On this episode of Newts World, Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln's penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him to the crisis. In his new book, Our Ancient Faith, Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment, Award winning historian and best selling author Alan Gelzo captures the president's firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln's deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession, while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recruitminals in the aftermath of war. Here to discuss his new book, I am really pleased to welcome my guest, Alan Galzo. He is perhaps best known as one of the most respected Lincoln scholars in the world. He is a Senior Research Scholar at the Council of Humanities at Princeton University and the author of several books about the Civil War, including Gettysburg and Robert E. Lee. He has been the recipient of the Lincoln Prize three times and the Guggenheim Lehmann Prize for Military History. He's also someone I regard as a close friend and who I turned to for advice regularly. Alan, welcome and thank you for joining me again on Nuts World.

On this episode of Newts World, Abraham Lincoln grappled with the greatest crisis of democracy that has ever confronted the United States. While many books have been written about his temperament, judgment, and steady hand in guiding the country through the Civil War, we know less about Lincoln's penetrating ideas and beliefs about democracy, which were every bit as important as his character in sustaining him to the crisis. In his new book, Our Ancient Faith, Lincoln, Democracy and the American Experiment, Award winning historian and best selling author Alan Gelzo captures the president's firmly held belief that democracy was the greatest political achievement in human history. He shows how Lincoln's deep commitment to the balance between majority and minority rule enabled him to stand firm against secession, while also committing the Union to reconciliation rather than recruitminals in the aftermath of war. Here to discuss his new book, I am really pleased to welcome my guest, Alan Galzo. He is perhaps best known as one of the most respected Lincoln scholars in the world. He is a Senior Research Scholar at the Council of Humanities at Princeton University and the author of several books about the Civil War, including Gettysburg and Robert E. Lee. He has been the recipient of the Lincoln Prize three times and the Guggenheim Lehmann Prize for Military History. He's also someone I regard as a close friend and who I turned to for advice regularly. Alan, welcome and thank you for joining me again on Nuts World.

Well, thank you very much, dude. It's good to talk again, especially to have an opportunity to talk talk about Abraham Lincoln.

Well, thank you very much, dude. It's good to talk again, especially to have an opportunity to talk talk about Abraham Lincoln.

Well, point you make, which is the United States is the longest still functioning large scale democracy in the world. What makes it different from the ones that have failed.

Well, point you make, which is the United States is the longest still functioning large scale democracy in the world. What makes it different from the ones that have failed.

Well, one thing which certainly has helped the United States that way are two oceans that has kept us from as a democracy being constantly under assault. And there's a sense in which those two oceans protected us from the very beginning. We had, at the beginning of the American Republic already an empire on our western border, and that was Spain. We had another empire on our northern border that was Great Britain, and we had the French very eager to re establish a beachhead in North America, which they'd lost in the middle of the eighteenth century. All of those powers, if they had had greater proximity to the United States, could have very easily destabilized the United States in its early years. Instead, our geography is a big help for us. A second big help for us is our Constitution. The Constitution struck this remarkable balance between power and liberty, and it made liberty something that people prized, that people loved, that people enjoyed, and that they were willing to make tremendous sacrifices for. So when you put those two forces together, the fateful friendliness of geography, along with the principles captured by the Constitution, then you have something which weighs in in a very formidable way for the protection, the defense, and the fostering of democracy in America. The great tragedy, of course, was that in eighteen sixty one we nearly threw all of that away.

Well, one thing which certainly has helped the United States that way are two oceans that has kept us from as a democracy being constantly under assault. And there's a sense in which those two oceans protected us from the very beginning. We had, at the beginning of the American Republic already an empire on our western border, and that was Spain. We had another empire on our northern border that was Great Britain, and we had the French very eager to re establish a beachhead in North America, which they'd lost in the middle of the eighteenth century. All of those powers, if they had had greater proximity to the United States, could have very easily destabilized the United States in its early years. Instead, our geography is a big help for us. A second big help for us is our Constitution. The Constitution struck this remarkable balance between power and liberty, and it made liberty something that people prized, that people loved, that people enjoyed, and that they were willing to make tremendous sacrifices for. So when you put those two forces together, the fateful friendliness of geography, along with the principles captured by the Constitution, then you have something which weighs in in a very formidable way for the protection, the defense, and the fostering of democracy in America. The great tragedy, of course, was that in eighteen sixty one we nearly threw all of that away.

There's a very interesting and important distinction between liberty, which we treasure, and the concept of democracy, which the founding fathers were very worried by. Can you describe their sense of why pure democracy was a dangerous concept?

There's a very interesting and important distinction between liberty, which we treasure, and the concept of democracy, which the founding fathers were very worried by. Can you describe their sense of why pure democracy was a dangerous concept?

Well, the one major example that they had in front of them of a pure democracy was Athens. And they didn't really think that Athens was going to give the United States very much in the way of direction. And for two reasons. One is, the Athenian democracy really amounts to nothing more than the citizenry of Athens. We might say, oh, three to six thousand people in the Athenian Assembly, and yes, it was a direct democracy, but it was also very small scale. In fact, it was deliberately small scale, because one of the problems of the Athenian democracy was that it resisted expansion of its citizen days. For the United States just at the very beginning, we were already too big in seventeen eighty seven to think about some kind of direct style Athenian democracy. So the first objection that the founders raised was simply one of scale. We just can't do it the way a city state like Athens did. The second objection that they would raise was that the Athenian democracy didn't always do things right. James Madison made the point in the Federalist Papers that if every Athenian had been a Socrates, the Assembly would still have been a mob because remember, Socrates, of course, was put to death by action of the Athenian Assembly. So when they looked at the major example of a democracy, strictly speaking, they were very dicey about it. What they preferred, and Madison particularly preferred, was to talk about a republic. A republican a democracy share one basic thing in common, and that is they believe that sovereignty belongs to the people, not to kings, not to the nobility, to the people. The way, however, the people manifest that sovereignty is different. In a democracy, you do it directly. In a republic, you do it indirectly through representatives. And Madison presumes that the representatives who would make these kinds of decisions would be the wiser, the more balanced, the more property the people who are willing to take responsibility. So the founders start out with the assumption that the United States is a republic rather than a democracy, and that's what's captured in the Constitution. But it didn't really stay that way. That line between democracy and republic was, as it turned out, surprisingly poorous and poorous, because, for one thing, they never really developed in America that class of elites that Madison thought should have the ruling authority. Instead, what you get is something of the reverse, instead of the representatives limiting the follies of the people. In general, you get a situation, and this is what took Veil crimes in democracy in America. You get a situation where it is the people who limit what the representatives can do. So very early on you get a situation where people are starting to use the terms democracy and republic interchangeably as though they were synonyms. And as I say, that happens very early so that by the time we get to Lincoln, Lincoln himself is using the term democracy and republic as though it really meant the same thing.

Well, the one major example that they had in front of them of a pure democracy was Athens. And they didn't really think that Athens was going to give the United States very much in the way of direction. And for two reasons. One is, the Athenian democracy really amounts to nothing more than the citizenry of Athens. We might say, oh, three to six thousand people in the Athenian Assembly, and yes, it was a direct democracy, but it was also very small scale. In fact, it was deliberately small scale, because one of the problems of the Athenian democracy was that it resisted expansion of its citizen days. For the United States just at the very beginning, we were already too big in seventeen eighty seven to think about some kind of direct style Athenian democracy. So the first objection that the founders raised was simply one of scale. We just can't do it the way a city state like Athens did. The second objection that they would raise was that the Athenian democracy didn't always do things right. James Madison made the point in the Federalist Papers that if every Athenian had been a Socrates, the Assembly would still have been a mob because remember, Socrates, of course, was put to death by action of the Athenian Assembly. So when they looked at the major example of a democracy, strictly speaking, they were very dicey about it. What they preferred, and Madison particularly preferred, was to talk about a republic. A republican a democracy share one basic thing in common, and that is they believe that sovereignty belongs to the people, not to kings, not to the nobility, to the people. The way, however, the people manifest that sovereignty is different. In a democracy, you do it directly. In a republic, you do it indirectly through representatives. And Madison presumes that the representatives who would make these kinds of decisions would be the wiser, the more balanced, the more property the people who are willing to take responsibility. So the founders start out with the assumption that the United States is a republic rather than a democracy, and that's what's captured in the Constitution. But it didn't really stay that way. That line between democracy and republic was, as it turned out, surprisingly poorous and poorous, because, for one thing, they never really developed in America that class of elites that Madison thought should have the ruling authority. Instead, what you get is something of the reverse, instead of the representatives limiting the follies of the people. In general, you get a situation, and this is what took Veil crimes in democracy in America. You get a situation where it is the people who limit what the representatives can do. So very early on you get a situation where people are starting to use the terms democracy and republic interchangeably as though they were synonyms. And as I say, that happens very early so that by the time we get to Lincoln, Lincoln himself is using the term democracy and republic as though it really meant the same thing.

The founding fathers literally identified the Senate with Rome and the Roman Republic and had the judges approved by the Senate. In that sense, even today, the very act of having a Senate is a step back towards the Roman Republic rather than the Athenian democracy. And I think that's some of the people tend to forget.

The founding fathers literally identified the Senate with Rome and the Roman Republic and had the judges approved by the Senate. In that sense, even today, the very act of having a Senate is a step back towards the Roman Republic rather than the Athenian democracy. And I think that's some of the people tend to forget.

Yeah, I think that's very true. Even the very name senate. This is what has drawn from the example of the Roman Republic, where the Senate was in fact the most important deliberative body for the republic.

Yeah, I think that's very true. Even the very name senate. This is what has drawn from the example of the Roman Republic, where the Senate was in fact the most important deliberative body for the republic.

So given that background, and I gather the enormous sense of pride in the American system that existed as Lincoln was growing up. How did Lincoln approach the preservation of liberty and the preservation of the American Republic as we began to drift into a crisis between North and South.

So given that background, and I gather the enormous sense of pride in the American system that existed as Lincoln was growing up. How did Lincoln approach the preservation of liberty and the preservation of the American Republic as we began to drift into a crisis between North and South.

He started from a baseline that understood that there were really two really important things that you needed to understand in order to have liberty. One was going to be consent, the consent of the government. He says this very early in the run towards residential office. This is in eighteen fifty four, in October, and great speech he gives in Peoria, Illinois. He talks about consent, says that's the sheet anchor of American republicanism. He actually uses the word republicanism there. It's also the speech where he uses that phrase our ancient faith, because there he talks about the Declaration of Independence and he insists, the Declaration of Independence is our ancient faith. It articulates in its basis exactly what it is America is. And he would later say that he'd never had a thought politically that was not contained in the Declaration of Independence. So for him, you start out with these two baselines. You start out with the declaration of independence, and especially you start out with the idea of consent. For him, that is the basic definition of what a democracy is, and in fact that's actually how he captures it at one point in eighteen fifty eight, because he makes this statement as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democraocracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy. So for him, consent the declaration, that's where we start when we're talking about a democracy.

He started from a baseline that understood that there were really two really important things that you needed to understand in order to have liberty. One was going to be consent, the consent of the government. He says this very early in the run towards residential office. This is in eighteen fifty four, in October, and great speech he gives in Peoria, Illinois. He talks about consent, says that's the sheet anchor of American republicanism. He actually uses the word republicanism there. It's also the speech where he uses that phrase our ancient faith, because there he talks about the Declaration of Independence and he insists, the Declaration of Independence is our ancient faith. It articulates in its basis exactly what it is America is. And he would later say that he'd never had a thought politically that was not contained in the Declaration of Independence. So for him, you start out with these two baselines. You start out with the declaration of independence, and especially you start out with the idea of consent. For him, that is the basic definition of what a democracy is, and in fact that's actually how he captures it at one point in eighteen fifty eight, because he makes this statement as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democraocracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy. So for him, consent the declaration, that's where we start when we're talking about a democracy.

When you think about that, I've used constantly Lincoln's line that with popular sentiment, anything is possible. Without popular sentiment, nothing is possible, and trying to get across that, effective legislation and effective policies have to grow from the people, not be imposed on them.

When you think about that, I've used constantly Lincoln's line that with popular sentiment, anything is possible. Without popular sentiment, nothing is possible, and trying to get across that, effective legislation and effective policies have to grow from the people, not be imposed on them.

This is very much the case because for Lincoln, sovereignty, the idea that sovereignty belongs to the people is absolutely key. The country, he once said, belongs to the people who inhabit it. So when you are talking about what a democracy is, you have to start by understanding that sovereignty. There's no hierarchy, there's no pyramid. There's no nobles, there's no king. It is the people themselves who are the sovereigns. And curiously, I think that the one provision in the Constitution which underscores that so dramatically, and it's a provision that we often miss. It's at the end of Article one, section nine, where it says there will be no titles of nobility in America. Well, as soon as you've said that, you've wiped out centuries of aristocratic, monarchic dictatorial rule. So you start with sovereignties. I was sovereignty manifested. It's manifested with three things. One is elections, free and fair and frequent. Elections are the key to the people's exercise of sovereignty and consent, because otherwise you said you can't have free government without elections. Because elections are about accountability. Elections say to officeholders two years from now, four years from now, you're going to have to give an account to the people of what you've done, so every elected official knows they're not permanently installed. Majorities are another part of this sovereignty, and the people is manifested by majority rule. Majorities rule. Now here's the key thing. Majorities rule, but they don't suppress minorities. Minorities dissent, but they don't subvert the majorities. And the thing which keeps all of these functioning together sovereignty elections majorities is law, because law is what keeps reason central to a democratic system. Otherwise, if you don't have reason, then the people wind up being governed by what he called passion, And for him, passion is a bad word. Passion is what happens when mobs take over. Mobs lead to anarchy. Anarchy leads to despotism, and that's the end of democracy. So those, for Lincoln really become the key features of what he's talking about when he speaks about democracy.

This is very much the case because for Lincoln, sovereignty, the idea that sovereignty belongs to the people is absolutely key. The country, he once said, belongs to the people who inhabit it. So when you are talking about what a democracy is, you have to start by understanding that sovereignty. There's no hierarchy, there's no pyramid. There's no nobles, there's no king. It is the people themselves who are the sovereigns. And curiously, I think that the one provision in the Constitution which underscores that so dramatically, and it's a provision that we often miss. It's at the end of Article one, section nine, where it says there will be no titles of nobility in America. Well, as soon as you've said that, you've wiped out centuries of aristocratic, monarchic dictatorial rule. So you start with sovereignties. I was sovereignty manifested. It's manifested with three things. One is elections, free and fair and frequent. Elections are the key to the people's exercise of sovereignty and consent, because otherwise you said you can't have free government without elections. Because elections are about accountability. Elections say to officeholders two years from now, four years from now, you're going to have to give an account to the people of what you've done, so every elected official knows they're not permanently installed. Majorities are another part of this sovereignty, and the people is manifested by majority rule. Majorities rule. Now here's the key thing. Majorities rule, but they don't suppress minorities. Minorities dissent, but they don't subvert the majorities. And the thing which keeps all of these functioning together sovereignty elections majorities is law, because law is what keeps reason central to a democratic system. Otherwise, if you don't have reason, then the people wind up being governed by what he called passion, And for him, passion is a bad word. Passion is what happens when mobs take over. Mobs lead to anarchy. Anarchy leads to despotism, and that's the end of democracy. So those, for Lincoln really become the key features of what he's talking about when he speaks about democracy.

It seems to me that Lincoln is the person who resurrects the Declation Independence and makes it central. The Constitution had been more focused on in the previous sixty or seventy years, but Lincoln literally weaves the decreation Independence into his entire political philosophy and dates the whole process at Gettysburg from this magnificent document. Is it accurate to think that Lincoln is the one who reasserts the Declaration as the heart of the American system.

It seems to me that Lincoln is the person who resurrects the Declation Independence and makes it central. The Constitution had been more focused on in the previous sixty or seventy years, but Lincoln literally weaves the decreation Independence into his entire political philosophy and dates the whole process at Gettysburg from this magnificent document. Is it accurate to think that Lincoln is the one who reasserts the Declaration as the heart of the American system.

Well, he doesn't do it single handedly. There are many people who will rise up along with him and who will say we cannot abandon the declaration. He's articulating the point of view that many people held in eighteen sixty one. The difficulty is that there were also many people who had taken a different road. The most obvious of the people who had taken that different road was John Calhoun of South Carolina. And John Calhoun is taking a road which says the Declaration of Independence was wrong. All men are not created equal, and since all men are not created equal, therefore it's legitimate for some of us to enslave some of them. We can reduce them to slavery. Well, they're not really equal to us. The declaration is wrong to us. That sounds simply astonishing coming from a man as John Calhoun had been, who had been vice President of the United States under two different presidents, by the way, and a Secretary of War, a United States senator. But he's very frank about saying it. We got it all wrong in seventeen seventy six. And the people who rally around him to say that the Declaration of Independence is wrong are in large measure going to be the slaveholders of the South, because that is what helps them to justify the very human slavery that Lincoln condemns as a contradiction of democracy, because he.

Well, he doesn't do it single handedly. There are many people who will rise up along with him and who will say we cannot abandon the declaration. He's articulating the point of view that many people held in eighteen sixty one. The difficulty is that there were also many people who had taken a different road. The most obvious of the people who had taken that different road was John Calhoun of South Carolina. And John Calhoun is taking a road which says the Declaration of Independence was wrong. All men are not created equal, and since all men are not created equal, therefore it's legitimate for some of us to enslave some of them. We can reduce them to slavery. Well, they're not really equal to us. The declaration is wrong to us. That sounds simply astonishing coming from a man as John Calhoun had been, who had been vice President of the United States under two different presidents, by the way, and a Secretary of War, a United States senator. But he's very frank about saying it. We got it all wrong in seventeen seventy six. And the people who rally around him to say that the Declaration of Independence is wrong are in large measure going to be the slaveholders of the South, because that is what helps them to justify the very human slavery that Lincoln condemns as a contradiction of democracy, because he.

So clearly condemned it and did so much earlier than people normally think. Was he really surprised that the South wouldn't tolerate his victory.

So clearly condemned it and did so much earlier than people normally think. Was he really surprised that the South wouldn't tolerate his victory.

I think he was to a larger degree than we imagined, because remember Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and that he's raised in southern Indiana, which is still part of that great border section of the country which owes a great deal to the South. And Lincoln really believed that he understood how Southerners thought, and that led him to conclude that all of this talk about secession, about rebellion, all of this was really the activity of a very tiny cadre of revolutionary figures in the South. And he'll persist in thinking that even into the war years. He will insist that what makes the Confederacy work, so to speak, is that it's a military coup d'etas. The Confederacy is really just its army. Its officials are just the military, and by and large, the generality of the people of the South retain their loyalty and commitment to the principles of the Declaration. I think he might have been more than a little optimistic in that judgment, because, in weighing as I do, the way the Confederacy resisted and the number of lives lost in the process of that resistance, my fear is that there were more people willing to embrace the song of John C. Calhoun in the South than Lincoln wanted to believe. And that is what makes the Civil War as protracted and as bloody as it turns out to be.

I think he was to a larger degree than we imagined, because remember Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and that he's raised in southern Indiana, which is still part of that great border section of the country which owes a great deal to the South. And Lincoln really believed that he understood how Southerners thought, and that led him to conclude that all of this talk about secession, about rebellion, all of this was really the activity of a very tiny cadre of revolutionary figures in the South. And he'll persist in thinking that even into the war years. He will insist that what makes the Confederacy work, so to speak, is that it's a military coup d'etas. The Confederacy is really just its army. Its officials are just the military, and by and large, the generality of the people of the South retain their loyalty and commitment to the principles of the Declaration. I think he might have been more than a little optimistic in that judgment, because, in weighing as I do, the way the Confederacy resisted and the number of lives lost in the process of that resistance, my fear is that there were more people willing to embrace the song of John C. Calhoun in the South than Lincoln wanted to believe. And that is what makes the Civil War as protracted and as bloody as it turns out to be.

Pulvanly Southern nationalism if you will guarantee that there would be a people's war and that you would have to literally destroy their capacity to fight.

Pulvanly Southern nationalism if you will guarantee that there would be a people's war and that you would have to literally destroy their capacity to fight.

And that eventually is what he begins to see as a necessity, so that he will turn to someone like Ulysses Grant, who understands that the real kind of war you need to make is on the Southern capacity to resist. You're not going to put an end of the war simply by marching onto a battlefield and having a data day with a Confederate army. I mean, for one thing, by the nineteenth century, armies are so big you just don't win catastrophic victories like Napoleon might have woned Austerlitz. The technology of weapons, the technology of war has changed so much in the fifty years since Napoleon Bonaparte. So you're just not going to win a battle like you'd win a football game or a football title. You're going to have to destroy the very power to resist. Grantees. Sherman sees that, and in the long run, that is what brings victory to the nation in eighteen sixty five.

And that eventually is what he begins to see as a necessity, so that he will turn to someone like Ulysses Grant, who understands that the real kind of war you need to make is on the Southern capacity to resist. You're not going to put an end of the war simply by marching onto a battlefield and having a data day with a Confederate army. I mean, for one thing, by the nineteenth century, armies are so big you just don't win catastrophic victories like Napoleon might have woned Austerlitz. The technology of weapons, the technology of war has changed so much in the fifty years since Napoleon Bonaparte. So you're just not going to win a battle like you'd win a football game or a football title. You're going to have to destroy the very power to resist. Grantees. Sherman sees that, and in the long run, that is what brings victory to the nation in eighteen sixty five.

I'm impressed with the fact that confronted with that, Lincoln had the sheer moral courage to accept that if that was the price of preserving the Union, he was a price that had to be paid, no matter how distasteful.

I'm impressed with the fact that confronted with that, Lincoln had the sheer moral courage to accept that if that was the price of preserving the Union, he was a price that had to be paid, no matter how distasteful.

Yes, but he never wants to pay that in any kind of vengeful spirit. He wants the war to end so badly that he's willing to meet with Confederate emissaries, and he's willing to do this either directly or indirectly, as early as the summer of eighteen sixty four. But he actually goes and meets with three Confederate emissaries at Hampton Roads in February of eighteen sixty five, and he makes it very clear to them that there's a non negotiable. The nogotiable is they lay down their weapons and slavery is on. But then he says, the way that we end slavery, I'm still willing to talk about that as a process. We want to get the war over, we want the killing to stop. He comes back to his cabinet and tries to explain this to them. The cabinet tells him, no, that you can't do that. That's not going to work. But what it says is that Lincoln felt so very keenly what the war was costing that he would entertain, however fleetingly, he would entertain whatever might bring peace to the country. My old colleague God or bore It, whom you have known Newt, once wrote an essay, and in that essay he said something it really struck me that stayed with me all the many years since, And that is in July of eighteen sixty four, a Confederate division is threatening Washington, the northern defenses of Washington. Lincoln goes out to Fort Stevens to see this. Lincoln stands up up on the parapet of Fort Stevens, or every Confederate skirmisher could take a shot at him, and God Bor wondered was Lincoln thinking, God, if I am wrong, let it end here. And then in the most eloquent way he comes to the second inaugural aw he could very easily in that second inaugural address, because the war is obviously coming to an end on March fourth, eighteen sixty five. Everybody can see that. He could have done a victory lap. He could have said, see, we were right, they were wrong. Time for us to have a big party, and he doesn't. He doesn't. Instead, he says, look, this horrible war that we have endured for four years is a visitation of God's judgment on all of us, North and south. We have all had our hands imbrood in slavery. None of us is innocent, and the judgment of God on all of us is manifest in this war. And anyone who wants to dispute that and protest their own righteousness and their own clean hands just doesn't know how God functions. And it's because of that he says, we have to proceed with malice toward none and with charity for all. Lincoln understands that vengeance is as toxic to the life of a democracy as any external threat, and that is what he is pleading for. Even there at the end of the war.

Yes, but he never wants to pay that in any kind of vengeful spirit. He wants the war to end so badly that he's willing to meet with Confederate emissaries, and he's willing to do this either directly or indirectly, as early as the summer of eighteen sixty four. But he actually goes and meets with three Confederate emissaries at Hampton Roads in February of eighteen sixty five, and he makes it very clear to them that there's a non negotiable. The nogotiable is they lay down their weapons and slavery is on. But then he says, the way that we end slavery, I'm still willing to talk about that as a process. We want to get the war over, we want the killing to stop. He comes back to his cabinet and tries to explain this to them. The cabinet tells him, no, that you can't do that. That's not going to work. But what it says is that Lincoln felt so very keenly what the war was costing that he would entertain, however fleetingly, he would entertain whatever might bring peace to the country. My old colleague God or bore It, whom you have known Newt, once wrote an essay, and in that essay he said something it really struck me that stayed with me all the many years since, And that is in July of eighteen sixty four, a Confederate division is threatening Washington, the northern defenses of Washington. Lincoln goes out to Fort Stevens to see this. Lincoln stands up up on the parapet of Fort Stevens, or every Confederate skirmisher could take a shot at him, and God Bor wondered was Lincoln thinking, God, if I am wrong, let it end here. And then in the most eloquent way he comes to the second inaugural aw he could very easily in that second inaugural address, because the war is obviously coming to an end on March fourth, eighteen sixty five. Everybody can see that. He could have done a victory lap. He could have said, see, we were right, they were wrong. Time for us to have a big party, and he doesn't. He doesn't. Instead, he says, look, this horrible war that we have endured for four years is a visitation of God's judgment on all of us, North and south. We have all had our hands imbrood in slavery. None of us is innocent, and the judgment of God on all of us is manifest in this war. And anyone who wants to dispute that and protest their own righteousness and their own clean hands just doesn't know how God functions. And it's because of that he says, we have to proceed with malice toward none and with charity for all. Lincoln understands that vengeance is as toxic to the life of a democracy as any external threat, and that is what he is pleading for. Even there at the end of the war.

I've gone, as I know, you have to the Lincoln Memorial, and it's so stirring and so moving to first read aloud the Jettisburg Address, and then to turn and read the second Inaugural, which has multiple references to God and which really is a sermon. It's probably the most amazing of all American inaugural addresses. And you think about what's going on in this guy's mind. Having presided over and in a sense insisted on a nationwide bloodbath for four long years, which could have ended any time. He was willing to quit, but because he believed in the Union that the very cause of freedom was at stake, he wouldn't quit, no matter the costs. And it must have been literally a constant agony for him and totally different from what he expected when he ran initially.

I've gone, as I know, you have to the Lincoln Memorial, and it's so stirring and so moving to first read aloud the Jettisburg Address, and then to turn and read the second Inaugural, which has multiple references to God and which really is a sermon. It's probably the most amazing of all American inaugural addresses. And you think about what's going on in this guy's mind. Having presided over and in a sense insisted on a nationwide bloodbath for four long years, which could have ended any time. He was willing to quit, but because he believed in the Union that the very cause of freedom was at stake, he wouldn't quit, no matter the costs. And it must have been literally a constant agony for him and totally different from what he expected when he ran initially.

Oh, he understood what was going on in the war was the biggest question that democracy could be asked, and that is, are democracies really stable? Are they really permanent? Are they for real? I mean, there's so many other issues that are bound up with the war, there's the issue of you know, are we a nation or are we just a league of independent states like the old Holy Roman Empire. All right, that's one question that has to get settled in the war. The other question, big question, is slavery. I get email all the time from people who want to say, well, you know, it was really about states rights, it was not about slavery. That's balder dash. Everybody. Everybody knew in eighteen sixty one that slavery was big ticket issue. The seceding states say this over and over again in their secession documents. But even bigger than slavery, even bigger than slavery, is an issue we don't often reflect upon because we don't need to, and that is the survival of the American democracy. New think about it this way. In seventeen seventy six, we declare our independence, we create this democratic republic, and it looks like we are the coming thing, because seventeen eighty nine the French overthrow monarchical rule, and it looks like this is going to be the wave of the future. But then you know what happens. The French Revolution descends into the reign of terror, the reign of terror descends into the dictatorship of Bonaparte, you get the Napoleonic Wars, you get the Congress of Vienna, and the restoration of monarchy. In eighteen sixty one, the United States is the last large scale democratic experiment still functioning in the world. If the United States blows it, if we can't hold together, then that just simply shows every monarch around the world that democracy is a joke, that people cannot govern themselves. And Lincoln says this to his secretary John Hay in May of eighteen sixty one. He says, the fundamental issue that we are facing in this war is whether self government is possible, or whether every time you hit a big problem a democracy is simply going to blow up. So he understood the enormous significance of what was happening in the United States, and as a matter of fact, you know, so did people in other places. All the monarchs were cheering on the Confederacy. The King of Belgium said that the Confederacy is the sign of the return of what he called the aristocratic monarchical principle in the New World. On the other hand, the friends of liberty in Europe were cheering for the Union because they saw in it the future of liberty being put to a test. Even slaves working in the sugar fields of Cuba were singing along with whatever songs they sang. They were interpolating these words, Avanza, Lincoln, Avanza to esperanza. You are our hope. People understood the biggest issue of all was this issue of democracy, and we enjoy today the fruit of that, sometimes without realizing just how much in danger it was in the American Civil War years.

Oh, he understood what was going on in the war was the biggest question that democracy could be asked, and that is, are democracies really stable? Are they really permanent? Are they for real? I mean, there's so many other issues that are bound up with the war, there's the issue of you know, are we a nation or are we just a league of independent states like the old Holy Roman Empire. All right, that's one question that has to get settled in the war. The other question, big question, is slavery. I get email all the time from people who want to say, well, you know, it was really about states rights, it was not about slavery. That's balder dash. Everybody. Everybody knew in eighteen sixty one that slavery was big ticket issue. The seceding states say this over and over again in their secession documents. But even bigger than slavery, even bigger than slavery, is an issue we don't often reflect upon because we don't need to, and that is the survival of the American democracy. New think about it this way. In seventeen seventy six, we declare our independence, we create this democratic republic, and it looks like we are the coming thing, because seventeen eighty nine the French overthrow monarchical rule, and it looks like this is going to be the wave of the future. But then you know what happens. The French Revolution descends into the reign of terror, the reign of terror descends into the dictatorship of Bonaparte, you get the Napoleonic Wars, you get the Congress of Vienna, and the restoration of monarchy. In eighteen sixty one, the United States is the last large scale democratic experiment still functioning in the world. If the United States blows it, if we can't hold together, then that just simply shows every monarch around the world that democracy is a joke, that people cannot govern themselves. And Lincoln says this to his secretary John Hay in May of eighteen sixty one. He says, the fundamental issue that we are facing in this war is whether self government is possible, or whether every time you hit a big problem a democracy is simply going to blow up. So he understood the enormous significance of what was happening in the United States, and as a matter of fact, you know, so did people in other places. All the monarchs were cheering on the Confederacy. The King of Belgium said that the Confederacy is the sign of the return of what he called the aristocratic monarchical principle in the New World. On the other hand, the friends of liberty in Europe were cheering for the Union because they saw in it the future of liberty being put to a test. Even slaves working in the sugar fields of Cuba were singing along with whatever songs they sang. They were interpolating these words, Avanza, Lincoln, Avanza to esperanza. You are our hope. People understood the biggest issue of all was this issue of democracy, and we enjoy today the fruit of that, sometimes without realizing just how much in danger it was in the American Civil War years.

Your point, I mean, Lincoln captures it himself in the Gettysburg Address when he says, now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. I mean, I think he has sort of captured right there that this was the ultimate test to whether humans could govern themselves.

Your point, I mean, Lincoln captures it himself in the Gettysburg Address when he says, now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. I mean, I think he has sort of captured right there that this was the ultimate test to whether humans could govern themselves.

You might say that the Civil War was looked upon by Lincoln as the final exam for American democracy. He said there were three things that democracy had to do. First of all, it had to set itself up. Second of all, it had to find a way of establishing its own governing rules. We do that in the Constitution. And then it has to show that it's not going to fly to pieces from within. And he said, that is the question that is now before us in this civil war, and in a lot of ways new I wrote this book because I think that question is before us in every American generation. I mean, Lincoln settles it in his day, but it gets unsettled from time to time. I think we're living in an era of unsettlement. And one of the reasons, if not the prime reason that I wrote the book was to say, can we look back to Lincoln and see what Lincoln had to say about democracy, to say what he had to say in praise of it, but also the moments when he points out its weak links and it does have them, And can we learn for today some of the lessons that Lincoln wanted to teach for people in his day. That to me was the most important thing I could say in this book. Because you notice Nout, I'm a history person. This is not a narrative history, all right, This is not a biography of Lincoln. This is really a series of meditations on these themes of democracy that Lincoln himself was concerned about. And I write this a way to speak to our anxieties today.

You might say that the Civil War was looked upon by Lincoln as the final exam for American democracy. He said there were three things that democracy had to do. First of all, it had to set itself up. Second of all, it had to find a way of establishing its own governing rules. We do that in the Constitution. And then it has to show that it's not going to fly to pieces from within. And he said, that is the question that is now before us in this civil war, and in a lot of ways new I wrote this book because I think that question is before us in every American generation. I mean, Lincoln settles it in his day, but it gets unsettled from time to time. I think we're living in an era of unsettlement. And one of the reasons, if not the prime reason that I wrote the book was to say, can we look back to Lincoln and see what Lincoln had to say about democracy, to say what he had to say in praise of it, but also the moments when he points out its weak links and it does have them, And can we learn for today some of the lessons that Lincoln wanted to teach for people in his day. That to me was the most important thing I could say in this book. Because you notice Nout, I'm a history person. This is not a narrative history, all right, This is not a biography of Lincoln. This is really a series of meditations on these themes of democracy that Lincoln himself was concerned about. And I write this a way to speak to our anxieties today.

Scott Rasmussen has been doing polling for thirty five years, and he recently developed what he calls the elite one percent. And these are basically people who went to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, et cetera, got a graduate degree. Didn't just go to grad school. We've got a degree, earn at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and live in a large city. This one percent, he said, the most frightening single number in thirty five years of polling. He asked the question, would you cheat if you're in danger of losing an election? Seven percent of the country says yes. Sixty five percent of these people said yes. So you have an elite which is basically valuing the imposition of its values over the preservation of a system of all of us mutually choosing who leads us. I think it fits what Lincoln was worried about. Every generation has to come back and renew its dedication to this extraordinarily complex system that the founding fathers gave us, which happens to work.

Scott Rasmussen has been doing polling for thirty five years, and he recently developed what he calls the elite one percent. And these are basically people who went to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, et cetera, got a graduate degree. Didn't just go to grad school. We've got a degree, earn at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, and live in a large city. This one percent, he said, the most frightening single number in thirty five years of polling. He asked the question, would you cheat if you're in danger of losing an election? Seven percent of the country says yes. Sixty five percent of these people said yes. So you have an elite which is basically valuing the imposition of its values over the preservation of a system of all of us mutually choosing who leads us. I think it fits what Lincoln was worried about. Every generation has to come back and renew its dedication to this extraordinarily complex system that the founding fathers gave us, which happens to work.

This is why he's at Gettysburg. I mean Lincoln didn't leave Washington very often during a Civil war. I mean understand the sense in which I mean this. It's a compliment. The man was a workaholic. He was at desk, he was at work all the time. He did not stray very much out of Washington to go on fundraising tours or things like that. But he does make an exception to come to Gettysburg in November of eighteen sixty three for the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery there. Why does he do that because he has seen something in that battle. He has seen something in the thirty five hundred Union dead who are buried in that cemetery. These are ordinary folks, Newt. I mean, you've walked around that cemetery, as I have many times, and you see the names there. They're not the names of the rich and famous. They're the names of people who a couple of months before had gotten off the boat from Europe. They're the names of clerks and farmers. And yet those ordinary people saw something in democracy that they were willing to surrender their lives for. And that pushes him to say in the Gettysburg address, it's not us who are going to dedicate a cemetery here, they've already done that. Rather, it's for us to dedicate ourselves to that great task for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. And that is a dedication that has to be renewed over and over again, and he is confident that it can be renewed. The statistic you were quoting from Rasmussen is a really disheartening one. But I don't think that Lincoln would have been disheartened, because he understood the democracies have these great capacities. Democracies have this tremendous resilience. Democracies have humor. They can laugh at themselves like Lincoln did. Democracies have humility. Elites and elite governments and aristocracies and one percent are all built on honor and self righteousness, but not a democracy. Democracy is built on so many other things that it thrives on. And if the people of that democracy will see in it the rainbow of promise, then that democracy will survive, It will prosper, it will have a new birth of freedom, not, as my friend Rick Kaiser says, and rightly, not a birth of new freedom. We're not going to rewrite all the rules all over again and have something entirely different as a governing way of doing things. No, we are going to have a renewal, a rebirth of the original purpose of this democracy. That dedication, I believe, springs from the people themselves. We've had faithless elites before. We have the tories of the Revolution. Even the slave owning oligarchs of the Confederacy talk about in elite. Do you realize that in the eighteen sixty census the richest county in America was Adams County, Mississippi, highest in terms of net worth. Why slavery plantations. That's where the elite were. And they were wrong, and they gambled wrong on rebellion, and they lost. And frankly, I'll say for myself, and probably get some hate mail for it, I'm glad they lost. I'm glad that Lincoln was right. I'm glad that we triumphed as a nation without slavery, and I want us to continue that way.

This is why he's at Gettysburg. I mean Lincoln didn't leave Washington very often during a Civil war. I mean understand the sense in which I mean this. It's a compliment. The man was a workaholic. He was at desk, he was at work all the time. He did not stray very much out of Washington to go on fundraising tours or things like that. But he does make an exception to come to Gettysburg in November of eighteen sixty three for the dedication of the Soldier's National Cemetery there. Why does he do that because he has seen something in that battle. He has seen something in the thirty five hundred Union dead who are buried in that cemetery. These are ordinary folks, Newt. I mean, you've walked around that cemetery, as I have many times, and you see the names there. They're not the names of the rich and famous. They're the names of people who a couple of months before had gotten off the boat from Europe. They're the names of clerks and farmers. And yet those ordinary people saw something in democracy that they were willing to surrender their lives for. And that pushes him to say in the Gettysburg address, it's not us who are going to dedicate a cemetery here, they've already done that. Rather, it's for us to dedicate ourselves to that great task for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. And that is a dedication that has to be renewed over and over again, and he is confident that it can be renewed. The statistic you were quoting from Rasmussen is a really disheartening one. But I don't think that Lincoln would have been disheartened, because he understood the democracies have these great capacities. Democracies have this tremendous resilience. Democracies have humor. They can laugh at themselves like Lincoln did. Democracies have humility. Elites and elite governments and aristocracies and one percent are all built on honor and self righteousness, but not a democracy. Democracy is built on so many other things that it thrives on. And if the people of that democracy will see in it the rainbow of promise, then that democracy will survive, It will prosper, it will have a new birth of freedom, not, as my friend Rick Kaiser says, and rightly, not a birth of new freedom. We're not going to rewrite all the rules all over again and have something entirely different as a governing way of doing things. No, we are going to have a renewal, a rebirth of the original purpose of this democracy. That dedication, I believe, springs from the people themselves. We've had faithless elites before. We have the tories of the Revolution. Even the slave owning oligarchs of the Confederacy talk about in elite. Do you realize that in the eighteen sixty census the richest county in America was Adams County, Mississippi, highest in terms of net worth. Why slavery plantations. That's where the elite were. And they were wrong, and they gambled wrong on rebellion, and they lost. And frankly, I'll say for myself, and probably get some hate mail for it, I'm glad they lost. I'm glad that Lincoln was right. I'm glad that we triumphed as a nation without slavery, and I want us to continue that way.

But to balance a little bit, because it gets complex. Lincoln may, if necessary, was willing to bend the rules to suppress dissent, which he thought could cost us the nation. And then, while he was himself a great lawyer, he was prepared to say, you can't use the rules to justify suicide and therefore they did a number of things, from locking up half the Maryland legislature to closing down some newspapers, et cetera. How do you balance the necessity of survival against the very system that you're trying to have survive.

But to balance a little bit, because it gets complex. Lincoln may, if necessary, was willing to bend the rules to suppress dissent, which he thought could cost us the nation. And then, while he was himself a great lawyer, he was prepared to say, you can't use the rules to justify suicide and therefore they did a number of things, from locking up half the Maryland legislature to closing down some newspapers, et cetera. How do you balance the necessity of survival against the very system that you're trying to have survive.

I don't know that there is a balance you can prescribe. I don't know if there's an algorithm for it. I can explain what Lincoln did. For one thing, Lincoln is working without a template. We never had a Civil War before, so he couldn't look up what the precedents were. There was no bookstore he could go to and buy a copy of Civil War for Dummies. That just wasn't anything. He's having to improvise, and improvise in a volatile situation whose result he can't really easily predict. And Newton, I'll say this just in case anyone thinks that I'm a Lincoln worshiper. He makes mistakes, and I think he made mistakes in some points. In other points, I think he makes mistakes on some of the civil liberties issues as well. When he arrests, for instance, the prominent draft dissenter Clement Vlandigham in eighteen sixty three, or former representative because they jerrymandered his district out from under him. Voralandigm gives a speech in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and it's a pretty incendiary piece of work, and he's arrested by military authorities, tried by a military tribunal. They're going to send him to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor to spend the rest of the war behind bars. No rid of abeas corpus. And Lincoln has to justify what happens to Valandigum, and he does it, I'm sorry to say, on the basis of what he calls necessity. He says the Constitution is different in a time of stress, in a time of necessity, a time of civil war, than it is in times of peace. Note he was wrong. He was wrong, and the wrongness of it becomes apparent a year after the war in expart Milligan, where the Supreme Court, in a decision written by a man appointed by Lincoln to the Supreme Court, it says, no, no, no, the Constitution is the same document in peace as it is in war, and it's still the law of the land under any of those circumstances. So he makes mistakes. The curious thing is and This is also part of the explanation. This is what I think sometimes people miss when they rush to say, oh, Lincoln try to be a dictator. No. No, If you look at the number of these kinds of arrests that happen, military, tribunal trials and so on like that, the actual number of them is vanishingly small. Out of a northern population of twenty two million, maybe there were three hundred arrests you could point to as political. And in many cases they're not even under taken at Lincoln's behest undertaken by military department commanders. And in almost every case that I'm aware of, people in order to be released, all they had to do is to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. So even when you examine these cases carefully, even then, even when Lincoln is making a mistake, it's not a fatal mistake. Of course, it's not a fatal mistake. Because if it had been a fatal mistake, why are we not living in a dictatorship today. No, the war is over. We go right back to being what we were. Lincoln hadn't revolutionized anything that way. So yes, I'm going to tell you, I hope it doesn't come as a surprise. Lincoln did not walk on the Potomac. All right, We've got him in the Lincoln Memorial there, but he did not walk on the Potomac. He made mistakes, and I think he would have said the same thing.

I don't know that there is a balance you can prescribe. I don't know if there's an algorithm for it. I can explain what Lincoln did. For one thing, Lincoln is working without a template. We never had a Civil War before, so he couldn't look up what the precedents were. There was no bookstore he could go to and buy a copy of Civil War for Dummies. That just wasn't anything. He's having to improvise, and improvise in a volatile situation whose result he can't really easily predict. And Newton, I'll say this just in case anyone thinks that I'm a Lincoln worshiper. He makes mistakes, and I think he made mistakes in some points. In other points, I think he makes mistakes on some of the civil liberties issues as well. When he arrests, for instance, the prominent draft dissenter Clement Vlandigham in eighteen sixty three, or former representative because they jerrymandered his district out from under him. Voralandigm gives a speech in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and it's a pretty incendiary piece of work, and he's arrested by military authorities, tried by a military tribunal. They're going to send him to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor to spend the rest of the war behind bars. No rid of abeas corpus. And Lincoln has to justify what happens to Valandigum, and he does it, I'm sorry to say, on the basis of what he calls necessity. He says the Constitution is different in a time of stress, in a time of necessity, a time of civil war, than it is in times of peace. Note he was wrong. He was wrong, and the wrongness of it becomes apparent a year after the war in expart Milligan, where the Supreme Court, in a decision written by a man appointed by Lincoln to the Supreme Court, it says, no, no, no, the Constitution is the same document in peace as it is in war, and it's still the law of the land under any of those circumstances. So he makes mistakes. The curious thing is and This is also part of the explanation. This is what I think sometimes people miss when they rush to say, oh, Lincoln try to be a dictator. No. No, If you look at the number of these kinds of arrests that happen, military, tribunal trials and so on like that, the actual number of them is vanishingly small. Out of a northern population of twenty two million, maybe there were three hundred arrests you could point to as political. And in many cases they're not even under taken at Lincoln's behest undertaken by military department commanders. And in almost every case that I'm aware of, people in order to be released, all they had to do is to take an oath of allegiance to the United States. So even when you examine these cases carefully, even then, even when Lincoln is making a mistake, it's not a fatal mistake. Of course, it's not a fatal mistake. Because if it had been a fatal mistake, why are we not living in a dictatorship today. No, the war is over. We go right back to being what we were. Lincoln hadn't revolutionized anything that way. So yes, I'm going to tell you, I hope it doesn't come as a surprise. Lincoln did not walk on the Potomac. All right, We've got him in the Lincoln Memorial there, but he did not walk on the Potomac. He made mistakes, and I think he would have said the same thing.

I've always thought the Jettis sort of address, in addition to being poetry and remarkably spiritual, in some way, was the kickoff speech of his reelection campaign and sort of created an amazing moral dilemma that in the end of vote against Lincoln was to vote that these young men should have died in vain. Do you think he had any sense of framing sixty four when he gave the speech in November of sixty three?

I've always thought the Jettis sort of address, in addition to being poetry and remarkably spiritual, in some way, was the kickoff speech of his reelection campaign and sort of created an amazing moral dilemma that in the end of vote against Lincoln was to vote that these young men should have died in vain. Do you think he had any sense of framing sixty four when he gave the speech in November of sixty three?

People had suggested then one of the reasons he does come to Gettysburg is because there's a certain concern that the governor of Pennsylvania, Republican Governor Andrew Curtin, might have been a possible rival for the Republican nomination. I think as pushing things to extremes, Lincoln doesn't betray any sign while he is at Gettysburg, while he's going to Gettysburg, while he's coming back from Gettysburg, that he felt that he needed to start taking out an insurance policy for his reelection or his renomination. Actually, at that point, in the fall of eighteen sixty three, things were really looking very good for him. He had written a public letter in September of eighteen sixty three in which he talked about how the Mississippi River, the father of waters, now flows unvexed to the sea, how the prospects for peace do not look so far off as they seemed. So I don't think he's coming to Gettysburg because he's got reelection anxieties at that point. He will have reelection anxieties months later when it appears that the war has stalemated, and that's what will lead him in August of eighteen sixty four to write a document that he has his cabinet endures, saying it does not look like this administration is going to be reelected. But I think in the fall of eighteen sixty three, he's got other things on his mind. He really wants to point us in the direction of where he thinks peace lies, and the path to peace is really going to have to lie through that action of dedication that he describes in the address.

People had suggested then one of the reasons he does come to Gettysburg is because there's a certain concern that the governor of Pennsylvania, Republican Governor Andrew Curtin, might have been a possible rival for the Republican nomination. I think as pushing things to extremes, Lincoln doesn't betray any sign while he is at Gettysburg, while he's going to Gettysburg, while he's coming back from Gettysburg, that he felt that he needed to start taking out an insurance policy for his reelection or his renomination. Actually, at that point, in the fall of eighteen sixty three, things were really looking very good for him. He had written a public letter in September of eighteen sixty three in which he talked about how the Mississippi River, the father of waters, now flows unvexed to the sea, how the prospects for peace do not look so far off as they seemed. So I don't think he's coming to Gettysburg because he's got reelection anxieties at that point. He will have reelection anxieties months later when it appears that the war has stalemated, and that's what will lead him in August of eighteen sixty four to write a document that he has his cabinet endures, saying it does not look like this administration is going to be reelected. But I think in the fall of eighteen sixty three, he's got other things on his mind. He really wants to point us in the direction of where he thinks peace lies, and the path to peace is really going to have to lie through that action of dedication that he describes in the address.

Do you think if Lincoln had survived, the reconstruction would have been dramatically different.

Do you think if Lincoln had survived, the reconstruction would have been dramatically different.

Well, it wouldn't have been worse, that's for sure. It's hard to imagine how we could have botched reconstruction more and a large measure of that is due to Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson. There are dangers in imposing what if questions. You know, as a history person, and wherever I go people ask me exactly this question, what do you think would have happened if Lincoln had served out that second term to which he was elected in November sixty four. Well, part of me wants to say, who can answer that question? You just can't know. But I get asked at so many times that I'll yield the point. In fact, I yield that point in the epilogue of the book, and I say, all right, I'll break my own rule, and I'll speculate. I think certainly he would have put his shoulder to the wheel for black voting. He's already giving the signs of that in the year before his death. I think he probably would have looked for a longer reconstruction period, probably with more involvement of the military, not so much because he wanted to suppress the South as because he wanted to give a chance for an entirely new political generation to grow up in the South. And as it is, reconstruction strictly defined, really only last twelve years. That's not a whole lot of time to do things. And I think there's probably some value to wondering if Lincoln would have paid attention to the economic future of the freed slaves. Here are people who have worked this land, and it was a tenet of liberal democracy all the way back to John Locke that you establish ownership of property by mixing your labor with the land. And I think he would have looked at lands that are abandoned by Confederate officials flee into exile as fair game for assigning to the slaves. He starts to do that on the Sea Islands on the coastal strip of Georgia and South Carolina before the end of the war, and I think he probably would have looked to that as giving the freed slaves not just the vote, but the economic heft to go along with it to support this advance into full and equal citizenship. But so I'm going to put a butt in here, he would only have been president for three more years if he observes the usual two term rule, which at that point was not specified yet in the Constitution, that's not going to be a whole lot of time to supervise it. So even if he had had all these intentions that I'm talking about, he might not have had the time. And even then, the challenge of reconstruction was so enormous it's entirely possible it might have been beyond the grasp even of Abraham Lincoln to pull off with success. We just don't know. All that we can say is we probably could not have done worse than we did.

Well, it wouldn't have been worse, that's for sure. It's hard to imagine how we could have botched reconstruction more and a large measure of that is due to Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson. There are dangers in imposing what if questions. You know, as a history person, and wherever I go people ask me exactly this question, what do you think would have happened if Lincoln had served out that second term to which he was elected in November sixty four. Well, part of me wants to say, who can answer that question? You just can't know. But I get asked at so many times that I'll yield the point. In fact, I yield that point in the epilogue of the book, and I say, all right, I'll break my own rule, and I'll speculate. I think certainly he would have put his shoulder to the wheel for black voting. He's already giving the signs of that in the year before his death. I think he probably would have looked for a longer reconstruction period, probably with more involvement of the military, not so much because he wanted to suppress the South as because he wanted to give a chance for an entirely new political generation to grow up in the South. And as it is, reconstruction strictly defined, really only last twelve years. That's not a whole lot of time to do things. And I think there's probably some value to wondering if Lincoln would have paid attention to the economic future of the freed slaves. Here are people who have worked this land, and it was a tenet of liberal democracy all the way back to John Locke that you establish ownership of property by mixing your labor with the land. And I think he would have looked at lands that are abandoned by Confederate officials flee into exile as fair game for assigning to the slaves. He starts to do that on the Sea Islands on the coastal strip of Georgia and South Carolina before the end of the war, and I think he probably would have looked to that as giving the freed slaves not just the vote, but the economic heft to go along with it to support this advance into full and equal citizenship. But so I'm going to put a butt in here, he would only have been president for three more years if he observes the usual two term rule, which at that point was not specified yet in the Constitution, that's not going to be a whole lot of time to supervise it. So even if he had had all these intentions that I'm talking about, he might not have had the time. And even then, the challenge of reconstruction was so enormous it's entirely possible it might have been beyond the grasp even of Abraham Lincoln to pull off with success. We just don't know. All that we can say is we probably could not have done worse than we did.

You've always been remarkably insightful. Every time I turn to you for advice. You bring a perspective that's extraordinarily educated and at the same time as an amazing amount of wisdom. So I really want to thank you for joining me your new book, Our Ancient Faith Lincoln Democracy in the American Experiment. It's so helpful in replacing our understanding of how a divided nation can in fact find a way forward, and it's very relevant today in terms of the principles we should apply. And Our Ancient Faith is available in Amazon and the Bookstore US everywhere will be on our show page. So I just want to thank you personally for taking this kind of time to help educate the rest of us.

You've always been remarkably insightful. Every time I turn to you for advice. You bring a perspective that's extraordinarily educated and at the same time as an amazing amount of wisdom. So I really want to thank you for joining me your new book, Our Ancient Faith Lincoln Democracy in the American Experiment. It's so helpful in replacing our understanding of how a divided nation can in fact find a way forward, and it's very relevant today in terms of the principles we should apply. And Our Ancient Faith is available in Amazon and the Bookstore US everywhere will be on our show page. So I just want to thank you personally for taking this kind of time to help educate the rest of us.

Always a pleasure, my friend, Always a pleasure.

Always a pleasure, my friend, Always a pleasure.

Thank you to my guests, Alan ce Gelzo. You can get a link to buy his new book Our Ancient Faith, Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at gingwidh three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingwistree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm newt Gingriich. This is Nutsworld.

Thank you to my guests, Alan ce Gelzo. You can get a link to buy his new book Our Ancient Faith, Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Ginglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guernsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at gingwidh three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingwistree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm newt Gingriich. This is Nutsworld.