Great honor to be here at the lincoln forum. I am coming from a different country. This is certainly, eddies berg is one of the holy paces places in lincoln country. I have spent most of my career in Founding Fathers country. Although they are both in the United States, and they both helped define the United States, i think of the scholars and the two countries do not talk to each other as much as they should. Abraham lincoln talked to the Founding Fathers all his life. His most famous utterance was the speech he gave here, where he said, our fathers wrought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty. That was in november, 1863. Two and a half years into the civil war. But three years before that, february, 1860, at the cooper Union Address, the kickoff was his first president ial campaign. His new york city debut. A 90 minute speech, half of it was devoted to the framers of the constitution. Lincoln argued that a majority of them believed that the federal government had the power to regulate slavery in the territories. He proved it from the laws that they made as lawmakers. In that speech, he said, slavery as they marked it, so let it be again marked as an evil not to be extended. Let us speak as they spoke and act as they acted upon us. Six years before that, his pale oria speech, in october of 1854, the kickoff of his mature political life, the longest speech he ever gave three hours. It lays out the themes he will pursue for most of the rest of his life. In that speech he said our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust, but it says churn the blood and spirit of the revolution. This afternoon, i want to focus on the three Founding Fathers who i think were most influential for lincoln. George washington, thomas paine, and Thomas Jefferson. A man who is so engaged with the Founding Fathers, inevitably makes us curious about his own biological father. I will start with Thomas Lincoln. Then there is a fifth father who assumes more and more importance as the civil war grinds on, and that is god the father. Thomas lincoln was born in virginia. He was taken to kentucky when he was a boy. It was in kentucky that he married nancy and began his family. A daughter sarah was born in 1807. Abraham was born in 1809. 1812, diesthomas, after only three days. In 1816, thomas takes his family to the brandnew state of indiana carved out of the northwest territory. In 1830, they moved again to illinois, which is where thomas will live for the rest of his life. Thomas was a subsistence farmer and a carpenter. There was a trend in the mid20th century biography and history to treat thomas as a never do well. One of the first lincoln books i read was a Modern Library collection of his greatest speeches and letters. There is a long introductory essay that was very disdainful of Thomas Lincoln. We do not think that way anymore. We knowledge that Thomas Lincoln never went broke. He never left bad debts. He served on several juries in his life, a sign of respectability if not prosperity. He was also a trustee of the Frontier Baptist Church that his family were shipped in in indiana. He provided a family for his children. His first wife, nancy, died when abraham was nine years old. Thomas waits one year and then he goes from indiana back to kentucky he looks up an old , acquaintance, sarah, who is a widow. He says to her, you have lost your husband, i have lost my wife, i want to become back to indiana with me with your children and help raise mine. She says she has debts to pay. He says, give me the list and i will pay them today. Which he does. And they leave the following day. That is a story that has come down to us. He gave his family a second mother, a stepmother. He also gave his children and education. Lincoln went to two schools in kentucky when he was a little boy, and three more in indiana. These were one room schoolhouse schoolhouses. They depended on the presence in the neighborhood of some young man who had an education and was Strong Enough to keep the older boys in line. If you add up all the time that lincoln spent in these schools, it was no more than one year. He did learn how to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. That is the second thing that thomas provided his son. But abraham and thomas never saw eye to eye. Part of the problem was work. As soon as abraham reached his full growth at 11 or 12 he shot, shot up, his father would put him to work, not only plowing his own fields, but renting him out to neighbors to clear their fields. All of the money that abraham earned by this work would go to thomass pocket. This was a common custom at the time. But common Customs Strike different people in different ways. We know that abraham hated this. He once said that my father learned me to work but never learned me to love him. That is because the work he was doing was not his own, it was for others, for his father. I do not think it is fanciful to say that some of his aversion to slavery comes from this youthful experience. When lincoln turns 21 and becomes an adult, he will leave his family and this will end. Of course, that never happens for a slave unless they escape, rebels, or is freed. Still, lincoln saw a bond before between the life he had led and the life that slaves lead. Another disagreement between him and his father was education. Thomas wanted his son to know how to read and write and do simple math. But that is because those were skills that would be useful for a subsistence farmer or a craftsman to have. That is why he wanted his son to have them. But for abraham, reading and portals, portals to the world. They were portals to his inner world. They could show him new things. They could allow him to develop his own thoughts. This is something his father never got. His stepmother did get it. She was interviewed as an old lady and she remembered how her stepson learned when he was young. When he was young and adults came to visit and talked about something that was unfamiliar to him, he would not interrupt, he would wait until they were gone and say, what was that, what were they talking about, what did that mean . If you read something he did not understand, he would write them down and rewrite it in his own words. If you did not have paper, he would write it on a board with charcoal. When he filled up the board, he would clean it up and start over again. His stepmother saw this and encouraged it. Thomas lincoln, not so much. Nevertheless abraham did get , three things from his father although he never ate knowledge to them. One of them was strength. The lincolns were differently built. Abraham was over six feet tall. He was thin and lanky. Thomas was five foot 10 inches and solid. Both of them were strong. This was important in the communal hazing rituals that every young man had to go through when he moved into a new place. You would have to prove yourself against the local tough guy. Both thomas and abraham had these experiences. They passed the test well enough that they were accepted. That was an important inheritance. The second inheritance was temperance. Early 19thcentury america was a nation of alcoholism. Estimates that the average adult drink five gallons of hard liquor a year. I saw another estimate which was 7. 5 gallons a year. That is probably done by factoring slaves out of the equation. Slaves were not encouraged to drink hard liquor. A doctor in new york, dr. Samuel mitchell on the faculty of columbia and u. S. Senator estimated that workingmen drink a quart of hard liquor a day. This not only ruined their health, it made them turbulent and willing to fight. Neither thomas nor abraham drank. I think it kept to them clearheaded and out of trouble. The most important thing that abraham got from thomas was storytelling. We know this from two of his cousins on his mothers side. John and thomas hanks. They lived for a number of years with the link in the family. One of them said in later years that thomas was as good a storyteller as abraham. The other said thomas was even better. Who knows. We do know that abraham was an excellent storyteller. It helped him as a lawyer, it put clients injuries as ease. It put audiences at ease. As a politician it kept people away. One of his cronies from illinois remembered how lincoln handled the crowds that descended upon him in springfield after he won the republican nomination in 1860. Everybody in the world was coming to his house and asking for something. He said he heard them all, told them all a story, and sent them all away. Probably the smarter ones as they were leaving said, i did not ask him about, but by then it was too late, the story had done its work. He seems to have gotten this from his father. He seems to have learned this at home. Lincoln got and did not get from Thomas Lincoln. Thomas dies in 1851. Abraham names his son after him. He names a horse after him, old tom. After he is elected before he goes up to washington, he visits his fathers grave. He sees that there is no stone on it. He says, i have to put one on. He never does. That was the end of his relationship with his biological father. If we do not get everything we need or want from our parents, and none of us ever does, we have to look elsewhere. We have to look for substitutes or surrogates. For a boy or a young man in early 19thcentury america, the handiest surrogates were the Founding Fathers. Many of these men were still alive when lincoln was young. He was born one month before Thomas Jefferson left the white house at the end of his second term. Jefferson was followed by eight years of James Madison, who was followed by eight years of the james monroe, the last founding father president. This takes us up to lincolns teens. By the time lincoln is in his 20s, this generation of men who won the revolution and wrote the constitution are dying. None of them ever came to kentucky, indiana, or illinois. Lincoln never went to the east coast where they lived until after they were gone. If you wanted to meet these men, the only place he could do it had to be in books. The first founding father he met with the greatest of them all, George Washington. Met them in a book called the life and exploits of general George Washington. The author was an ordained clergyman, but he made his living as a publisher and seller of books. He would go up and down the east coast with his stock, many printed by himself, some of them written by himself. He and that George Washington once. He paid one visit to mount vernon and sent him one letter about his book business. He turned this link on the title page of his washington biography where he identifies himself as the parson of mount vernon parish. [laughter] there is no such not theand he was parson of it. He did see that biography of George Washington would be a bestseller. Washington dies in 1799. He comes out with his book in 1800. He has a second edition in 1808, the year before lincoln is born. This is the book that lincoln reads as a boy, probably as early as kentucky. He was one of those writers alike James Fenimore cooper or h. P. Lovecraft, sentences are not very good, but the stories are terrific. The proof is that we all know one of them. The story of washington and the cherry tree has entered the national mythology. You all know it. When george is a young he is given a hatchet by his father augustine and as he is swinging , it around he accidentally slashes the bark of one of his fathers prize cherry trees. The father sees what happened. He goes to his son and he says, george, do you know how this happened . George says i cannot tell a lie, i did it with my hatchet. And then his father says, come to my arms my boy. What you have said is more valuable to me than gold. This story is teaching a double lesson. It is teaching children or young adults to tell the truth. It is also teaching parents, if your child tells the truth about some mistake he has made, do not beat him up, but praise him for it, because that will encourage him to be honest. Lincoln was not inspired by the authors story of George Washington as a good boy, he was inspired by his stories of washington as a great man. We know this because lincoln said so himself in 1861 when he was on his way to his first inauguration. He leaves springfield in the middle of february and he takes a train trip through the northeast and he swings down to washington, d. C. The country is falling apart. Six states have already seceded. The day he arrived in washington, texas the seventh will join them as the seventh. Will join them. He is trying to show the flag in the northeast. When he passes through trenton, new jersey, the capital of the state, he gives an address to the new jersey state senate. In there, he refers to the book. He says, i remember it from my first days of learning how to read. He says that of all the battles that the author describes, the one that made the greatest impression on him was the battle here at trenton. This of course was washingtons counter attack the end of 1776. This was after four months of catastrophic defeat. Washington had lost the battle of long island, lost the battle of white plains. The british had chased him out of new york. They had chased him across Central New Jersey and the Delaware River into pennsylvania. They rested on the jersey shore. They thought, come the spring they will wrap up the campaign , and the war and destroy his army. But washington takes his army back across the delaware in a nighttime attack. He attacks an enemy garrison at trenton capturing 900 prisoners. That is not the end of the beginning it is not the beginning of the end, excuse me. But it is the first time that this revolution may not end in disaster. Lincoln describes it to the new jersey senate. He refers to the struggle with the hessians, the allied german troops that there british had brought over. He talks about the crossing of the river and the sufferings of he talks about the suffering of the men. These are the very things he spends paragraphs describing. Lincoln goes on to say that even though i was, i thought there must have been something even more important than independence that these men struggle for. Something of importance to all men at all times. And he explains what that is. It is the liberties of the people. Again, if we go back to the book, that is exactly how he framed the battle of trenton. Because after he described the crossing of the delaware, the Continental Army still has a march of several miles before they come to trenton. He introduces a figure, a woman hovering over the troops, the spirit of liberty. He says she has been chased out of europe. Shes come to the new world as a refuge. But her enemies have followed her with navies and soldiers. Who will defend her . Nly this ragged band of men. And the words he puts into washingtons mouth when he is encouraging his men to charge are all that i ask you to remember is what you are about to fight for. In 1861 lincoln remembered. He had said the battle of trenton was a battle and struggle for the fate of liberty in the world. Lincoln thought he was engaged in the same struggle as George Washington. The second founding father that comes across lincolns path is homas payne. He fits a little oddly among this group, an englishman who came over in his 30s. He never had a political office. He was briefly a secretary of the congressional committee. He was the great journalist of the american revolution. In january, 1776 he published a pamphlet common sense which argued for independence six months before Congress Declared it. He sold 150,000 copies. This was in a population of 3 million. It was shared and it was read allowed to other people. Ive seen an estimate that as many as onehalf of all the adults in america read or heard common sense. At the end of 1776 he writes an essay the american crisis and wrote it during washingtons retreat across new jersey before the battle of trenton. Paine was in one of washingtons camps and wrote it n a drum head. He hurried to philadelphia to have it printed and washington had it read aloud to his troops. The opening sentence of the essay, i think, is the greatest opening sentence thats ever been or will be in journalism. Its these are the times that try mens souls. The suffering soldier and the sun shayne patriot will dessert his country but he who stands now deserves the love and thank of men and women. When the american soldiers attached trenton he said these are the times that try mens souls. That is the effect trentons words had. After the war paine almost destroys his reputation by writing another book called the ainge of reason. Its a ferocious attack on revealed religion. Paine was not an atheist. Thords would later call him a filthy little atheist. That was not true. Paine himself always said i believe in one god and no more but he argues in the age of reason that every exiting religion is the system set up to terrify and enslave mankind. He makes a number of hits at islam, more at judaism, but most of his fire is directed at the religion that he, himself, grew up in, which is christianity. In his book he explains the moment where he says that he first came to this conviction. He says that when he was 7 or 8 years old someone in his family gave a reading at home of a sermon on the substitutionary atonement, which is the Christian Doctrine that christ died for our sins. He paine remembers that left the room and he walked down some steps into the garden, and he writes, i revolted at the recollection of what i had heard and thought to myself that it was making god almighty act like a passionate man that killed his son when he could not revenge himself any other way. As i was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, i could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. Now, lincoln seems to have read paine in illinois, in new salem, and later on when he moves to springfield in his early 20s. So hes just left the nest. Hes left his father. Hes left his fathers church. Like many 20 somethings he hinks this is just terrific. The religion he was brought up in is all nonsense, full of con