With sydney blumenthal, former Senior Advisor to president bill clinton. His book is a look at the political life of Abraham Lincoln. With that, im going to throw it over to our interviewer, elizabeth taylor, the literary editor at large for the chicago tribune. [applause] hi. Thank you. Are these mics on . Great. You can hear me . Thank you so much for coming out. This is a wonderful turnout for a wonderful book, and were delighted to be here. Ive actually in this chair, year ago, talking about the first volume of Sidney Blumenthals four to be four volumes on lincoln, and im really excite it excited about this one. I loved that one and this is even norwich. Wrestling with the angel. So, like to set the stage. Begins in march 1849. Lincoln returns to springfield to practice law. 1849. And then 1856, nonothing party, nominates bill moore for president , National Convention for the Republican Party. We have that blackdrop. Whats the title about . Host wrestling with his angel is a title i took from the story of jacob in the bible in the bible, jacob wrestles through a long night, possible my with himself. The bible says an angel. And at the end of the night, and with the break of dawn, he comes to a realization of who he is and he adopts a new name. Israel. Lincoln wrestles through a long night, its his long, dark night of the soul, for lincoln. The last years. He enters it coming home to springfield after one term in the congress, and he ends it by founding the Illinois Republican party, and adopting his own new identity, and emerging with husband his cause against slavery. This is the story of how lincoln became the man that is recognizable to us today. If we met lincoln at the beginning of the story we would not recognize him as lincoln of history. By the end he is lincoln. Host so interesting. Want to get into lincoln the man and also you do a wonderful job of sort of settling the stage for all these events, through the politics, history, culture, and lets first talk about the fascinating 16th president. Recent years he is sort of depicted as melancholy. Was he depressed . Could you read about it . I just love this passage. There you go. Guest well, this is about ling ling as younger man was depressed and he did suffer from depression all the way through. When he was younger, he was even suicidal, and his friends kept razors from hip at one opinion. But now he has returned to springfield, a form congressman, and ill read here the more time i spent with lincoln the more i began to see the arc of this story was unease, unpredictable and often unintended yet his thoughts and words were the careful result of his intense consciousness. And i should add, selfdiscipline. The opass silences that his law partner and others of his friends described as lincolns melancholy, were also a mask for his concentration, intellectual absorption and focus. He made his depression as well as every other feeling into instruments of selfdiscipline in a wilderness of political despair for a destiny he could not foretell. Even when hi life was reduced to simple insignaturans he was vanning the horizons and quietly interpreting its signs. His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest, as hernan called and it he was professional partisan politician who early in his career, in the name of party fidelity, perjured from the list of candidates for local offices in new salem, illinois, his surrogate father, though later shead tears over it did not arise as recognizable lincoln until he lined the ambition and the political schools in the democracy as a unique experiment that might be undone from within. Host thats beautiful. So, he had sort of interesting imagination and discipline that he actually constructed of a coherent argument, an intellectual argument, for a political coalition. Can you just thats, i think, one important part of this book. Guest this is also a period of party chaos. Lincoln the party of lincoln is the whig party. He is a whig. A leader in a state legislature in illinois at the age of 27. He invented the Convention System in order for not get himself nominated for the congress in illinois. And so he is a stalwart whig but his rival, steven a. Douglas, perennial rival, blows everything up with the passage of the kansasnebraska act that eliminates repeals of the missouri compromise by which slavery was prohibited in the north. So now the extension of slavery becomes an open question. This is a question also about the political balance of power in the country and the power of what people called the slave power. The parties blow up. The whig part cracks apart. After 1852 theres never another whig president ial candidate. This party just disspin entity greats between lincolns feet and the Democratic Party splits went anne and pro slavery and theres an antiimmigrant movement that turns into a party called the knownothingings and one plank, only nativeborn protestants can hold Public Office in the United States. So,. Host history repeats itself. Guest they have a slogan, and heres the slogan of the knownothings americans only shall govern america. And theres a lincoln writes a letter in 1855 i know im not a knownothing. Thats certain. The declaration of independence began by saying, all men are created equal. Then some people say, all men are created equal except negroes and if the nonothings get called it will say all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and catholics, and he said if thats the case, i would emigrate to a country where they make no pretense of loving liberty to russia, for instance, where they do not where despotism is taken pure and there is no base alloy of hypocrisy. Lincoln had way with words. Host yes. Guest but lincoln had to construct a Coalition Just to get back to your thought here in this whirlwind with everything falling apart and he had to construct an argument, and the argument theres a lot to say about lincoln and argument itself because he is a lawyer, he trains himself in logic, he is very cognizant of appealing to people and persuading them and bringing them along and being accessible and using plain language, and lincoln also wants to construct an argument that appeals to different parts of these fragments, this floating across the landscape, in order to bring them together in an antislavery coalition. He is waiting out the knownothings and waiting out the temperrans movement, the big movement against liquor, and he has got to bring in antislavery dem chats who hate antislavery whigs who have been running against each other forever. He has his work cult out for him cut out for him. Host a great line from the book is, for him the courtroom and the campaign were transferable arenas. Can you explain that a little bit . Guest well, in this period lincoln from 1849 to 1855, to 1854, really, he is not running for Public Office and says at one point it was almost indifferent to politics, which is not true. He was paying very close attention to the politics. But for Lincoln Lincoln is traveling from county courthouse to county courthouse, sometimes on his horse, old bob, in central illinois, and people line up as clients at the courthouse before the court is in session, and he agrees to take their case and argue it before juries. So, he has to persuade jurors. That that was lincolns great strength, was to speak to juries of ordinary people in central illinois, and to him, this was the law but he was also a politician. So, he is thinking about this all the time, and every time he is trying to win a case, he further develops his mind and his ability to persuade, and the other thing that he is doing while he is a lawyer is in traveling around, he is developing this travels around in a kind of entourage of lawyers. All travelingaround illinois today. They have a maestros, judge davis who lincoln later names to the supreme court. The richest man in bloomington, a whig, and they travel around together and do these cases in different courthouses and the judges travel too and they all live in boarding houses. This network of lawyers, of these lawyers in central illinois, become his campaign team, and, you know, people may have thought that this was these were a bunch of provincial lawyers from central illinois, but when it came to it in 1860, they outplayed everybody and won the republican president ial nomination at the convention in chicago for lincoln. These were very canny, shred and experienced shrewd and experienced political panel. To lynn, even as he is just practicing the law, is developing his political network. The lines are invisible between the two. Host you write about one interesting case that i dont think much is known about. Thought it completely fascinating. The hers case that helped him the todd ahres case. Guest it was a revelation to me, too. I had read as much as i can about lincoln, and and i decided to begin the book with this. Think this is a seminal event in lincolns thinking and life. He returns to springfield and his wife sends him to her home town of lexington, kentucky. Her father, john f. Todd, who is henry clays Business Partner and political ally, has died of cholera. And he has for about a decade been contesting for the todd family estate, which is a large fortune in kentucky. And the todd family wants the estate, except its held by john s. Todds political rival, an enemy, robert whit cliff because he married john s. Todds cousin, polly, and woodcliff has the estate. So theyre engaged in a kind of its like jarndicevjarndice, going on for a decade. There are two subtexts to it. One is woodcliff is the leader of the pro slavery movement, and he succeeds in creating a new state Constitutional Convention to make the kentucky constitution more proslavery. There had been something call the nonimportation in kentucky which stopped selling of slaves. So, whitcliff is a powerful man. The state constitution is being rewritten. Lincoln arrives as all this is happening and it happens and he watches as the he loses the case, loses the family fortune, he watches henry clays legacy destroyed. John s. Todds personal financial and political legacy destroyed, and he observes slavery in kentucky up close. Hed seen it before as a boy. Hes seen it in washington, dc where slavery was legal and he now sees the rise of what people call the slave power. This is a rising power in the country. A very powerful right wing, if you will, and he is very embittered. Theres a secret, another subtext. Heres the secret. There was a todd family secret. Its in memoirs and pamphlets. Ive read these pamphlets. I found these pamphlets. Turns out just following me polly todd, who had died, who is whitcliffs former wife, his wife, had a son, and the son had died, and the son left a living heir. So, he is the rightful heir, except he is not legally a person. And the reason is that he is the son of the of polly todds son, and the house maid, who is a slave. And so this boy, who is a slave, was emancipated and sent to liberia, and heres the kicker in the story. He becomes the president of liberia. Decades later that means that Mary Todd Lincoln was related to two president s. Two kentuckians. So, this case is very important for lincoln, and he is simmering, angry in private, and he starts to he observes slavery as a social force, as an economic force, as a political force. He says its most us a asu us a ostentatious in the world and he is fuming, and this is in 1849. Its all private, its all in private conversations with people that are not recorded and not known until literally decades later. Almost all the conversations come out in an oral history that his law partner, herndon, conducted after lincolns death with people who were still alive. So, people you know, couldnt really understand lincolns evolution at the time because it was unknown except to some of his closest friends and associates. Host do you think that Mary Todd Lincoln was aware of any of this . It was her familys money. Guest i think she was aware of everything. She is a she was describe as a child as a volatile, firey whig, and very political. She is very devoted to the whig party, longer than lincoln. Host in your previous volume, you said that i think, without mary there might not be lincoln. So, got me thinking as i was reading, this book, she plays a somewhat less Important Role, prominent role. Would there be a lincoln without steven a. Douglas . Well, let me address mary and then douglas. The answer is mary todd and steve steven a. Douglas are completely indispensable figures for the creation of Abraham Lincoln. Theres no lincoln without these two people in illinois. Mary doesnt play quite the same role as she did earlier in the first volume, but she plays a very Important Role here, and its a little known incident in which lincoln runs for the senate in 1855, not 1858 against douglas. He runs for the senate in 1855. She pushes him to run. He was slated to run for the state legislature, and she hes elected again, and she hes been a congressman in the legislature, she thinks the senate seat opens up, and she thinks this is completely beneath him. His ambition is a little engine that knew no rest, and marys was real are knew no rest, and lincolns friend describe a period of two days of yelling and shouting and lincoln hanging his head and at the end of which he drops his being elected to the state legislature and announces for the senate because his wife says, youre a senator. And its really important the way he loses for the creation of the Republican Party, because brief story host tell this. Guest the democrat who is now i. F. Douglas is in second place. Lincoln has the most votes but looks like he is just shy of a majority. And so the democrat starts bribing legislators. I know thats unknown in illinois. [laughter] host highly unusual. The person in third place is a man named trumbell and he is a democrat, too, but an antislavery democrat. So he hat the fewest votes, and lincoln realizes the other democrat, douglas ally, is going to win if he allows him the time to bribe everybody. So he quickly throws all of his votes to the antislavery democrat and elects Lyman Trumbell as the senator from illinois. Remember, the elects are held with the legislature, obviously. Theres no thats who decides who is a senator. So, the result is that the antislavery democrats trust lincoln, who had been their rival as a whig, but now they trust him and that becomes a basis for a year later in the creation of the Republican Party. Of bringing all these people together. So, lincolns done something very important in sacrificing himself in making something larger possible. And mary hates this, by the way. And her best friend was Lyman Trumbells wife, and she never spoke to her again. She held it against her. Douglas host oh, douglas. Guest douglas, the little giant, the senator from illinois, is most powerful figure from illinois. Hes on the national stage. He is young. He is already run for president in 1852. He is not even run when hi is 37 years old. 1852. A meteor. Lincoln is envious of him. Says his acolossus and i walk underneath his legs. He has been his rival for decades and has been attacking him for decades. They have rival newspapers in springfield. Editorials flying back and forth. And lincoln feels completely insignificant. Douglas is everything and then douglas blows up the world because his ambition is thwarted. He has run for president , didnt get the nomination. He wants the nomination, in 1856. So he needs to do something enormous. He wants to build a Transcontinental Railroad across the United States, get credit for it. He also wants to make money off it, and he has bought land in dubuque, iowa, and he made a lot of money off the illinois stroll because the owned the lakefront in chicago and sold it to the ic as the right of way land after he passed the Illinois Central Railroad act. So, theres nothing new in politics. And he needs the south, and he also needs to open up this territory. He is the chairman of the committee on territories and what is in the ways these territories are not organized. Kansas, nebraska. Sponsors kansasnebraska act and repeals the missouri compromise, withdraws a erases the line of slavery in north and throws it all open. Whoever settles there can doo decide whether theyre a free state or slave state. And you have bleeding kansas, and as a result of that, the issue of the extension of slavery in the country lincoln calls it the nationalization of slavery and says pretty son well have it in illinois and then across the country. He has this cause and now has to develop his argument. Host referred to the newspapers, and theres so many newspapers and the time, Harold Holzer wrote a wonderful become about newspapers and lincoln, and lincoln wrote a platform at a meeting of the antislavery editors. Can you talk below the role of the newspapers about the role of the newspapers at the time and lincoln . Guest well, lincoln had a close relationship with the media of his day. He played media politics. He was an avid reader of newspapers since he was a boy. Partly how he selfeducated himself, reading newspapers. And then the telegraph came into existence. The internet of the day. So it made daily newspapers you could really follow the news every day. They were very current, and people kept up, and in the Northern United States was the most literate area in the entire world, and had the greatest number of newspapers anywhere in the world. All the newspapers were partisan one way oar another. Host very. Guest very partisan. They were idiosyncratic, eccentric editors but partisan. Lincoln was in this law office and is more or less the coeditor of the illinois newspaper in springfield and he anonymously writes hundreds of editorials. We dont know everything lincoln has written for the newspaper. And he and herndon have the best library in central illinois, and lincoln is reading the new york times, the new york tribune, the the richmond inquirer, journals from london. So here is, the circumference of his life appears very small. His house, his law office, the state capitol. He travels around, but actually he is living in a much larger world in his head and