wrote levels -- to tossed around -- testosterone levels drop as you age. fat,not just the level of the distribution of it is affected as well. afterwords.ght on you are watching american history tv, which airs every weekend on c-span3. live from ford's theatre in washington, d.c. with an all-day symposium on abraham lincoln's life, career and legacy. we will hear about his views on emancipation and immigrants and his relationships governors loyal -- with governors loyal to the union cause how contemporary americans view the 16th president.

throughout the morning, we will be hearing from various speakers, including daniel crofts. engle and alan -- in a few moments, the symposium should get underway with an introduction from the director and thes theater president of the abraham lincoln institute. c-span3live coverage on . [indiscernible chatter]

>> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. andome to ford's theatre the abraham lincoln institute annual symposium. i want to start by thanking the , theam lincoln institute illinois state society and washington, d.c. and all of our presenters and speakers for making today possible. [applause] i am standing here on the set of our current production of ragtime. it is a musical based on the novel of the same name.

program,side of your there is a special discount code to be used for this evening's performance if anyone would like to come to the show. it is at 7:30 this evening. if you cannot make it tonight, the production is playing through may 20. it is spectacular. i hope you will come and see that. a few housekeeping things for the day -- no food or drink in the theater. they allow bottled water. that is it. your wristband will serve as your ticket for the full day admission. it will also grant you admission to ford's theatre museum in the basement and the petersen house across the street. please keep it throughout the day. it will allow you to come back and forth. there will be in time for questions after each presentation.

however, you may have noticed, c-span is filming the entire day's proceedings today. if you ask questions, please use the microphones that are in the so that folks listening on c-span can hear your questions. ,fter each presentation today there will be a 20 minute break. you can get up and stretch your feet and get some coffee or refreshments at the gift shop. presenters will be signing books in the lobby. all the books are able to be purchased throughout the day at the gift shop. all presenters will be signing books after the presentations in the lobby with the exception of zo and doug wilson. they will sign books prior to their presentations. assume those presentations will

be brilliant and you will want to have them sign your books before. i guarantee that will be the case. alan and doug will sign books before. james conroy will sign copies of his books before the final talk of the day. there will be a lunch break 1:50.at 12:25 to please take all of your belongings with you. all my that is housekeeping things. for the day issk to introduce the president of the lincoln institute, michelle kroll. she holds a doctorate in history from the university of california berkeley and is a civil war and reconstruction specialist in the manuscript division of the library of congress. she has been a terrific

president for ali. it is my pleasure to welcome michelle today. [applause] morning. this is wonderful. in 1847, abraham lincoln arrived in washington to begin his term in the united states congress. although that respectable but single term it may not be remembered as the pinnacle of his political career, lincoln's time in washington did add luster to one of his ambitions. i have no other so great as that of being truly seen by my fellow man by rendering myself worthy of his esteem. his arrival in washington in 1847 prompted the formation of the abraham lincoln institute 150 years later.

for the past 20 years, missions has been to promote research on the life and legacy of abraham lincoln. the group organizes and funds in annual symposium that offers the latest in lincoln scholarship presented by the best scholars in the field and made available to the public free of charge. we also sponsor the ever him lincoln institute book award and in cooperation with the bramley can association of dust abraham lincoln association of springfield, illinois, we offer the scholarship. we are reminded of lincoln's remark that the better part of one's life consists of his friendships. paul and the marvelous staff make it possible to once again meet in this historic theater. we want to thank colleen pryor, patrick pearson, allison and lauren for their assistance.

thestaff have handled complicated logistics of hosting this event and i hope you will join me in giving the society staff a hearty round of applause and appreciation of their efforts. [applause] sincerely thank the donors whose contributions allow us to meet in this magnificent space. we also thank our friends at the illinois state society and washington, d.c. for their continued support. your online and in person financial contributions to the abraham lincoln institute help to fund the symposium and we hope you will give generously again today. dds enthusiasm, a validating our efforts and demonstrating that abraham lincoln's ambitions for the esteem of his fellow man and

woman has been achieved. on behalf of the board of directors, i welcome you to our 20th annual symposium. whether you are with us here in washington or watching the elsewhere, we trust you will find yourselves having been informed, inspired, enlightened and entertained by our please joinspeakers me in welcoming my esteemed colleagues, william c harris, who will introduce our first speaker. [applause] >> good morning. it is a bit intimidating to stand on the stage and look where the good was assassinated.

i had the honor of introducing the distinguished speaker for the first session of the symposium. daniel cross is a professor at the college of new jersey and the author of a number of important books. 1989, professor cross wrote "reluctant confederates." the book has stood the test of time as a standard account of north carolina, virginia and tennessee in the secession pe riod leading to war. in the book, professor cross

skillfully demonstrated the combined efforts of upper union.ts to preserve the , "lincoln andk the politics of slavery," is an account of the failed attempts to pass and ratify the original of theendment as a part copper mines to save been in in early 18 621. to save the union in early 1861. he believed it was redundant and did not need to be enshrined in the constitution. come across -- significantly, crossed challenges his determination to

end slavery. professor cross. [applause] professor cross: i think ank bil harris for that generous intervention. only two people in the world know the lincoln story indeed inailed while also knowing deep detail what happened in the reconstruction south after lincoln's death. bill harris is one of these two remarkable scholars. that's not all. bill has just published two more books. the first is lincoln in congress .

"twoecond is entitled against lincoln." productivity should cause and me among those were half his age he deserves a round of nvy among-- cause e those who are half his age. he deserves a round of applause. [applause] professor cross: today's crowd audience is still remains for engaging directly with the past rather than trying to fancy it up while allowing our imaginations to run free. i welcome your eagerness to deal with facts, especially at such a prompt hour on a weekend. my focus this morning will be the faithful series of events in late 1860 and early 18 61 when a

presidential election triggered a grave crisis and a civil war. you that we are in the midst of the second grave crisis triggered by a presidential election. the fate of democratic government itself hangs in the balance. this time, we do not yet know the outcome of the crisis because we are living it from day to day. back to the winter of 1860 and 18 621, i will organize my talk into four main topics. abraham lincoln and the republican party. i will post several key questions. what did lincoln and the republicans and stand for in 1860? what did they hope to do? did they intend to abolish southern slavery or was the program mostly wishful thinking

about the distant future? second, the slaveholding south. i will ask why the south flew off the rails after lincoln's election. was the slave system imperiled or did white southerners overreact and transform a distant danger into a deadly and immediate threat? third, the book i've just written. it revisits the actual situation at the time and shows how political leaders and ordinary people tried to figure out what was happening and how they expected events to unfold. fourth come i will finish with some thoughts about the tension between myth and history. what is a mythic version of history often dominate our historical memory? what does feel good fo folklore overshadowed mustard to

demonstrative facts? let's start with abraham lincoln. in november 1863 when he spoke so memorably at gettysburg about a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, lincoln was looking toward a hope for the future rather than accurately describing the american past. a growing shelf of modern scholarship challenges lincoln's understanding of history. some founding fathers wanted to curb or restrict slaveowning, but they had a far stronger desire to create a federal union that possessed sufficient power to govern. lincoln thought the founders expected slavery to disappear. the constitution in fact gave slavery new protections. it made the slaveholding south an equal partner as the u.s. first took shape. lincoln lived in a country where the slave system was deeply

rooted and spreading rapidly across the lower mississippi valley. thinking about it made him miserable. he convinced himself that the founding fathers really wanted something better. lincoln and most other anti-slavery northerners also prized the union and wanted it preserved. lincoln was committed to values that cannot logically be reconciled. lincoln and the republican party's mainstream moderates hope to slavery eventually would end, but they had no blueprints to get from here to there. they read the constitution to mean that they had no power to touch slavery in the states where it already existed. instead, they counted on white southerners to realize that free labor would create a more prosperous and productive society than slave labor. republicans had no plan to fight

a war that would revolutionize southern society. what did lincoln actually propose to do? he and his republican friends believed the south wielded too much power in the union. the republican party coalesced in the 1850's to challenge what supporters called the slave power. republicans bowed to enable the free white men of the north to gain the political clout to the numbers entitle them. once in power, republicans promised, they would stop the spread of slavery to the territories. what they called free soil would become national policy. some republicans wanted to do more. they demanded a more aggressive nationalized -- denationalize slavery.

he called for much more than territorial restriction. he wanted to abolish slavery in the district of columbia to restrict or eliminate the interstate slave trade and additional slave states from entering the union and to repeal the law that made easier to recapture slaves in the north. the stance assumed by the republican party gave short ft to freedom absolutists. they emphasized that they posed no threat to slavery in the states. they focused narrowly on the territories and on the long run hope that white southerners might reconsider their addiction to forced labor.

had republicans embraced the hardline plan to denationalize slavery, they might lose voters. the party, he warned. "i bite my lip and keep quiet." republican party managers nevertheless needed votes for northern whites who saw slavery as a moral problem. party promoters endlessly promised their enlightened moral minority that this was the first step on the road to abolition. they never identified the second step. carefully calibrated his words so they would appeal to hardliners and to moderates.

let's turn to my next topic, the south on the eve of the war. any reasonable standard, southern slaveholders had little to worry about. if they faced any dangers, it was in the distant future. the republican party's antislavery stance offended the white south and got back up. this disagreement spiraled out of control. blastedry absolutists the republican party as the deadly menace that would deny the south access to the territories and then attack slavery in the states where it existed. throughout the presidential campaign must southern alarmists charged repeatedly that republicans were abolitionists in disguise who plotted to unleash slave rebels and murder white women and children. it was the combative over-the-top quality of southern

political give-and-take. rival partisans in the south regularly sought to identify threats to southern rights. they smeared opponents for displaying insufficient zeal in blocking such threats or for insidiously collaborating with the south enemies. it became standard procedure for orators to warn that the south was a menace. accusations -- white southerners depended on his a system of forced labor. affirmations that slavery was a positive good for everyone involved never vanished the fear that rebels might lurk behind inscrutable black masks. white southerners were predisposed to be suspicious. it became a staple of 1860 campaign in the south that

republicans were allies of the abolitionist john brown who led an uprising in harper's ferry. lincoln tried to quiet the white south's hysteria. his speech in new york city explicitly condemned the harpers ferry raid and insisted that john brown was no republican. lincoln did his best to show that republicans were not abolitionists. his reassurances never found an audience in the white south. the presidential election because he carried every free state except for a divided electoral vote in new jersey. he compiled a clear majority in the electoral college. it is electoral votes that count.

amassed far more popular votes than any of the other three candidates. but his plurality victory gave him 40% of the nationwide popular vote. he got no electoral votes and hardly any popular votes in the south. lincoln's supporters were outright abolitionists. and articulate minority of republicans did consider slavery a moral problem. lincoln pitched his rhetoric to show that he shared antislavery values. he and other mainstream republican moderates always said slavery in the states was beyond their reach. lincoln's victory shocked the white south. throughout the summer and fall, the southern political orators had warned a catastrophe if he were elected. distress.o southern the south contended for a supposed constitutional right,

the right to take slaves into territories. hardly any slaveholders wished to exercise that right. it was endlessly reiterated, closing up the territories to slavery would denied southern equality in the union and put the country on the high road toward abolition. south,wept the especially the deep south, during the weeks after lincoln's election. in a presidential election refused to accept the verdict of the voters. secessionists took the fateful step of trying to break up the union and establish an independent country. supposedly responsible southern leaders fueled the uproar that rapid deep south extremists fanned into a raging fire. wielded more power

than any other southerner. he was the u.s. secretary of the treasury and the power behind the throne in james buchanan's cabinet. the grossly exaggerated the south's danger and warned that republicans were committed to immediate and unconditional abolition in every state and that lincoln planned to build up a party in the south to promote insidious warfare. cobb certainly knew better but he and other key southern theyrs apparently decided could do nothing to deflect the panic among ordinary white southerners and chose instead to amplify it. cobb wass echoed by -- echoed by the three most prominent democrats in the senate. before the election republicans

assumed secession threats were a harmless charade. an mixture of bravado and posture. refused to take seriously an outburst based upon what they considered ludicrous and seemingly deliberate misconceptions. they described the crisis as artificial. it had been whipped up by the south and only could be resolved when the south climbed off its high horse. let me shift to my third topic. a quick glimpse at my new book. it is called "lincoln and the politics of slavery." you catch the qualifying adjective, the other th amendment.

, this book is about an entirely different amendment, polarolar opposite -- its opposite, which was proposed for years earlier -- four years earlier. it was the handiwork of william .eward and thomas cohen seward, a u.s. senator from new york, had expected the republican presidential nomination in 1860. the great prize slipped away from him. ohion, and ohio accomplishments, had been a fixed or in national politics for 30 years. congressman.

republicans, seward and corwin feared that southern secession created a grave crisis need.y recognized an early so they offered to make explicit in the constitution what most americans assumed already was implicit there. and they persuaded lincoln to get behind the amendment. abraham lincoln's first inaugural address on march 4, 1861, denied that he or the republican party intended to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. lincoln then announced he could except the constitutional amendment test approved by two thirds majorities in both the house and the senate. the hind the scenes am a lincoln had quietly told his local

allies in congress to vote for the amendment. the man destined to become the great emancipator those sounded entirely different note as the took office. condemned lincoln for knuckling under the slaveholders, but lincoln wanted most of all to prevent a war. he pleaded with white southerners to stop and think and reconsider and state in the union. when lincoln offered these reassurances, seven states in the lower south had seceded from the union and it had begun to organize a separate government. but eight slave states, home to two thirds of white southerners, remained uneasily within the union and no shots had yet been exchanged. lincoln hoped to contain and ultimately to reverse the secession movement. above all, he helped to preserve the peace.

friends,t enemies, but he insisted in the conclusion to his inaugural address. "we must not be enemies." at the moment lincoln was inaugurated, virginia was still in the union. by decisive two to one margin, it's voters just a month before had rejected secession. robert e lee, stonewall jackson, and jeb stuart were not fighting in a war because no war was taking place. a delegate to the convention of virginia where he repeatedly warned against following the deep south's reckless lead. we know, of course, that lincoln proved unable to prevent war. six exact are his and migration, seven confederates opened fire on for sumter in the harbor of charleston, south carolina. lincoln responded by calling for troops. rival waves of patriotic fervor swept both the north and the south.

north, many democrats joined hands with republicans to uphold the flag and restore the union. stephen a douglas, lincoln's longtime illinois rival, announced that every man must be for the united states or against it. there could be no neutrals in this war, only patriots or trait ors. the newouth, confederate nations suddenly became far more formidable. most white southerners decided to fight for independence. slave states,l virginia, north carolina, tennessee, and arkansas, sided with the deep south and doubled the new nations military manpower. a great many virginians who rejected secession in february decided in april the question had changed entirely. the new question was, which side are you on in a war? both sides mobilized fast armies

and both stumbled into a war approved more bloody and protracted than anyone expected when it first started. secession was the most calamitous example of bad judgment in all of american history. this outrageous leap into the unknown was designed to counteract a supposed threat to slavery, even though lincoln and his fellow republicans vowed they would not touch slavery where it already existed. but when sudden secessionists fractured the union and started a war, they removed their states from the protection of the constitution. they also killed the seward-corwin effort to amend the constitution and make slaveholders feel more secure. instead, the hard spectacle of bloodshed and death and injury and disease prompted more and more white northerners to demand a war against slavery, the apparent taproot of the

rebellion. a war originally waged to restore the old union as it was gradually was transformed into a war to create a new union in which slavery had no place. just after lincoln issued his preliminary emancipation 1862,mation in september his secretary of the treasury marveled at the greatest collective insanity the world had ever seen. have the slaveholders stayed in the new and, chase reflected, they might have kept slavery for many years to come. no party or public feeling in the north could have touched them. but instead, they had madly placed slavery on the very path of destruction. in the end, secession destroyed slavery. the actual 13th amendment five -- ina density 18 625 specify the opposite of the original version.

the one13th amendments, that did not become part of the constitution in 1860 one, and the one that did in 18 625, book end up four most critical years in american history. so my book tackles and an important subject that has long been hidden in plain sight. it cuts against the grain of what we think we know about the civil war care of --era. i turn now to my fourth and final topic. what we can learn about american history more broadly by taking a fresh look at the crisis that led to the civil war. there is a tension between history as a actually unfolded and history as it is remembered. americans with liberal values tend to read back into history what we would like to find their , a nation conceived in liberty where slavery never really longed. an underground railroad that

liberated vast numbers of slaves, even before the war started. a lincoln who was elected to abolish slavery in the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's that decisively ended racial discrimination and made a mark and practices align with american ideals. by sugarcoating a more troubled reality, we downplay the cancer of racial assumptions and practices that has so interwoven with our national history. and we trivialize the bravery and dedication of those who did challenge the status quo. a history that we can feel good about often substitutes fancy for fact. americans today find it difficult to realize that slavery once was considered normal and taken for granted. see ourby fail to country as it was. we pay little attention to the hard fact that far more slaves

were sold and bought than ever escape. at least 100,000 african-americans each year in the mid-19th century were sold like merchandise or draft animals. in southern cities, richmond, montgomery, new orleans, slave trading was a big well organized his miss. slaves were a key form of liquid capital for settling debts, dividing of a state, and so on. montgomery, alabama, the first capital of the confederacy, has lots of confederate monuments. the just a few years ago, a group called the equal justice initiative directed something different, a historical marker entitled "warehouses used in the slave trade." it reminds us with the confederate states of america really was about. the domestic slave trade was a far -- was far bigger than the legendary underground railroad. 1850's, nouring the

more than 1000 to 2000 slaves successfully followed the north star to freedom. during that same year, however, 100,000 slaves or more were sold and bought across the south. but we choose instead to emphasize the upside, and so we celebrate the underground railroad and we put. tubman on the $20 bill. my book raises questions about uplifting national mythology. it also runs contrary to conventional wisdom as defined by many of my professional colleagues, some of whom are here today. they see a north that did endanger the south, a south that knew it was in danger and reacted rationally, and runaway slaves who did much to bring the sectional crisis to a boil. i think the supposed northern threat to the south has been much exaggerated, that secession threatened the south far more than did lincoln or the republican party, and that white

southerners admitted more nightmares about slave rebels and they did about runaway slaves. south, 60% of american slaves lived by 1860, and where the secession movement was centered, escape was effectively impossible. , a louisiana slave. so i come back to where i started. to abraham lincoln. andgeorge washington, franklin d roosevelt, were the three most consequential presidents in american history. lincoln faced extraordinary challenges. every day he was in office, the nation itself hung in the balance. instead of being overwhelmed, he grew. lincoln brought to his duties certain traits that are in notably short supply today. a workhorse rather than a show orse, he did not preen

striped or call attention to himself. his command in the language was impeccable. both when speaking and writing, he used words with great care and his word was his bond. he did not tweak. [laughter] but, i resist the modern tendency to make lincoln someone he wasn't. i reject the idea lincoln was a prewar radical bent on destroying the slaves system. we now honor lincoln as the great emancipator, but during the months that followed his election as president, he was totally preoccupied by other matters. he faced the greatest political crisis ever to confront a new president, and he could not have spared a moment to think about the long run future of slavery or the many indignities and hardships suffered by an american slaves. that changed and lincoln played a large role in advancing the change. the war forced the issue of

slavery from the margins to the center of attention. it made slavery vulnerable in ways that never could have happened in peacetime. quite suddenly, those white americans who knew slavery sabotaged american ideals were in a position to start doing something about it. and they had increasing motive to do so because black americans were eager to support the union cause and fight in the union army. the arithmetic of the situation was clear. slaves liberated from confederate captivity could be transformed into assets that enhanced the union war effort. out to spelled this disgruntled northern whites who complained about emancipation. to whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemies , he reasoned, to that extent it weakens the enemy in his resistance to you. can be goter negroes to do as soldiers, lincoln

added, leaves us so much less for why soldiers to do in saving the union. abraham lincoln reminds us that moral complexity lies at the heart of the american experience. his career highlights tensions for which there were no easy answers. you wait between conscience and law, but he said the fugitive slave law must be obeyed. he knew that black people in america work treated unfairly and he dared not come out squarely for equal rights. he always had been appalled by disorder and violence and bloodshed, i'd as president -- but as president, he hoped the ends would justify the terrible means. lincoln's two towering achievements, restoring the union and ending slavery, made it possible to build a new nation that did more closely reflect the nation's highest ideals. the constitution was amended three times between 1865 and

1870 to abolish slavery, to provide an expansive definition of citizenship, to insist that states must treat all citizens equally, and to specify that neither the federal government nor a state government could deny voting rights for reasons of race, color or previous condition of servitude. , tothe new constitution make a long story short, was shelved for the next 100 years. racial stigmas, the perverted stepchild of slavery, poisoned the bold democratic initiatives of reconstruction. during the long jim crow era that followed the supreme court twisted the three postwar constitutional amendments into irrelevance. the most hideous form of racial , whichion was lynching claimed over 4000 victims between 1880 and 1940. united stateshe

did not begin on 9/11. and we are still far from repairing the damage. but we mention again, the equal justice initiative and its founder brian stevenson, who wrote the widely read memoir "just mercy." the equal justice initiative is building a museum in montgomery to call attention to the tragic history of lynching, and it plans to erect 4000 historical markers at the many, many sites in our country where people were lynched. african-american refugees from jim crow terror fled to the big cities of the north and west, but they did not find eagle rights or equal justice. they were cheated out of housing and jobs. when a michelle obama, for example, beats the odds and stands tall, i celebrate. when martin luther king preached at the broad sweep of american history bins towards justice,

i'm eager to believe him. when president obama quotes or paraphrases reverend king, i want very much to share the ultimate optimism. but the actual reality of our bittersweet history keeps tripping us up. the promise of equality is tantalizing, but too often unreachable -- a mirage. the struggle to achieve equality continues, but it too often ends in heartbreak and frustration. every day for the past two months, american citizens, children born right here in the united states, have seen their mothers and fathers warned from them and deported -- foreign from them and deported. lincoln's salute that locally defines our aspirations. we ought not imagine, however, that his words actually squared with historical reality.

and we are reminded every day that our current reality does not measure up to lincoln's standard. is time for your questions and comments. [applause] and if these stage lights could be lowered a little more, i could see who i am talking to. at the moment, i cannot see anything. [laughter] ok, right in front. >> thank you very much. fascinating. fascinating talk will stop can you estimate or do you estimate a period of time -- any you put a number on the number of years would abolition -- but the southerners had not overreacted, if they had taken a chill go and it had not been ginned up by politicians for their own,

abolition would have taken over? do you agree with that? can you put a number on a number of years, would be a generation, would it be 50 years, would it be five years? prof. crofts: i said at the very beginning that i was going to s, butd stick to the fact it is an obvious and good question that leads me to get into what you might call counterfactual history. how it would have worked out if this effort to try and quite things down in 1861 had worked, what with the future of the country have looked like? might slavery have ended? it is a very hard question to answer because at one in this lame time, slavery was becoming more and more in anomaly in the 19th century. southern slaveholders were aware of this. it had collapsed in the nightmare of insurrection in the french empire, the british have voluntarily gotten rid of slavery.

there were few places left, except cuba and brazil, where racial slavery was still practiced in 1860, 1861. you would be inclined to say, gee, it could not have continued to much longer. after all, into member zeljko komic it is on its way out in the next couple of decades. on the other hand, the slave system in the united states was doing pretty darn well. it was successful. lots of profits. there really wasn't much motive for the people who are benefiting from it to give it up. even though republicans believed free labor would work better, that was a kind of theoretical argument and the actual reality down on the ground in the south was that large slaveholders were doing fine with the slave system. so i cannot come up with -- you want a number. i cannot give you a number. it somehow seems unlikely that slavery would have continued

indefinitely, but i sure don't see any short-term way, nor did -- i quoted salmon chase who was no doubt about it antislavery republican of a more deep dyed than lincoln himself. at least his antecedents were more in the free soil liberty party than lincoln. but chase, you know, says straight out, it would have lasted for many years. which i think is true. >> thank you. >> good morning. i know most historians don't questions, but i'm going to give you one anyway. my question is this, what if john wilkes booth had never happened? and lincoln had survived and continued with his presidency, perhaps for another two terms? how do you think that would have affected reconstruction as well

as jim crow? lincoln,proviso that of course, unless he changed, which i don't know he did, had rather harsh provisions of the african-americans as a race. can you answer that, please? prof. crofts: ok, for starters, we would not be here in the ford's theatre. [laughter] saycontinuing, i would there is abundant evidence that lincoln was an extremely skilled politician. it was his calling card. he had built from the ground up a republican party in illinois, have brought together a whole bunch of disparate elements. he made himself the leader of the party and one of those three key states in the lower north, illinois, indiana, and sylvania, that republicans today needed to win in order to carry the 1860 election.

and he ever so deliberately and carefully made himself the candidate in 1860. so his political skills are we --ear, his success for successor andrew johnson, have political skills that are way down there. johnson in an incredibly inept exultant -- exhibition of lyrical full hardiness, estranged himself from the party -- to be sure, johnson was not a republican. you been up prewar democrat. he was officially part of what they call the union party in 1864. but to do what he did and to not justrly alienate the radicals of the party, but the moderates of the party -- which is what he did in 1866 -- i can't imagine lincoln going that way. i think lincoln in 1866 would i figured out a way to work with people like william penn thus in and one of the leaders of the

moderate senate and come up with something that would have been, you know, kind of building on the civil rights act of 1866. where he would have ended up, i'm not sure. lincoln, i'm sure, was aware this was not going to be easy. but certainly am a by keeping the republican party together and avoiding this karen does split between president and congress, it would have been different. some historians take the view, well, we have johnson to thank for the fact we got the constitutional amendments -- well, the 14th and 15th. because without his hand handedness, that would not have happened. maybe that is true. jujitsu anderse johnson may be did not get what he wanted and got the reverse of what he wanted, but certainly, johnson's polarizing policies and writing off the whole republican party was just political insanity. and what we call radical

reconstruction was the result. i will go to the site now. >> a quick comment. my, is about the purpose of national myths. they sometimes have great value in unifying the country, creating a national identity and aspirational, an goal. i think it is fine for wise men and women to realize how far our society is from the myth. it is still good to have them i believe. my question has to do with the the -- what did you call it, the freedom nationalists? when lincoln's outreach to the south in his first inaugural address failed. what was their response to him? prof. crofts: ok, first, on the question of myths. yes, i think we need myths. i was confessing in the end, in my own ambivalent way, i honored

these myths that the arc of bends in the right direction. i really want to believe it. and yet there is contrary evidence. on the question of the actual card-carrying members of the republican party and their response to lincoln's inaugural address, there wasn't much pushback. i mean, lincoln -- the election of lincoln is what they have been working for you for many of them, for decades. so somebody like giddings was no longer a member of congress, but people like him and the more far right republicans, that if stevens, lovejoy, they probably would have said, he is saying what yes to say. we think he is with us. we're glad he is president. but the out and out abolitionists -- wendell phillips i did not mention, i did mention frederick douglass.

they were furious at lincoln. they consider this a betrayal when lincoln gave this sort of, ok, if you want the amendment, you know, it says what i've always assumed was implicit, you can make it explicit, no problem. the abolitionists hated that. >> thank you. with the dred scott decision, would it have been possible to prevent the spread of slavery? >> well, the question of the spread of slavery is much discussed. my point would be that the territories that were then owned by the united states were not simple dish suitable for slavery as it was practiced in the south. it did not rain much out in arizona and new mexico. there were not slaveholders standing in line who wanted to take their slaves out there. if you owned a valuable slave, you wanted that sleep working for know, and mississippi or louisiana or east texas where

you could get a good return on your investment. there's also this question of the future of slavery, the possibility of expanding. many historians, some probably in the room today, would say, hey, this is a big deal. the south was desperate to expand in the caribbean, and this is really what the fuss was about in 1860 and 1861. i don't think so. south,te an independent the confederate states of america, you immediately give up and renounce any chance for expansion into cuba or the caribbean. and they seemed to have done that without camino, without a twitch. so i think the whole argument of the need to expand slavery has been greatly overplayed. you have a kind of mirror image situation where the republicans are saying, we want to stop slavery in the territories and we want, by the way, our radical so let hear us say that

them feel, hey, this is the first step in the right direction. but the way it worked in mirror image reverse is that southern slaveholders and southern politicians could then say, these republicans want to stop slavery in the territories and they say, well, they knew how to say, but we know this is just the first step and soon it will be coming after slavery in the states and igniting all sorts of troubles in the south. thatn't dare of them take first step. i would say a great deal of political theaters involved more than tangible reality. this is my view. there are people in the audience who would disagree. >> you spoke about the white southern views prior to the secession and prior to the war. what the effect was among the non-slaveowning or , and why slaveowning

first in the deep south in the upper south they, too, were drawn into that position of secession? prof. crofts: this has always been a question that is troubling. we note even in the deep south that a majority of white people were not slaveholders. and when you go to the uppers out, it becomes a relatively small minority. and you're never going to fill those confederate armies unless you have lots and lots of white non-slaveholders who are ready to fight and die for the confederacy. i think the best way of resolving this paradox is to what the old south was actually like the local grassroots level. and what you find there are kind of clusters of kind of communities in which the big guy in the neighborhood exercises patron-client relationship with the ordinary people in the neighborhood.

i have a particular jurist in political history. the political history. what you often see in southern never would is political unanimity or near unanimity. if the big guy the neighborhood is a democrat, the ordinary folk around there are democrats. it has to do also with the way in which the big i can provide them with benefits. you have a small farm, you do a bale or two of cons, you don't have the means of affording a gin of your own. the big guy can help you out. t is done in a way that --written about this the way in which this sort of warmth of relationships the between white southerners who were humble and those who were privileged tended to kind of bring white southerners together as a band

of brothers. i would also go back to debbie j cash whose book, now long ago, published the year i was born, i think also helps to elucidate this way in which the white southerners pulled together. through serendipity, this turns out to be a related question. i read a paper recently in which the author said the south was quite wealthy, the plant talk received. so wealthy that only great britain was a richer country. i don't know if that is factual or not. but let's say it was. and was that enough, also, that plantocracy was the 1% of its day, and was that enough to give them the confidence to start a war and win it?

prof. crofts: good question. if the question does assume an element of what you might call rationality that i find missing. i see the whole march toward secession as a kind of panic mobck in which a sort of mentality sets in. the leaders might have known that they somehow persuaded themselves, hey, if a whole bunch of people heading up the same blind alley and were heading up together, there must be power in numbers and they deluded themselves into not really thinking seriously about where this might go. there was a great deal of unwarranted confidence, both north and south, in april and may 18th asked he won that this was going to be a short war, would be over soon. and the reason they felt that way was because each could see as i looked around the

camino, ofd, either in wisconsin or down in alabama, a tremendous outpouring of patriotic enthusiasm and volunteering such as had never been seen before. it seemed reasonable to assume, hey, nobody could ever stand up to this huge groundswell we see building right in front of us. were the planters 1%? there was a little more than that, especially in the deep south where plantation slavery was strongest and where the slave holdings were largest. but, yes, it is an example of how, you know, a relatively privileged minority that has all can kind ofages, push their agenda forward, but they're pushing it forward in the context of democratic politics. they have to get ordinary people to believe that this is theirs,

too, and that they have a dog in this fight. >> thank you. lincolnu mentioned working with his allies in congress to get the first original 13thhe amendment passed through congress. was he drawing up plans to help get it through and ratified by the states? if so, did he anticipate there being more or less difficulty than getting it passed through congress? lincoln and: well, seward somehow took time during the crazy chaotic weeks that thatwed to sign documents were sent out to the governors of each of the 34 states. i found there were copies of these documents down in the archives in north carolina, and they are in my book. so to that extent, lincoln and seward went through the proper

procedures of notifying the government's, all of the states in the union, that is constitutional amendment or proposed amendment i just passed commerce by two thirds majorities and a way to the action of the states. but the whole thing was kind of cut off at the knees by the fighting at sumter six weeks later. it even then, a few states did ratify it. away, and over the course of the next year, five other states ratified this would be amendment. it ceased to have any practical value as soon as the fighting started. it was devised as an effort to try to prevent fighting. what lincoln might have done with it is hard to say because everything was just up for grabs. i mean, you know, he gets through the inauguration and the long day involved and get up the next morning