much feels. like the relationship of the writers to the subject, the actual politicians. their efforts to communicate and get their messages heard, a lot of familiar types. >> yes. as editors now, you have -- looking back through the history you think there was this great moral purity, and there was on abolitionists were working but the way they got there was through manipulation of the media. a number of instances we were struck by where he talks about you've got instances of lincoln talking to his aides and reporters about, maybe you should play -- one case somebody wants to write a story for "the

liberator," and lincoln says it would be better placed in "the atlantic." just like current presidents, how is this going to be received? just as today, president obama will bring in david brooks conservative columnist or franc rich, liberal columnist and try to spin them. he did the same thing. ralph waldo emerson comes into the white house and lincoln talks to him. >> superficially and in many ways is a heroic celebration of the midnight ride of paul revere

and revolutionary war. the context was longfellow, he was a timid guy and weary of engaging in politics but was a very good friend with paul sumner who was an outspoken abolitionists. from 1850s through the '60s, longfellow was more and more taken up with abolitionist and the institution of slavery so he sort of infused with this fashion i have to do something about it. he had several years earlier written poetry about slavery. midnight ride of paul revere is to warn of the red coats coming. the passion is infuses is about ending slavery and the cause of the union. so, if you read it through and actual

actually -- jill lapore goes through, there are many references through the poem, you know, they go back past a cemete cemetery, paul revere does on his ride, a cemetery only for the black dead. he talks about a hanging of a slave. the whole idea is whoa are engaged in this moment, the early 1860s, that is a threat to the stability of the union and a threat to the -- threat to the ideals that inspired founders during the revolution. it's komg come down to a childish ride of paul revere and it's a creed and impassioned call to kind of, you know, go to -- >> readers at the time understood that the message -- >> they knew the context, the times they were living in.

it so happened the poem appeared in january 1861 issue of "the atlantic" which came out, as our issues still do, ahead of january, on december 20, 1860 when ses seeded from the union. >> they were the very first state in. >> correct. >> nathanial hawthorne piece, chiefly about war matters by a peaceable man. he takes this trip in 1862 to washington. what's his purpose? >> this is a fascinating piece. nathanial hawthorne, founders and early contributors to the magazine were a great exception in that he was very ambivalent about slavery, about abolition. he wasn't. he was very skeptical of this war effort. and the whole premise of this piece is that i'm going to set out for washington to sort of

see what all this hubbub is about. he writes what is really a very superficial account of what he meets in washington, including lincoln, offended he doesn't show up in time because he's having breakfast and leaves hawthorne sitting there -- >> another writer offended by lincoln. >> another guy -- i mean, this really is. we're talking about the great likes of american letters. this is a superficial piece of magazine literature which makes it fascinating read. he meets mechanic clel land's manly bearing and let's wreeders know, all this criticism you shouldn't buy into it. lincoln would dismiss mcclelland for being too timid in prosecuting the war. >> our con tech rather references are so many and so deep. you read the hawthorne piece,

you know, well established in american letters. >> and for good reason. >> very good reason. you can look at him and identify his type today which is cynical journalist going to washington and not every good journalist has cynicism. this is all -- and the irony is, but then he also had written -- he had been discovered by one of the editors, henry field, and who is instrumental in getting hawthorne a national audience. fields commissions this piece not knowing what to come of it. he's alarmed because the publication was abolitionist. how thorn has a jaundiced view of the abolitionist cause. he skribz lincoln in unkout and

rude. he edits this out. we're talking in the 1860s to do a post-modern thing. all the stuff gets edited out and hawthorne gets mad. in the final piece he's inserted all these fake editorial comments so it's back and forth, you're reading along and then all of a sudden that is actuality removed by the editor, but then they allowed hawthorne to inject his joking commentary on what the editors had done. the whole thing is a meta commentary. >> you wonder how he got those comments through there. he's one of several writers who visits harpers ferry and meets southern soldiers. he's one of several writers in this issue that comments on the nature of southern character. what was your impression of how writers viewed southerners? >> it's interesting to me that -- i mean, it speaks in some ways to the first of the

original "the lantic" editors and breadth of vision. they were abolitionists brut there are a number of pieces where they thought to capture this legislature. in particular, we published two out of the seven he wrote for the magazine, which were from the perspective of a southern, where he's talking about the challenges the south are having to wrestle with and breakdown of authority and gives credit to the federal union troops coming in and re-establishing -- >> and also one of his periods of installment of "the l atlantic," it was a bit radical to do that but he's writing saying, you don't understand what it's like in the south. if you northerner had been in our shoes, you would have fought, too, and here's why.

and sort of explains the psychology of the south and the run up to the war. >> the publication were fairly controversial among editorial staff at "the lantic"? >> there was one remark somewhere, which i think we reference in the introduction, that it actually -- his pieces were so convincing they were a little worried that it was going to sway readers to be too sympathetic to the south. he described it. it's what -- sort of defenders of lost cause had said. this is really about state's rights. peser vags of our way of life. you would presume to sort of usurp that. >> a picture that accompanies the hawthorne piece of abraham lincoln visiting with mcclelland and generals. tell us about how you got the photographs for this? >> early on we realized the

national portrait gallery had this phenomenal collection of americana and specifically port rats and other images from the civil war which is where we got the image on the cover. working with them and curator of photography knows civil war photography backward and forward and pat mitchell, art director for the issue, we also went further afield. there's no shortage of just fantastic civil war imagery. we were almost, i think, you know, struck by -- we have this great pieces of journalism. the juxtaposition of some of these pieces with the images we were able to find.

mark twayin sitting with african-american gentlemen he was friends with. really brings it home in av visceral way. >> there are two pieces by ralph waldo emerson largely dealing with emancipation. how influential were his writings and speeches on abraham lincoln dealing with emancipation. >> he had a huge impact. in some ways he registers as a contemporary writer, op-ed columnist. the first piece was calling for emancipation proclamation. he writes emancipation is the demand of civilization. all else is intrigue. he had been crusading on this question for a long time. really, you can see him -- you feel him almost writing to an audience of one, trying to stiffen abraham lincoln's spine.

after emancipation proclamation is issued, and emerson writes, at the end of that year, celebrating its arrival, he says, though, but it better not just be a piece of paper. stand up and deliver on the promise that has been made here. >> and his tone in that second piece is almost -- is victorious. >> and still warning that we need to back it up. >> we're going to hold your feet to the fire here to deliver. >> so, this is one of two pieces. you also have a piece by harriet beecher stowe. she responds to the women of great britain. how did that come about? >> she had a relationship with with with the magazine and a story that may be true where -- because she published uncle tom's cabin that focussed national attention to the problem of slavery.

so i can't remember where she comes with audience in the white house. she says, you're the woman that started the war. the little lady that started the war. >> but she's responding in that piece to reacting to a petition she received among other american women several years earlier from the women of great britain -- of england saying, why aren't you standing up against slavery? a moral call coming from british women for american women to act. she's responding in this story, saying, where are you now? we're fighting this war and great britain is standing on the sidelines. you, women of england, why don't you stand up and lend your voices. >> your senior editor wrote the final piece in the article. current article with the title of piece, why do so few blacks study the civil war?

what was his motivation for this article? >> well, who's deeply interested in the civil war, working on a historical novel and he writes for the magazine and blogs for us, has been blogging a great deal about thes ive war is responding to the eggleston, but he what he sees as sanitizing of the history of the civil war in the south, that does treat it as a noble cause, a lost cause, a fight about civil rights -- states rights, rather than a fight about slavery and the effort to end the buying and selling of forced labor of human beings. his argument is basically whites in the north and south came together to kind of we won't talk about that on the 50th

anniversary of the civil war woodrow wilson gives a speech. as a result, he's trying to reclaim this history for black americans as well as white americans. >> he makes a somewhat controversial point which you happen to agree with that tags a number of historians to task. the tradition is to talk about civil war as great tragedy and that's true. yet the outcome was unarguably good and moral. and partly, perhaps because a lot of blacks don't study it and partly because of the whitewashing, the focus on the meaning of the war and the tragedy or not or the nobleness of the lost cause gets lost.

>> we've been talking about "at lanlt -- "the atlantic" special edition on the civil war. >> you can go to our website and order a copy of the magazine and we'll happily send it out to you. our website is theatlantic.com and buy it on a tablet if you have an ipad or kindle, you can download a copy there. >> other pieces or features as well? >> you can find individual pieces from the issue on our website. >> we have really cool allen taylor who does our photo blog has published a series of three collections of images from the civil war which include some but go way beyond that and really striking, powerful images. >> james bennett, editor of "the atlantic," thank you for joining us. we'll have a link to our website and you can watch this program

and all our other than american history tv programs on c-span.org/history. >> commemoration of the 150 anniversary of the civil war continues, join us saturdays at 6 p.m. and 11:00 on sundays. go to c-span.org/history for our schedule. to send us your questions or comments, follow us on twitter. we' we're. up next, kevin hymel talks about his book "patton's photographs: war as he saw it." he uncovered a number of photographs patton took during world war 2. he presented them a