I mean the woman he referred to as his angel mother, nancy lincoln, the woman who regarded in his fatherand his whose relationship with him remains something of a controversy even today. Of the three, who was influential and who was a negative influence . Why dont we start with sydney. Microphone. Negativesitive and the were about one experience, and that was an experience of being in the lincoln family growing up. Him,tepmother protected crucially, from his father, which enabled his Early Education and that was the initial positive spark for lincoln. Lincoln was a bright, inquisitive, naturally inquisitive child, but he was suppressed by his father. Was ather himself suppressed man and that have enormous influence all the way through his life and deeply on his articulate thinking on slavery. Had been a poor third farmer in kentucky. He had been cut out of the family inheritance. His stepbrother had taken it all and wound up being a quasiaristocratic. He had terrible luck was reduced to competing for wages with slaves. His farm was expropriated from from the philadelphia banker who owned the land. He fled kentucky, fled a slave economy in which he was on the lower rung and fled into the free territory of indiana. On, he rented out abraham as a wage as an indentured servant, until the age of 21, which was legal. And he all of his wages sent it out as a laborer of all kinds. The opening line of my book is that he was remarkably reticent about his life and understandably so. Lincoln, when he emerged with his identity, his new identity as a republican in 1856, makes a kind of joke, the kind of joke that is a freudian joke. And he says i used to be a slave. But now they let me practice law. What he is talking about is growing up and his father. When lincoln makes the pr you speed the peoria speech, he are states fores poor white people to remove from. Free states are states where poor white people go to. That is his idea at the root of the struggle between slavery and freedom, its not simply about the slave, its also about the free white laborer. Written that have perhaps we ignore the subsistence and positive provisions thomas made for his struggling family but at least they survived. How would you respond and the women, lets not forget the women. I think sydney puts this all very well, and certainly thomas freelf moved from a state to a slave state, showing him the way out he took. Son, iwrote founders think the book that made the latest impression on me was the publication of all the notes that he took after lincoln died and he was preparing his biography and realized there was a lot of stuff that lincoln never told and he wrote what we would call an oral history. The most moving single piece in that book is his interview with Sarah Bush Johnston lincoln, she survived her murdered son, she and he describes that when he first went to interview her he thought she lost it and she wont get anything. But he sits down and has dinner with her and he must have been a great interviewer. He talks about the old day and then she opens up and she describes how lincoln learned when he was a boy and how persistent he was and how careful he was and how she served this, and then she has this amazing sentence where she says, almost shyly, his mind and my mind, such as it was, were alike. And i read that and i thought, lady, your mind is fine. You did us all a great service. Even though she complained that he didnt like her food. [laughter] well, you cant have everything. [laughter] we now have president elect lincoln in springfield. Everyone is coming to see him. Everyone wants his ear. Many appointments are being made. He slips away from springfield to go visit his stepmother. This says volumes about who she is in his life. This is the trip he wants to make. We dont know exactly what transpired in terms of the conversation below we have already heard from our two previous persons is how important she is in his life. When the mother died, the family fell into disorder, a comment about men living by themselves. He goes back and brings Sarah Bush Johnson is the family. She brings order but she brings female nurturing to him and i think it is hard to overestimate how important she is in nurturing this boy and he wants to say that back to her. This is a very deep, personal, intimate visit that he must make to his stepmother. , itst is a hard visit not easy to move around once you get off the train in charleston or whatever. I was struck by a letter that he gets when he is in the white house theres not much evidence of what he did support his family but there is this letter in which dennis says the 50 you said has been appropriated by one of sarahs children. Shes not getting any benefit. It must have broken his heart because hes not there to control the meager support. Its a fascinating relationship. Quickly, because we should move influence,athers why do you suppose lincoln never introduced his wife or his children to this begin of the stepmother . Sarah afterto lincolns assassination to say you may not know this but we have a son who was named for your husband. Thats how remote the connection is. Different classes, maybe . She writes that mary lincoln did not approve of his family and regarded them as lowerclass. She turned into hated and she would notsays allow lincolns family in the house, she would not allow herndon in her house and regarded him as a problem. Who could be closer to my hero than me . Closest. Exactly the lincoln had a very strange relation all the way through with his father. He had gone earlier when his father was ill and then recovered and then when his ,tepbrother summoned him again refusing to say that god will take care of things. Its brutal. Think still felt the andds of that relationship it goes back to the stepmother who made possible lincolns education. The father regarded education as a waste of time, as useless streaming. In a positive sense of father may have thought my son should be a cabinet maker, carpenter like i am you should have a trade. He regarded reading books as a complete waste of time and putting him on the wrong road, away from being able to earn a living. That is why lincoln escaped he described his father is a poor, wondering boy, but it was lincoln who was the poor, and who discovered other influences in indiana as a who he would befriend and discover their libraries and read through them. Psychobabble for a moment. When we talk about the founders, as we must, inevitably we refer back to the image of lincolns first major public speech. In it he talks about the and there is much is that the moment when he discards his mind and his own adopts the Founding Fathers at that moment as his true inspiration . Why dont we start with you you talked a great deal about this in your book. Speech, its a very interesting speech. There are flashes of the Great Lincoln when he says the silent artillery of time that is from his topdrawer. The whole speech is not at that level there are interesting things and then there is 19thcentury padding. There are lincolns problem is that the founders are dead and gone and what do we do in his absence . How do we make up for the fact that they are no longer here . 1838,ceum speech is madison died in 36, the last signer of the constitution. Way, later on lincoln would find a way to make a living again. Is mourning their absence whats so funny to me is that how come you are talking about the silent artillery of time . Thats not like euclid, you are undercutting your own appeal with your own language. But he is a young man. I think this speech is his right of passage, this is his first public address the toastmasters club, learning how to speak and debate. Onlynk of the phrase, tis will to transmit there be the recollection of the founders but now he is beginning to ask himself, what is our identity, there is this sadness we have been left with not a great role to play. He hasnt yet discovered what that role is and i think thats a very real part of the speech. Although the death of Elijah Lovejoy is back there in his consciousness, the presbyterian editor of the newspaper who had been killed in the streets, he is worried about what he calls mobocracy. Theres a context of great crisis around him and his speech is an answer to that crisis. Lincoln is always conscious of he context it is never a speech reaching backwards. The president it the president is the death of Elijah Lovejoy. And he is trying to insert, what do we do . He says he is terribly worried right at that moment. First on the psychobabble front, the literary critic suggests that in this speech when lincoln talks about the danger to democracy coming from an individual who believes that he is a towering genius, above all others and will trample down the laws in order to gain the ultimate power and you will do it on the basis of lincoln uses the word celebrity. Wilson, according to lincoln is projecting himself into the future and worried about himself and imagining him self being that individual. Fact, lincoln is talking about his eternal rival, stephen a douglas. And also napoleon, dont you think . No, no, exactly right. In either case, towering genius is a joke. [laughter] its the image of napoleon as the dictator who travels to democracy and ruins the initial revolution lincoln had been writing anonymous editorials under pseudonyms denouncing douglas as taking those sorts of actions. Douglas was in a norm asleep dynamic camera was an enormously capable and demagogic person who was already rising above lincoln and kept rising above him for decades. ,incoln is looking at douglas ron pointed out the lovejoy connection and this is crucial to the speech. The background is that Elijah Lovejoy is an abolitionist editor who has been running a newspaper in illinois, who has his Printing Presses that are destroyed by mobs and thrown into the mississippi river. And in defense of his Printing Press warehouse he is attacked by a mob. He brings his own people to protect him. He refuses to give in. They have a battle in which he is murdered. There is a trial. The abolitionists are put on trial, not the mob. This completely takes over illinois politics. Lincoln does not use lovejoys name. He refers to an editor who was murdered in the context of many other incidents of trampling on the rule of law. Lovejoy is very important and he becomes even more important to lincoln through lovejoys brother, owen lovejoy, who swears on his brothers coffin that he will revenge him by dedicating himself to the abolition of slavery and becomes the early leader and organizer of the Republican Party and a great ally of lincoln. Vouching for lincoln to the abolitionist about his true principles. One cant say too much, or maybe one can so we shouldnt, about lincolns idealization and idolization of George Washington. The mightiest name on earth, he says. Long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty and moral reformation. In february, 1861, he leaves springfield for washington and delivers and later refines what i think is the first of his great, brief speeches. That is the farewell address. Which has many layers. The one i have always been most astonished by and continued to be astonished by that no one at the time seems to have noticed or been offended about it or about it, was lincoln saying i had a test before me greater than that which faced washington. That seems to me to be a breathtaking break from his reverence for the founders. I wonder if you agree with me or im totally alone in this conclusion. I think we have to look at what hes really saying and what people understood was his task was greater than washington. In no way is he suggesting he is greater than washington. The fact he references washington is his whole larger perspective of what the nation is involved in. Yes, this is quite a remarkable speech. We can argue if it was spontaneous or not. I think it was spontaneous and then he writes it down on the train and hands it to nikolay. I think the task is greater. He understands that even though he has reverence for the revolutionary period, they were and what historians would call a second revolution and he is leading that effort. But it is also pretty clear this will be a civil war. Which in his day the revolution was not remembered as being of course it was, especially in the south. Also in upstate new york there was a lot of civil strife during the revolution. That had all been kind of forgotten and smooth the way. People just rumored us against the brits. The enemy was foreign. It was the brits and the hessians and they came here to fight us. It is South Carolina and mississippi and alabama now. It is just a few train rides and a steamboat right away ride away. This is a very different thing. It is arguably a worst thing. The enemies are not foreigners, they are americans. They are all americans. Thats a terrible thing to contemplate. Did you want to comment . I think i agree with ron. It is a daunting task he faces. A civil war is more terrible. He is speaking about washington becoming president. I dont think he is speaking about washington leading the armys against the british armies against the british. I dont think he is talking about washington and the constitutional convention. I think he is talking about washington coming to be president. That is a different thing. And washington was universally acclaimed. He faced no opponent. He had no real election. And lincoln faces something quite different. He is a minority president. He has a divided country. He is accused of being the source of the division. And he has to come into the country even before the civil war and manage the beginning of what will be this great crisis. I will offer that i still think its audacious. Yes, you can parse it and say it is the task, but he is mentioning his own challenge in the same sentence as that of the most beloved, revered, fearless, spotless person in american history. These are interesting interpretations. But also washington did face a rebellion. There was the whiskey rebellion. The only rebellion we had had was that. That was six counties in pennsylvania. [laughter] now we are talking about six states and it will be seven when he gets there. And lincoln uses some of the same language that washington used in his proclamation against the whiskey rebellion. It comes from the militia act of 1792, the circumstances under which a president can call up of militia if the loss cannot be laws cannot be enforced in the regular way. I always try to drag myself and ourselves away from the washington story, as fascinating as it is. In 1861, that side of virginia fairly secure, mary lincoln indoors and excursion in mount vernon they go down in a steamboat. They get out of mount vernon and mary lincoln is absolutely thrilled. She goes and visits the dilapidated but iconic mount vernon. She visits the grave of george and martha washington. She buys photographed of not vernon and the photographs of mount vernon. 20 years ago. She is all in. Lincoln does not leave the boat, which i find fascinating. It is as if his reverence for people does not extend to places. I find that again and again with lincoln. I have political people who dont have that kind of reverence for place as much as for theory and example. Just a story. I knew if i told a story i would be immediately killed. [laughter] which i have apparently done. Did you know about that story . It reminds me of the education of henry adams he describes being taken the mount vernon when he was 12 years old by his father. He said the roads were bad. Bad virginia roads. In my mind i linked that was slavery but in the end there was mount vernon and George Washington. It concludes that there was nobody get to him. Which is a very painful, painful remark. Maybe lincoln felt something similar. He also resisted the invitation to go to the museum. Maybe he just do not like visiting places. Lets turn to the generation that proceeded lincoln more immediately and look there for some of his inspiration. Of course lincoln himself proposed henry clay as his that is of course how it should be pronounced. I dont think he said beau id eal. Henry clay, a hero. He abandoned him for clinically expedient purposes in 1848 in order to secure a whig victory. What was it about clay do you think . He references the compromise at the expense of webster, who he thinks is a greater orator and whose reply on the floor he reads over and over again in preparation for other work. Lets talk about clay and why he was the ideal . Clay is the founder of lincolns party. He is kind of George Washington of the whigs, but he is more than that. These an extraordinary political figure who creates a new kind of politics that lincoln grows up in. And the crackup of the federalists and after the long r reign of the democrats, clay is central to democratizing what was left of many of the federalists. But also drawing in new elements. He has a more modern hamiltonian vision of the economy, the american system. Building up using the federal government to build infrastructure, canals, roads. And he is rhetorically antislavery, although he is a slaveholder and often speaks about programs of gradual emancipation. He is the founder of the american Colonization Society, which we can debate about. In the upper south was considered to be a philanthropic and benevolent way of looking at the problem. He is more than that. He is the creator of the power of the congress. He is the first real speaker of the house. He creates the office with all of its powers and congressional powers. He is a senator. He represents kentucky, which is in a way i kind of balance we all in the country know in the country as a border state, lincolns birthplace. Lincoln is married to mary todd, whose father is clays Business Partner and political ally. Also a state senator. This is a connection that lincoln has to clay. In fact he is his beau ideal. He reads the louisville paper. Papers are kept, preserved. A dozen people will read one newspaper when he is a boy. They dont print local news. That is considered to be wordofmouth. It is national news, including excerpts from the annals of congress or the congressional globe. We would call the congressional record. Whole speeches, lincoln memorizes whole speeches of clay. When he becomes a whig, the first time he betrays clay was in 1840. By then, even then clay carried the burden of having been in politics and fighting in the trenches. He had been he suffered many wounds already by 1840. Before he had been nominated for president. Lincoln supported William Henry harrison who he thought was more electable, a general, and lincoln supported clay in 1844 when he was the whig chairman and clay narrowly lost. And then lincoln betrayed him again. Lincoln needs clay in lexington after he is elected to the congress. It