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

first, he persuaded the president to relieve secretary of state william seward of the authority to makeraordinary arrests. arrests without due process. without evidence in most cases. had that authority transferred to himself. ton, as the army was about take the field, he removes the telegraph equipment from army headquarters and took it across the state into the war department right next to his office. that prevented mcclellan from communicating with anyone else in the government and particularly with president lincoln without going through stanton first. it also allowed stanton to control the communications of everyone below mcclellan. took military possession of the private telegraph lines in the country. and that enabled him to observe theiderable control over news. he telegraphed major newspapers what first appeared to be a suggestion that they should not report on the movements and makeup of the army but soon enough, he started calling that suggestion and order. his motive lay more in propaganda and insecurity. because he enforced that with a bipartisan bias which left supportive

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

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

in new york, senator william seward, who had been a leader who whigs there, called in october to become leader of the republicans, for familiar friends to leave behind dissolving hearties. he talked about the spirit of the american revolution against the aristocracy, a privilege class of slaveholders, 1/100 part of the entire population, the 1% that had seized control of the federal government. what then is wanted? organization, organization, nothing but organization. on february 22, 1856, a group of anti-slavery newspaper editors invited lincoln to join them to create the illinois republican party. lincoln was abstinent at the time, recalled herndon, and believing what i knew his feelings on this work, i took the liberty to sign his name to the cause. [laughter] sidney blumenthal: john t. stewart, lincoln's first partner, trying to remove lincoln's endorsement. no sooner had it appeared that john t. stewart was trying to retard lincoln in his advanced movements, rushed into the office and see if lincoln had seen the abolition call in the journal. i answered in the negative saying i had

tripled 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