Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War A Conversation With His

Did his gradual work at the university of pennsylvania where he focused on the history of religion. He holds a master of divinity. His roster of publications is so long that i am not going to try readthe salt to you all of it to you. You can get a full accounting on biography and his his doings. To mention five books that i think are especially pertinent to what we will be doing this afternoon. The first is called Abraham Lincoln, redeemer president. It was published in 1998. It is the first of his lincoln books. The emancipation proclamation the end of slavery and america published by simon and schuster. That brought him his second lincoln prize. Lincoln and douglas the debate that defined america. For some reason that did not win the lincoln prize. A new history of the civil war and reconstruction came out in 2012. Mentionh title i will is called gettysburg, the last which brought a third lincoln prize to alan. The only person who has won three. He is currently working on a biography of her really. That will be published and it will be one of the things we will get to today. We are going to talk about his work on the field of civil war era studies. Begin with a question relating to the opportunities for people in our field to try and reach a broader audience. He has done courses for the Teaching Company the great courses company. Aboutd like your thoughts if this is something we should strive to, how effective do you think it is, and what are the yield for this . Allen first of all, let me thank you for the option to be here. Especially to will kurtz and everyone here. Just made myho has visit here for the past several days such exceedingly pleasant. Gary you have snuck in some research . N indeed. I have been in the reach of many manuscripts, diaries and whatnot. Looking at what people are writing and thinking and saying. With those Tumultuous Times of 150 years ago. I am particular glad to be here on this very very significant and special day. One of the greatest days in American History. I noticed people are starting to look at each other and this is the fourth of july. It is september 22. Gary we did this on purpose. Allen it is the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation. Writing about that back in 2012 for the wall street journal a got me some unusual responses. I got a death threat. That does not often happen to people writing and the wall street journal. Did succeed in injuring somebody sensibilities writing about it. In a way it testifies to the fact gary did you say it was a good thing . Allen if they did, that upset somebody. I think what it does speak to that there is a large audience trying to understand history. How do we identify as americans . We dont identify ourselves or shouldnt on the basis of a language are a on ethnicity, a established religion, of race or anything. What identifies us as americans . Fundamentally lincoln nailed that in the gettysburg address. What identifies us is a proposition. That all men are created equal. Of how we have unfolded and live with that proposition is really the most important aspect of our identity. Really read about our history we are not doing it for a granite agrarianism. We are looking at a referendum on that proposition. In thed what i have done popular press fully as much as the academic respirator that is two sides of the same coin. Explain ourselves to ourselves . That should draw in much more than a academic audience. That is what touches all of us and that is what identifies all of us. Instance forng for the journal of the early republic or for civil war ready for thei am wall street journal or if i am ready for the washington post. I really regard those as being part of a overall and ever. It is a constant reminder of ourselves of who we are. And what we are dedicated to. That is something that involves more than academics and college students. It really is something that embraces all of us. Especially for historians like ourselves to be able to speak to everybody. We identity as americans. We are speaking professionally but speaking as citizens. And only one identifier of a american. That is that you are a citizen. To be a citizen of the american theblic is in my book greatest privilege on earth. Ary so many issues of the civil war continue to resonate. In oursee echoes of them daytoday life. Ofluding responses to some the current president talking about when president obama was in office. You do not have to look very far. With current american politics to find echoes of the civil war era. Than sometimes it is more echoes. There is a oped in the san in which bee yesterday , california is a 21st century state which is mired in a 19thcentury country. Therefore it should separate itself. That is a way of saying california is a entirely different culture from the United States. I thought that is exactly what they were saying in South Carolina in december of 1860. Gary some people are really trying to emulate South Carolina. Perhaps shortterm, longterm and did not work out well for South Carolina. It does come back to the fact that it was so often a question that we think are so uniquely modern really have these replication of the rhetoric of 150 years ago. Gary there is almost nothing new, i think. We dont really know anything. Allen these have become the fundamental questions posed by the american experiment. All about the business of debating that fundamental proposition. In a sense it is not a total surprise that the rhetoric and assumptions you hear people strike today will find uncanny and unnerving echoes by those 150 years ago. For the history and what we have to do is signal, this is what the relationships are. Be careful what you wish for. Beeher it is the sacramento or the charleston mercury. Gary when you write the right specifically with more than one audience in mind . Obviously you are reviewed and scholarly journals but do you have one or the other of those audiences more and mind where you not even think about that . Allen i cant say i really think about that. Sometimes i am asked, what kind of school do you have with writing and how do you go about the writing . I can only shrug my shoulders. I never had a writing class. I never had anyone instruct me. No better explanation than to simply say i want to explain something to people. I want to communicate with people. I look for ways to do that. I dont really have a better explanation. Gary you have certainly read a lot of good writing. I certainly did. I think i am very good at imitating. It is nothing in my mind that is more complicated than that. Gary i will try to make you more complicated. Andyou wake up one morning say link to not have enough attention from writers i think id better write about him . Edwardse about jonathan in your dissertation and youre early work. How did you get from Jonathan Edwards and religion to Abraham Lincoln . Allen it is a little unusual. Not more unusual than lets say a chest game. There are a few strange modes that have to be made. Not too many. Dissertation on Jonathan Edwards with the determination of free will on 18 central moral philosophy. That is a title made for white public consumption. [laughter] allen they actually did do a second edition. Gary the one with Matthew Mcconaughey really resonated. Allen and the one with nick nolte was george whitfield. I had wrote the dissertation which was published by wesley and university press. The problem with free will seem to be really perennial, maybe not the thing you stay up reading about. It had been perennial. I plan to write a followup volume. Things to the modern philosophy. Was working on this project this was in the mid90s i knew that Abraham Lincoln had something to say about the subject of free will and fatalism. Familiarity with lincolns corpus. I thought it would jazz it up. There is this book of philosophy and to be able to inject Abraham Lincoln would really put some fizz in it. I ended up writing a paper on lincoln and determinism and what he called his doctrine of necessity. He told people he was a fatalist. Read thatpaper paper for the Abraham Lincoln association. To my surprise it was wellreceived. A book publisher got in touch with me, would i be interested in writing a biography for Abraham Lincoln . I said no because i had seen a get swalloweders up in a swamp of that subject. The publisher got back in touch sometime later. When i do this biography of lincoln . I said no. Finally a friend of the publisher called me and said book if you do not do this they are going to give it to professor so and so. Gary someone you knew . Allen the hand hit the forehead. I got back in charge touch with the editor in chief. Let me do it as a intellectual biography, not just about religion but all of the other intellectual influence is. Did not treat him as a political figure but lincoln and the context of the ideas of the 19th century. Having got my hands on the cookie chart so to speak, i really could not get it out. One lincoln book became another book, so on and so forth. You have already gone down the list. I have never actually got them back to writing that free will 2. 0. Gary you think there are more elements to lincoln . He has not been a sauce. Allen i think that is entirely true. He was a very complex and complicated individual. People underestimate lincoln theuse they say he is just 16th president , just the civil war president. He is just a politician or a lawyer. Time new and own said about them that lincoln was a shut mouthed man. Another who practiced law with him on the circuit for many years that anyone who took Abraham Lincoln for a simpleminded man would wake up with his back in a ditch. I think that may be one of the truest things ever said about him. He was a man of very meager education extraordinary intellectual curiosity. He would delve into anything. In his diary in 1863 he recorded saidident in which haye discussionhad a the elegy he has a unsuspected interests. , oh lets look that up. It is the study of language. Intellectual. So many different directions, he was not a intellectual. He had curiosities. He like to pursue them. Towards the end of his life that he did with a journal. What were the most influential books in your life . His reply was very peculiar. Mesaid, butlers analogy, and analogy of religion from 1785. A securely important text for natural religion in the 18th century. As well as John Stuart Mill on liberty. Still functions as a major text for people thinking about free speech, about libertarian political philosophy. He then added i always wanted to get president edwards on the will. To you . At spoke it did great. Here is a man who does not simply read the newspaper is and do a crossword puzzle. Ambition towho has penetrate some very serious intellectual questions. It is part of lincoln that we miss because we are so impressed political acty wire puller. D that is what we are most similar with. What his often see closest friends had a peek into. Gary how to use when his facility with language. With hislk about this ability to deal with complicated issues and render them in language that can store or make a point sore or make in no way that anyone was able to do. How do you get to the second inaugural was someones background and his education . Jon stewart no i dont think allen no. One thing that would shape lincoln was being a communicator. In this case he was a trial lawyer. He spends virtually all of his professional life as a lawyer trying courses in county courthouses all across the middle of the state of illinois. He enjoys being and the courtroom. He enjoys being in the state in the front of a jury. This is a jury he has to persuade. In these Little County courthouses a jury would often be summoned by bystanders. You could have almost anyone standing in a jury box. Be able to communicate with them and you had to do it fast. If you cannot make yourself clear and make a clear case of things that you were not going to be a functioning and profitable lawyer for very long. He had to learn how to communicate directly with people. His partner of many years once was his very real passion. How to make something Crystal Clear to people. He said that lincoln would tie himself up in knots in the office and sit there concentrated how to get a idea easily understood. Was so effective at this certainly on one occasion in his Opening Statement the judge interrupted him saying thank you. Well never from the other side. Hemade it case so clearly had not finished his Opening Statement and the court made it seem like he had one. Possible to open up the idea and have these wonderfully clear laboratory terms. I think a lot of this comes out of his expenses a trial lawyer. Disciplineelf to the of logical expression. Once sent by somebody and their autobiography who had listened to the Lincoln Douglas debates. If you listen to them for five minutes you would always take the side of stephen a douglas because he was about passion and about stamping his feet. If you listen to them for half an hour you would be taken by lincoln. Even though he spoke in this voice, he tone of always a things out like a date on a hook. If he got that hurricane nora mount he needed to do afterwards was really been was reel it i n. He would state the case that it was absolutely irresistible. Kind of logic. He was not a man of emotion. His headonce said ruled his heart to radically. He was not a man of emotional appeal. He was eloquent in a extremely reasonable way. When you look at the second but ital it is eloquent is eloquent and very logical ways. Understand, if we if god is like this, if we see , thewar as the payment drawing of blood through the to pay for the bondmans unrequited 250 years of labor, for every drop of blood drawn by the lash. That is logic. You really cannot resist at the end because he has you. Also it is logic but it is a daring move on his part. That is not what most of the wanted to hear. How many people would be willing to do that, that is a remarkable speech on many levels. They want to hear that there will be retribution and god is on our side and he will chastise the rebels. They are responsible for everything. He never said that. Allen the great your political operator wrote to lincoln to complement him. Lincoln thanked him for the compliment but he wrote back and said i dont think people are eager to have heard what i have to say. No one likes to be told that god has a controversy with them. But, it was gary it is a remarkable speech on many levels. If you put it alongside the emancipation proclamation, you could not have i think a stronger contrast between this language, this incredibly powerful and which at the second inaugural, and what some people compare to a bill of lading, the emancipation proclamation. Allen but they are two different documents. Gary i know that. Allen [laughter] proclamation has been interpreted by many scholars as not doing what it should be it should do, others saying it is everything. Take onyour shorthand the importance and place of the emancipation proclamation in the much broader story of the process of emancipation . Allen i think it was the single most family effective president ial document ever written. I think that is largely because gary so you think it is important. Allen i would say so. At least moderately. The language of the emancipation proclamation disappoints people, that is why Richard Hofstadter , the emancipation proclamation having all the moral grandeur of a bill of lading. Quiver. E my antenna a bill of lading is not unimportant if you are involved in commerce. But lets go with the flow. What is the emancipation proclamation . Rhetorical Statement Like the gettysburg address . No. The gettysburg address is marvelous, beautiful prose. But you cannot take it into a court of law and do anything with it, can you . When a trooper told you over on the interstate, dont try reciting the gettysburg address, the trooper is only interested in the statue. The emancipation proclamation is about the statute. It is a legal document. It has to be carefully honed and crafted so that it survives the challenge of the courts, and lincoln knew this. President s are, after all, only president s. Was keenly aware of the fact that as the president of the United States, he did not have a strictly speaking, the authority to emancipate anybody, at least not under normal circumstances. The war changed the circumstances. As commanderinchief, he may have powers that in times of his he would not have. Lets explore that. In time of war, there are more powers. His emancipation one of those powers . We dont know, lets find out. Who is going to be the arbiter . The federal courts. If lincoln, so to speak, talks andand throws open window yelled down pennsylvania avenue, ree going to thing that is happen is slave owners will andk to county courthouses ask for injunctions and they will get them. There will be appeals, they will go through the courts and they will wind up with the United States Supreme Court. Who is the chief justice . Oger beat tonic he has shown himself to be a friend of emancipation over the years, hasnt he . [laughter] if lincoln makes one slip in crafting and emancipation proclamation, that would be meat. Be raw he must craft and emancipation proclamation which treads very carefully about who is free and who is not. That is why there are these exceptions, why the emancipation proclamation does not apply to slaves in kentucky, delaware, maryland, missouri. Why . They are not at war with United States. Gary anyplace the United States army was in control. Allen exactly. Where the courts were back control. Is noaware his war power longer functioning in these places. He cannot take the chance that if he makes an assertion in those areas, that might be the awnwy that roger b t beats the emancipation proclamation with. If he gets the stick in his hand, he can beat it for another generation or longer. Lincoln has to be very careful and how he crafts the proclamation. Work. To stick, it has to it is only at the very end that he allows himself one small moment of eloquence. That is when he says at the very end, believing this to not only very end,itutional believ