Hello, my name is kai bird, im the executive director of the leon leavy centers for biography at cuny, university of new york. We are sponsored by Sheldon Whitehouse and the abto promote the arts and crafts and biography among other things. We been a sponsor of the National Book festival for some years. We are here on a session with the 20th anniversary actually of the National Book festival, the theme this year is american ingenuity. We are going to be talking tonight with two notable publican intellectuals, Harold Holzer is one of the countries leading lincoln scholar, currently the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at hunter college. Ted widmer is himself the author of eight books, professor witmer is now on my faculty abwe will be discussing his latest book lincoln on the verge thirteen days to washington. These are two very different books. Im going to hold up each of them. This is literally a mini biography, not so many, its a substantial book, focuses on 13 day and this is Harold Holzers book on the presidency vs. The press. They are very different books but they are both about president s. Both authors are deeply versed in lincoln and the civil war era. To my mind, both folks actually have a theme which is the notion that american politics have always been deeply partisan, contentious and downright toxic. Toxic. Ted, lets begin with you, you give us a vivid description of lincolns dangerous train journey. At one point you refer to it to the toxic climate of 1860. I wanted to ask you off the bat, is it worse today . No, its horrific today, worse in 1860. Its such an honor to appear with harold because he literally wrote the book on this period, the lincoln president elect was constantly on my bookshelf as i was writing the new book. He has read every newspaper and a statement by lincoln and all his contemporaries and ive read a lot of them but i think harold has read more. It was a nightmare. There was a presidency falling apart with James Buchanan presidency which had not been especially distinguished, even in the better years. The proceeded 1860 but it was having a strange kind of immolation. Buchanan personally was failing, he was having a a lot of trouble making decisions, trying to please very angry southern members of his cabinet. And promising things he couldnt really promise to the northerners hitting upset about southern promises. The treasury didnt have very much money. There was mounting evidence of very serious financial corruptions among his cabinet but also the sending of armaments from northern forts and armories down to southern installations almost as if the civil war had begun, although it hadnt yet begun. Wild rumors sweeping washington about militias who might take over the government buildings at any moment. Lincoln was very far away without that much power to affect in anything in washington. As he got on the train he really didnt know what he was going to find at the end of the journey or if he would even make it into washington and as i tried to show, it was the close call, he made it but only barely. Turning to harold, why do you call in your book why do you refer to the endless battle between the white house and the media, why is it an endless battle . I think all of our precedents go back to washington. Even in the founding period when there was a distance between the president s and press, no scrubs as washington was ready to board the helicopter and the golf course. No press secretary. It was still a part of the print press that in no way resembles the television dichotomy between msnbc and fox news. Or the extremes of liberal and rightwing media on the internet. At the beginning washington established a special relationship with federalist journalists and editors who were friendly to his administration and policies and sort of two top anything we hear about today about leaks that displease the current president , George Washington had a cabinet member thomas jefferson, who held the highest rank in the cabinet as secretary of state, who actually helped create opposition to his paper in the capital, philadelphia at the time. Not only encouraged its creation, specifically the criticize the policies of George Washington, but but gave its editor a job in the state department and the state department abhe had to travel to philadelphia, to set up shop. That in no way sets the example of president s being wary of and sometimes an open hostility against the press. We mentioned the inaugural journey of lincoln within within six months of that inaugural journey lincolns administration was promoting the shutdown of ab antivolunteerism, volunteering for the newspapers. It was imprisoning editors without the habeas corpus. The antipathy on occasion an American History has become vitally burden. As i point out in my book and as ted said, not as bad as it was then, today the crackdowns and the complaints are nowhere near as they were under john adams, abraham lincoln, woodrow wilson, and maybe even fdr in some ways. Was it because of the Trump Presidency and his particularly hostile relationship with the press or did you start this book before trump was elected . I started it a bit before i would say. I had written a book about lincoln and his long relationship with the press both as an anonymous journalist for the past as a manipulator of messages as a master of technologies that helped him get his message across. I think i was motivated in a way nostalgically by my own career, which is at least in circulated as teds. I started a [multiple speakers] 51 years ago my first job was as a cub reporter and reporter than editor. As the real professional staff peels away a lot of money of a weekly newspaper in new york. Run by a very political guy who was very closely aligned to the kennedy family. Then i spent years in politics as a press secretary to political candidates. None of whom under my watch ever won an election but thats another story. I seen it from several angles and this seems like a natural subject to tackle the origins of the pervasive the contentiousness between president s and journalists and the varying peaks and valleys of those relationships. Coming back to you ted, i described at one point in lincolns journey you say this was the first time a president had direct conversations with the voters. Unscripted with the Media Standing by. Meaning that the reporters were standing there witnessing the conversations that lincoln would have with people along the way on the railroad journey. They were telegraphed their accounts of these conversations this is the first time there is an instant press conference as such. I dont think thats too big of a stretch although i dont think anyone use the phrase press conference at the time but it was a very volatile situation and lincoln understood very well as harolds work has shown just how powerful the press was he had antipathies and he got unbelievably frustrated and angry but he also was skillful at using the power of the press to his advantage. He knew that reporters were lessening and there were reporters embedded on the train with him as hes coming from springfield to washington. Some very talented reporters. Sometimes they even helped him get his message out amid the very famous farewell address. He gave the speech and then a few minutes later after the train started, a reporter named Henry Villard went to lincoln on the train moving and asked him to write it out and there is a famous document in the library of congress that shows half of the speech written by lincoln and squiggly handwriting because the train is literally moving. He handed it to John Nicollet his aide who finished it and then they gave it to Henry Villard who telegraphs it to the rest of the country and an extremely important lincoln speech was made available because of the cooperation but he also got angry and sometimes the message got distorted severely. Sometimes reporter wrote things that were not true at all. While hes on this train people in the south are writing the most hateful things they can think about him. Ted, how did you come to write this book . I understand it emerged out of your work for the New York Times in 13 days, 13 essays, can you tell us about that . I feel lucky because i had been a pretty academic historian and i thought of serious academic topics which you could almost substitute the word tedious for serious and the story crept up on me and i think it was a better story for that reason. I was working with some friends, some were historians, some were journalists who wanted to but the story of the civil war day by day into the online section of the New York Times at a time, this was 2010 and 11 when it began when the online part was not consider that valuable. Its funny because 10 years later its very valuable. At the time it was seen as less significant part of the papers real estate. It gave us some space and it was all virtual space. It didnt even matter, we could write fairly long pieces. Harold contributed to the series very meaningfully. As i think we all spurred each other on and some of the writers were very good tellers of stories. I would not put myself in that category but i was lifted up by their example and i liked how they were doing it, my friend Adam Goodhart who harold also knows was really writing beautifully in those early months and so i was looking ahead a little bit and i noticed that lincoln had a train trip coming so february 1861 is when it happened. February 2011 is when i was thinking about writing something and i pitched it to the editors of the times and they said go for it. For 13 days in a row i wrote essays about what happened on that day i really fell in love with the story. I had harolds book right on my desk then and i read the original newspaper account, some of which i read on the website of the library of congress. It was an immersive experience. It was a kind of adventure. I have not really found adventure in history until this project came along. Its a very vivid pale and i have to say i was surprised at your ability to tell the story with such suspense. I hadnt realized how dangerous the journey was. I hadnt realized that there was indeed a very serious conspiracy to try to perhaps prevent lincoln from actually getting to washington. It reads like a trailer at times, you learn a lot of history but its a very narrative driven. I wrote a very long manuscript, abi wouldve published it but fortunately i had a really tough editor, alex mayhew who spends harold editor too and she jumped all over me and made me cut half of it and im so glad she did. She died in february but i include a memorial page to her, she was a great editor and she helps me to find that story. Really having a great editor helps so much. Coming back to harold, why did you abyou actually have chapters devoted to any number of president s, not all of them. You had to pick and choose. For instance, you dont write about eisenhower or truman, how did you pick out abwhy did you pick the presidency picked to talk about their relationship with the press . It wasnt a perfect linear process, like ted in a World Without editors i mightve went with a two volume book with a chapter for each of the president s because there are things to say and but heres what i decided to do. For the 18th and 19th centuries i basically limited the chapters to those president s who have the most consequential impact from relationships between the presidency and the media. Washington obviously because he sets the tone for everyone. Adam because he was as sour with the press as he was with his political enemies. And because he ultimately signed and enforce the sedition law that made it possible for the federal government to consider criticisms, attacks against the president s of the United States unlawful and prosecuted those. And then jefferson who stands out as kind of as much a hypocrite and his announcements about the press versus exactions. I thought it was a remarkable story. Is one of the great apostles of the free press. Famously saying if we have to choose between an effective government and free press we should always choose the press. In effect was quite manipulative, quite denied to tori about critical journalists and, in fact, while he opposed the sedition law, he did so only because he didnt believe the federal government had many rights in terms of a law that superseded state laws. He was all for prosecuting the press at the state level and he was quite enthusiastic about it. He commissioned a reprobate of a journalist mr. Calendar to write prorepublican articles and when he refused to reward calendar with a very small federal job, calendar turned on him and publish the sally hemming story, that did more to hanss reputation then anything. Ih holds the most consequential, jackson because he imported journalists into his official family and made them speechwriters, advisors, Kitchen Cabinet members, lincoln for obvious reasons. I try to get almost all of the 20th century president s if i could, and left out exciting folks like coolidge and harding and hoover. Although hoover held quite a few press conferences, the press didnt like the fact that they had to submit them an advance. Wilson invented press conferences, he had rented ab Teddy Roosevelt invented the informal back of the white house interview, while he was being shaved, in fact. Then i included president s who revolutionized communications in their ability to bypass the press. And speak directly to the people by utilizing cutting edge technology. The most obvious one and the one that i dealt with and failed were Franklin Roosevelt who used the radio so brilliantly, and also unless acknowledged, he also used news articles. He was the second or third future at movies abthird future at movies. His first radio address was as president elect ababthen kennedy for television. Barack obama for choosing the internet over personal relations with the press, which i comment on i think people might be a bit surprised about how obama emerges in my book. And need i state the obvious that all of his flaws and no matter what your position about his politics or leadership abilities donald trump ranks with kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt and barack obama as a genius of a particular form of communication, twitter. Its extraordinary not only the volume and the intensity of the communication but his uncanny ability to direct the news of the day with a morning tweet. The sheeplike ability or inability of the press to do anything but follow his lead during the day. Franklin roosevelt, ronald reagan, and obama, now maybe i should add trump, given what you just said, which of those four president s do you think were most effective at manipulating the press . Franklin roosevelt. Who befriended them, ingeniously. Who got them to ignore and not write about or photograph his disability. Through what began as a gentlemens agreement because journalists and photographers simply liked the guy. And ended with unchallenged white house rules about taking informal photographs of roosevelt in his wheelchair. Even taking unflattering photographs. He was able to censor his administration was able to censor he was remarkably transparent about the wheels of government and decisionmaking although many things were off the record. abhearing a continuous fireside chat from open car window to open car window without interruption. Roosevelt was everywhere and i think he was the great genius of communication, being out there and yet being somewhat secret and successful. Along the way your story you he you talk about how the press in his coverage of lincoln humanized him for the first time. This is of course a very delicate moment in his trying to get to washington to be inaugurated and on the verge of what we know becomes civil war. Lincoln suddenly becomes flesh and blood. The press does this. Can you describe how this happened . I agree. First of all, the curiosity about him was i would say larger than that that had followed any president on his way into office. It was overwhelming. Lincoln had come almost out of nowhere, not quite nowhere because the Lincoln Douglas debates had raised his profile in illinois and certainly in the east and then with the Cooper Union Speech which harold has written about, his profile went up a little bit more but he was still outside shot at the nomination which he got in may 1860. It was a tremendous curiosity, who is he, what is he look like, what is he think . What is his home like. His home appears in weekly newspapers in new york are beginning to include illustrations and thats important. Lincoln is a kind of political celebrity. That word was being used. It had been used in some other context in the 1850s and then suddenly the bigger celebrities american has ever known is getting on a train to come to the capital to take charge of a government thats falling apart. All of these things, the fear, the excitement, the hope and the criticism. Every newspaper in the story wanted to cover it and there were tens of thousands of newspapers. This was a very literate society, especially in the north and the upper midwest and so if the train was bringing lincoln within any reasonable distance of a small newspaper or bigger newspaper, all the reporters were there watching it, they came through and a lot of physical descriptions of a guy who was unusual looking. Not only for his height but his face that changed moves quickly from a twinkle in the eye when he was about to tell a joke to a deep kind of melancholy expression all within a few seconds then back. All the strange ways in which he spoke he spoke of western and somewhat southern accent he ran out of material. He written about one serious speech per day and had to give many more speeches he had to improvise and there are moments its almost like standup comedy where hes just there saying whatever comes into his head and he is a quick thinker and the journalist convey that to a huge northern audience hanging on every word. Talk a little bit about the conspiracy. This is not my period of history but i was really shocked by how serious the conspiracy, harold, you might jump in and i assume youve written a little bit about the early conspiracy too. I did write about the conspiracy in my book. I thought i backed up the historical understanding of when lincoln and his aides mightve be