professor foner: mm-hmm. agree.or medford: i i don't know that it is as complicated as all that when it concerns johnson. if that is the position lincoln is taking, i would believe it is about states right. -- states rights. johnson is no lincoln. it comes down to race issues. see man might be willing to freedom. he is not willing to see a quality. it is about that. that is the bottom line. director blight: but johnson, as a member of -- professor foner: but johnson, as a member of congress, he voted against giving aid to the starving people of ireland. let's thinkzer: about another character. i've always been fascinated with his journey, is reverse journey -- well, maybe up and down william t. sherman agrees to a surrender that retreats from federal policy on emancipation. then he or around the same time agrees that land should be given , 40 acres and a mule should be given to free african-americans and then loses interest. in fact, doubles back away from that idea which he agreed to. typical journey or is s

professor foner: good point. we disagree about the movie. mr. holzer: let me jump in with one comment about lincoln. there is a wonderful story that ccurs in june, 1864. when lincoln gets a visit from someone who was at the republican nominating convention. lifpblg supported a plank for the union party platform as the party was renamed for that lection. a plank supporting what they called a constitutional amendment. nobody called it the 13th. a constitutional amendment to end slavery everywhere. the person came back and said, well, when the advocate presented the plank, he got enormous cheers. and lincoln stiffened up and said well i hope he mentioned it was my idea. so, you know, he certainly regarded himself as early as june, 1864, as a father of the 13th amendment. >> right. but as you well know it was introduced in congress in december, 1863 by henry wilson. mr. holzer: he was denying paternity. professor foner: he was not -- he jumped on board and did a lot to get it passed but it wasn't his idea. at this point the movie which is truncated

professor foner: thank you for saying that. i am not the only one who tried to correct the old mythologies. you have to go back to w.e.b. dubois. and even earlier than that, there were others challenging what we call the dunning school. as edna said, the problem today is there is a vast gap, maybe bigger than any other period of american history about what scholars think about reconstruction. the old view is no longer live in universities, in textbooks, in scholarship in this era, but there is a gap between that and kind of a sentiment -- hillary clinton, i do not expect politicians to be experts on every aspect of historical interpretation, but she was just channeling what was, is still a sentiment that is out there. although my feeling is, lecturing a lot about reconstruction, the problem is not the survival of the dunning school, as we call it, but ignorance altogether. people do not know anything about reconstruction. it is overshadowed by the civil war. and also, as david blight pointed out in his great book some years ago