, his Outstanding New book, gathering dissemination, we come to know a new team of lincoln allies. We are likely familiar with names like gates, andrews and some others. But steve brings another analysis of the nearly five dozen individuals who served as chief executive during lincolns presidency. This nearly 500 page volume is supplemented with 122 pages of footnotes and nearly a 70 page bibliography. For those of you who can read in the program a little bit about steve but for those watching, let me say that Stephen Engle is the professor of history and director of alan b. Larkins symposium on the american presidency at Florida Atlantic university. He is a past fulbright scholar to germany. He is currently a distinguished lecture for the organization of american historians. In 2016, he was awarded a Andrew Mellon fellowship to the massachusetts historical society. The incoming president of the Abraham LincolnInstitute Associate Professor john white whose opinion carries a lot more , weight than mine has written a review of stephens work for the journal of American History. Let me quote from johns review that will be published later this year. Gathering to save the nation will stand for years as the book on lincolns relationship with the union governors. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the north mobilized to win to win the civil war. It is my pleasure to present professor Stephen Engle. [applause] Stephen Engle thank you. What a wonderful introduction. Thanks for the preview of a review that i hope to receive in a few months. I want to thank everyone here who is make my stay an absolute delight. It is my first time on the state so if i appear a little nervous, i really am. This is a real stage. It is not any stage. In any case, i want to thank the staff here. I want to thank michelle and the board for inviting me. I am delighted to be here. I can tell you im probably the least lincoln scholar here given the illustrious crew that you always assemble and the people who are part of your institute. I will say this, i am not half of professor harris age but i am certainly envious of his productivity. I confess i thought bob would hold up the book but he confessed he would drop it which is a testament to the fact that a Company Michael burlingham school of writing history. A shout out to michael here who , i have read for many years and many of the scholars here, i have read all your works. A great fan and tremendous pleasure to be here. [indiscernible] [laughter] dr. Engle thank you. Thank you, michael. Its interesting. This project had its origins in germany in 1996. I had a conversation with a professor visiting as a scholar and we became great friends over the couple weeks he was there and he and i talked a lot about the civil war and reconstruction. He was there doing a paper on a book for the road to total war. He was with a number of scholars to assess the American Civil War reconstruction and the german wars and reunification. Hans likes to talk about what he called federal history. Oldfashioned federal history. No one was doing oldfashioned federal history, and now i know why. I began this project in 1996 and it has taken me almost 20 years to bring to the light of day what has been a labor of love for more than two decades. One of the things that i thought i needed to do to acquaint myself with federal history was not only visit all of the statehouses and read all of the governors letter books of the legislative proceedings of the governors of 23 north states, but one of the things i did during this time was i came to recognize that statehouses and state governors were the conduits between the national and the local. So, i decided to read three newspapers for every one of those 23 Northern States for every day of the war. Through that i am asked several amassed several hundred pages of testimony about how central the statehouse became during the American Civil War. As i began to reflect on putting pen to paper, i kept coming up with the same theme, the same opening scenes for what is a continuing work in progress, our democratic ideal and our selfgovernment. So, imagine this scene in april of 1861. Its april 17. It is wednesday. William vanderveer is an iowa state congressman who receives a telegram in davenport, iowa from Abraham Lincoln, asking for men to be put into federal service. The governor of the state is sam kirkwood. He is a republican. He is on his farm in iowa city. Because there is no telegraph service between these towns, vanderveer decides to ride on horseback to tell the governor of the news. When he finally reaches the farm in iowa city, he finds governor kurt would in his overalls, his stoga boots, rake in hand, tending his stocks. Kirkwood reads the dispatch, look at vanderveer and responded, you mean the president was a whole regiment of men . Do you suppose i can raise that many . How many men are there in iowa . [laughter] dr. Engle first, the governor had no idea how big his population was and he had no idea the size of a regiment. After all, more than 70,000 iowans would serve in the civil war. Although the very means of how kirkwood received the call is not typical of most governors it , revealed the realities of the nations unpreparedness and gave , me the title for the book. Gathering to save a nation. The American Civil War was as much a story of operation as it was conflict. For all we know about why the southerners left United States historians grapple over how and , why the north restored the union. Secession provided unionists with and why many example of how fragile the federal system was in the mid 19th century. Withdraw of your destructive, almost madness. It inspired loyal political leaders to demonstrate that states had more rights in the union than outside of the union. This revelation motivated loyal state leaders to unite in the hopes of vindicating democracy. And preserve the union. The ensuing war ironically forged a powerful nationstate alliance that produced a Northern StateArmy Powerful enough to defeat the confederates. Scholars seeking to uncover unions formula for victory have expanded investigations to include the character of governors, northern and southerners, as contributors to the factors of this victory. Northerners witnessed the surge of governmental activist at the state level and National Level that sustained mobilization throughout the war. The unions defense of 1861 revealed intense nationalist feelings but marshaling the , resources required extraordinary coordination between nation and state. Yet before delivering sorted soldiers organized in march to work, the mena material necessary to fight the war rested on the partnership between Abraham Lincoln and his loyal state governors. It was this alliance that established and shaped the waste the union applied its military power against the confederacy and pursuit of union. Only by examining this Crucial Partnership can we begin to understand how it contributed to the new nation lincoln referred to at gettysburg. For all that has appeared in print on lincoln and the civil war in the 150 years since the conflict, only the classic lincoln and the war governors has served as the sum of work on this relationship. Characteristic of its time and contributed to the lincoln idolatry, he portrays lincoln and the masterman and later of Public Opinion and political opinion and conflicts with governors over mobilization. He argued that the president was a key figure who brought northern governors and to tell into tow, doing what was needed despite the governors. The victory of nationalism over localism, over states rights was, in the last analysis, the victory of keener intellect over men of lesser minds. Consequently the history of the civil war merges into the biography of the man in the white house. That much is true. Yet as much as scholars credit lincoln with Engineering Union victory, he also benefited from governors selective efforts. Hardly did he regard his chief executives as men of lesser minds or dismiss them as insignificant spectators watching the war unfold from state capitals. Quite the contrary. Loyal governors demonstrated considerable influence by collaborating with the president , partnering with him to mobilize for war, and at times pushing him toward Greater National efforts. Governors experience the same expansive powers that lincoln enjoyed during the war. Governorslum Held Extraordinary power in wartime. The partnership between lincoln and governors can muster medically in mobilization. Lincoln understood their importance far better than the he allowed. Yes, they had disagreements, but lincoln was not trying to overpower them politically, ruin their prestige, or dominate their state affairs. Rather, he included them as essential in representative parts of the whole, meaning the unions preservation. Thus reinforcing the federal unions nationstate partnership that was necessary to maintain democracy. And selfgovernance. Without the willingness of local governors who agreed independently to uphold the union, marshall state resources and cooperate in establishing and national army, lincoln would have been hardpressed to preserve the union. William c. Harris takes this up in his volume, lincoln and the republican governors. It provides appointed to spark your a point of departure. He respects their Constitutional Authority and worked with them to maintain a unified war effort. He emphasized their contributions and stresses that lincoln relied on them to win the war as well as preserve the union. Northerners who remain in the union clung to the notion that the bond between nationstate would have to succeed in order to achieve military victory. On a practical level, this took shape as unionists mobilized for war. By their cooperative effort, loyal governors exercised important powers. Citizens looked to them for leadership. Their partnerships with lincoln opera present examples of federal, state and federal cooperation that normally not only resulted in Union Victory , but also registered a triumph for the federal union. Antebellum governance had been centered and regionally driven, the consequence of a decentralized political system. Both lincoln and federal jim is thought the civil war by summoning the dates to save themselves within, at first, vastly decentralized federal systems. As much as governors northerners accepted states rights, they rejected the presumption of state sovereignty over national sovereignty. The work presented an opportunity to emphasize the Mutual Respect and kinship among states that obliged its citizens to preserve the union first, even ones that contain slavery. In raising northern armies governors functioned as agents , of a National Coalition that stressed governmental activism, and emphasize the United States as a single nation. As such, preserving the union gave the appearance of nationalism. The required governors to play a crucial role in the war effort. By answering lincolns call, northerners chose to emphasize april, 1861, the same rights that southerners did in leaving the union. Only they used it to cooperate with lincoln. In doing so, they placed nation above state and relied on the union strengths to support a national authority. That strength spring from the alliance between lincoln and the governors and it reinforced the , federal unions resiliency. Yet fighting for the union did not been a lesson in their commitment to local governance. On the contrary. The struggle between easter conservative and western liberalism cap popular sovereignty alive and pitted agrarian and industrial interests against each other. Supporting the National Government, many believed, would support state and local autonomy. Lincoln understood the fusion of state politics and nationalist ideology and state governors regiments organized by governors compromised his plans. Union government derived from the regionally dependent relationship between national and state leaders who navigated the political shoals of mobilization, emancipation, and conscription. One lincoln expanded his war aims and his National Power to assist governors and maintaining support for the war, a test of popular sovereigntys limits. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles predicted this much early on in the war. The government will doubtless be stronger after the conflict is over then it has ever been, he confided to his wife. And it will be less liberty, perhaps of greater security. Even so, state executives clung to a wide range of powers and displayed skill in bringing together political worlds that prior to the war had existed independently of one another. Mobilizing and sustaining a volunteer spirit forced them to despite jealousies and competing ambitions to reach across state lines as well as cooperate with the National Government. Governors were as worried about the expansion of National Powers as they did about the conduct during the war. Statesng seven seven southern states. Unity was important for northerners to achieve victory. Yet they debated the nature of the union they were preserving. Governors were party spokesman, policy formulators. Yet, in times of peace, they served as figureheads. Legislatures held nearly all in ministry of authority and delegated to governors limited powers suited for the times. They had two primary functions assigned by the state constitutions executive and , administrative. Theye chief executives ervise, appointed typically, state constitutions relegated them to be commanders in chief of the state militias, granting them power to convene the legislature, create and submit budgets fill vacancies in , state offices, and granted them some appointed powers. Administratively however constitutions limited their , powers, often qualifying the governors veto power and restricting their oversight of elected officers. Before the war, the governors cabinets are small and included typically a lieutenant governor, a secretary of state, a treasurer auditor of public , accounts, a superintendent of approvals, and attorney general. Many states they were elected rather than appointed, thus minimizing control over these opposite by the governor. With the assistance of executive secretary and one or two clerks, governors supervised correspondence that attended the legal matters associated with the government including deaftitutions for the and insane, prisons, public schools, public works, and the office of the adjutant general. Chief executives given annual address and recommended changes to improve their citizens economic and social conditions. But the exigencies of war turned governors and a powerful closelyans and voters monitored their ascendancy, also in maintaining a balance between local and national priorities. Relied on financiers and merchants to advise and mobilize resources to raise and maintain the armys and worked with legislatures to accommodate the changes brought by the war. They made use of advances in weaponry, refrigeration, medicine and relied on agents to procure items essential to soldiering. And assuming such vast power so quickly citizens kept them , accountable for their decisions. Most human editorial terms are made short made were governors all the more answerable to the electorate. Lenders went to the polls annually to elect governors while california, illinois, iowa, kansas, new york, ohio, michigan, minnesota West Virginia and wisconsin went to the polls biannually. Delaware indiana, kentucky, missouri, and oregon allow their governors foryour terms. Four year terms. Most importantly, with their authority as commanders in chief, they were allowed to take emergency actions. Still their formal powers did , not equip them with the powers for leadership and they relied on local political and Financial Advisors better suited to offer assistance. Many chief executives came at office having won popularity and credibility because of the practical business experience, their legal acumen or previous political service. They have been farmers, merchants, journalists, lawyers, doctors and bankers. Some were lifelong democrats. Some had been whigs. Rodes road the tide of the tide of the Political Movement over kansas statehood that helped engineer the established a sectional identity comprising a vastly political assemblage dedicated to preserving the union. With the wars outbreak, they forged a stronger relationship by infusing a patriotic spirit among locals that tied into a national cause. Along the way governors politicized the regiments that one of the war, mobilize voters and maintain alliances at home. Thus most women states remain strongly republican throughout the war. The most prominent republican governors throughout the war included john andrew, William Buckingham of connecticut, injured curtain of pennsylvania Samuel Kirkwood of iowa, edwin only two years in new , yorks, Oliver Morton israel , washburn, and richard gates of illinois. Preserving the union also fell on loyal democratic governors who well chanting the partys causes including states rights in slavery supported the union war effort. Notable democrats, as well as those who joined the ticket in 1964 included Thomas Bramlett of kentucky, john downey of california, Jewell Parker of new jersey, david todd of ohio, John Whitaker of oregon. The choice remained loyal to direc