william marvel: i don't think seward -- stanton did. >> seward did. william marvel: yeah. stanton was very shy of political office. in order to run for political office, you have to stay where you stand for. he only liked to do that in private so that he could tell as many different people as many different things as possible. [laughter] i think that is the literal truth. anyone else? i think i am free. oh god, i was afraid of this. >> no, this is legitimate. stanton's abuse of civil rights is outlined here in the course a work and highlights traditional american conflict in our culture, the conflict between security and freedom, something we experienced in world war ii with the internment of japanese, something which is tossed around today in political discussions with security versus the freedom of people. is there any defense of stanton, his actions on the basis of sincere desire to keep the united states secure in a time of war? william marvel: there are certainly defenses like that. i just don't find them valid. i think harold heiman in particular gave stanton a past

but seward was actually loyal to stanton.n when he no longer trusted him later in the johnson cabinet. stanton, he didn't care who he was dealing with. he would just mold his personality or his face to fit whatever he needed at the time. you see, seward was making the arrests in 1861 and early 62. when stanton stepped in, he took over the same authority, took it away from seward in that he started doing it. the first thing that he did was let a lot of prisoners go. it seemed to be a benevolent 1862 heut by august of was arresting more people in a month than seward had in a year as the man holding that authority. -- theirly didn't authority did not conflict thereafter because stanton had it and they tended to be, because seward could compromise and because stanton could acquiesce or somehow get around anything he didn't care for, they managed to be somewhat compatible. >> i had wondered, in my research, when they were releasing almost prisoners and 62, saying you've got to let them go, within a month they were arresting them a

john's on the 24th of february, on a sunday, for the 11:00 service with senator william seward of new york. they sat in the front of the church but hardly anybody recognized him including the rector, who was giving the sermon at the time and didn't even know he was speaking to the president-elect of the united states until after the service when senator seward introduced him. now, abraham lincoln didn't belong to any specific church during his life, but because his wife had a tendency towards presbyterianism, they attended on most sundays. they did go to church as a family, the new york avenue presbyterian church. however, lincoln did from time to time sit in the president's pew, number 54, with his secretaries, but most of the time he did not formally attend st. john's. however, during the civil war, he would, from time to time during the evening services of st. john's that were instituted, he would come in the very back door of the church on the south side and sit in the very last pew in the back of the church where he could have a quiet moment of contemplation and reflection withou

and illinois is a little more conservative than new york, where seward was talking. but without that, lincoln could not have galvanized his party and held that coalition together and would never have moved forward beyond his senate defeat had he not given that speech. >> nobody is behind me. you said at the very beginning of your talk that he had a higher aim than office. when you think he started thinking about the presidency as something that he could bring to the country, because he had such a unique capability that he had confidence in? sidney blumenthal: that is an interesting question. even lincoln's own actions after his defeat in the 1858 senate race create contradictory evidence. where some of his friends want him to run, others do not, he seems to push them away. he is also drawn to it. meanwhile at the same time, he is very assiduously making sure that the correct transcript, as he understands it of the lincoln douglas debates, are being published and circulated nationally to what end? >> catherine. >> hi, thank you, i so enjoyed your remarks. sidney blume

in fact, william seward and sam, two other cabinet members and lincoln's cabinet who very infrequently saw eye to eye, went to lincoln and said you have direct cameron another letter. this is just too rude, to obnoxious. you will kill this man's political career. so lincoln ends up writing a far more genial letter backdating it and allowing cameron to actually submit a letter of resignation, sort of a face-saving effort. there's another incident where cameron is censured by the house of representatives in 1862, and though lincoln comes to cameron stefanski taken three weeks to do it. it's a very, very tepid defense. mostly about covering his administrations like, and less about actually coming to cameron to defense. and again these are really uncharacteristic episodes in lincoln's of political career. this is a man who would take an insult to the face and would turn it around and turn into a joke, and who had, said in his second inaugural address with malice towards none. he had quite a bit of malice toward simon cameron and cameron becomes the focal point of a lot of lincoln's frustra

ingrid seward, thank you for your time this afternoon.is family, saying that he died peacefully at home. he was 86 years old. more now on our top story, and the nhs has released figures which show nearly half of hospitals in england declared a major alert in the first week of this year, as large numbers of patients experienced trolley waits and delays in a&e. earlier, the prime minister was asked what she thought about the comments made by chris hopson from nhs providers, who we'll speak to in a moment, that the nhs can no longer deliver everything that's being asked of it. i recognise, and we've acknowledged, that the nhs is under pressure. we always see increased pressures in the nhs overwinter periods. i mean, that's why in preparing for the winter period this time, £400 million was put in to ensure that winter preparedness. but of course what we've seen, we saw on the tuesday after christmas, the busiest day for our hospitals, and the hard work of medical professionals up and down the nhs in providing a vital service that people need.

bernie sanders, seward brown, if the senate had gone democratic which was one of the heartbreaking didn't go moments of the election night, you would have had a progressive populist caucus. senator warren, elizabeth warren, jeff berkley. others who i think could have rebuilt the idea of populism as a progressive, galvanizing democratic force in american politics. and they will, but the obstacles are much larger. host: if you want to join the conversation, the phone lines are open. host: as callers are calling in, what would be your advice for progressives calling in to rebuild, resist in the trump era? so, i wrote a column with sort of a blueprint. i say with humility there's no single answer. i think we need a diversity of tactics and ideas. but i do think that the states, the cities, the communities will be a place not only of resistance and opposition, but legislation, moving, humane reforms improving the conditions of people's lives, which is always for me the bottom line of what matters in politics. you see city states as bulwarks against a trump administration rollback of the civili

the size of our country so they were looking around for a candidate and the obvious one was william sewardfrom new york. he was a former whig and he thought i'll wait my time out. this is not really going to work out this year, so they picked a celebrity john fremont. he had been a governor of california for a little bit but basically was called the path finder, he and kit carson mapped out the west and he wrote sort of a dry journal about all of this but married the 17-year-old bell of washington jesse benton the daughter of the longest standing senator, thomas benton democrat from missouri so she is sort of the chris kardashian to bruce jenner, she's going to make something of him, takes him around to all her father's friends and becomes what today would be a best seller so he's suddenly a celebrity and the republicans say i can hitch our ride to this guy and so he's the man who runs for president of the republican part. >> the word that popped out at me that you ascribe to james buchanan is obliviousness what were you getting at? >> you got to start somewhere, so i started in the librar

started a paper called "the jeffersonian" to promote the candidate of a governor for new york, william sewardeventually he went to the tribune. so he was mainly a new yorker. brian: who paid for his paper "the log cabin"? ronald: the whig party paid for it. they were able to raise a lot of money. the main backer was a party boss in new york named weed, a newspaper publisher in albany. he knew all the rich people in new york city, who he called the merchant princes. he would do favors for them and get the state legislature to do anything they wanted. he rationalized by saying the merchant princes never asked for anything bad, so there was no problem. then he said when he needed money, they were happy to give. so he would raise money for the harrison campaign. brian: go back again to how harrison became the candidate. he lived in north bend, ohio. ronald: 67 years old. brian: van buren was in the white house one term. he was running again, economy was not good. how did harrison get the nomination? ronald: that is the question henry clay always asked. they had three candidates at this time, the