my name is michelle kroll, and i'm the lincoln forum's secretary. and i'm delighted to to introduce the speakers to conclude this session. we now turn our attention to the topic of lincoln and the democrats. let me briefly introduce the panelists before turning the program over to our moderator, jonathan white. so proceeding in alphabetical order, reg ankrom is the author of two of a projected three volume biography of democrats stephen a douglas, who played such a pivotal role in american history and in abraham lincoln's political life in illinois. it was through his interest in lincoln that and from discovered douglass, whose connection to his hometown of jacksonville, illinois, inspired him to take on douglass as a biographical subject. his first book, stephen a douglas the political apprenticeship, 1833 to 1843, received the illinois state historical society annual award for scholarship, and graham earned his bachelor's degree in english at illinois college in jacksonville and his master's degree from the university city of kansas at lawrence, a city with additional ties to douglass and lincoln. through the turmoil produced by link by douglass's kansas nebraska act of 1854 and graham worked as the statehouse reporter for the illinois state register before embarking on a career in public relations and working for an illinois utility company. he also served as the executive director of the historical society of quincy and adams county. jay matthew gallman is a professor of history at the university of florida, where he teaches courses in the civil war era 19th century america and american women's history. he is the author of numerous books, including receive aaron's children, philadelphia, liverpool and the irish famine migration. 1845 to 1855 america's joan of arc. the life of anna elisabeth dickinson and several studies of the northern homefront during the civil war. he is the coeditor with gary w gallagher of lens of war, exploring iconic photographs of the civil war and civil war places. seeing the conflict through the eyes of its leading historians. his most recent book is the cacophony of politics northern democrats and the american civil war. lincoln forum chairman harold holzer ah needs no introduction to forum veterans. his scholarship and media presence are also so extensive that he may needs no introduction to the wider audience. harold has authored, coauthored and edited 55 books, including the lincoln image lincoln on democracy on lincoln, president elect and lincoln and the power of the press, which won the 2015 gilder lehrman lincoln prize, among other awards. his latest books are monument man the life and art of daniel chester, french and the presidents and the versus the press. harold has written more than 600 articles for popular and scholarly publications and chapters or introductions in 60 additional volumes. following 23 years as senior vice president of the metropolitan museum of art, he has served since 2015 as director of the roosevelt house public policy institute at hunter college in new york city. and as many of us know, harold is lucky enough to be married to the lovely edith, a stellar thought forum participant and formerly the director of public affairs for the new york state council on child caring agencies. i wanted to make sure edith got a shout out to there too. elizabeth leonard is the john jay and cornelia v gibson professor of history emerita at colby college in waterville, maine. leonard is the author of several books on the civil war era, including yankee women, gender battles in the civil war, all the daring of the soldier, women of the civil war, armies, and lincoln's forgotten ally. judge advocate general joseph holt of kentucky, which was named co-winner of the gilder lehrman lincoln prize in 2012. her new book, benjamin franklin butler a noisy, fearless life. elizabeth delves into the life of the controversy. shall 19th century lawyer civil war general and massachusetts politician and argues for a reevaluation of the historical reputation of this colby college alumni and democrat turned radical republican. given that i work in the manuscript division of the library of congress, it would be remiss of me not to note that elizabeth is one of, if not the only researcher to identify her favorite manuscript reading room locker number. in her acknowledgments. that's hard core. and this morning, elizabeth and i said, we may need to put a plaque on that locker. and the moderator for this discussion is lincoln forum vice chairman jonathan white. john is a professor of american studies at christopher newport university in newport news, virginia. he is the author or editor of 13 books, including abraham lincoln and treason in the civil war the trials of john merriman and emancipation, the union army and the reelection of abraham lincoln, which was a finalist for the lincoln prize. his most recent books include midnight in america, darkness, sleep and dreams during the civil war. to address you as my friend african americans letters to abraham lincoln and a house built by slaves, african-american visitors to the lincoln white house. he has published more than 100 articles essays and reviews, and he has been a frequent forum presenter, including the 2019 into 2018, when he and coauthor anna gibson holloway spoke on our little monitor. the greatest invention of the civil war and hopefully after all these introductions, we still have time to actually have a panel discussion. so now let me turn it over to john white, who will be your moderator. thank you, michel. i think we've got about 5 minutes till we break for lunch. i wanted to start off by acknowledging some of the ways that politics in the 19th century differs from our politics today. and so i wanted to start with harold and ask, can you talk a little bit about how the political party press was different in the 19th century? what was it like during lincoln, during lincoln's rise? did it change at all during his presidency? well, it it was it was it was different, certainly in the print world. maybe the closest analog to the partizan nature or the openly, happily partizan nature of the print press in the lincoln era is the all news stations of of 2022 fox. on one end of the spectrum, msnbc's c on the other, although they don't quite admit that they're partizan they they sort of show that they're partizan and, you know, proudly so they do it. so that's the the analog in the lincoln era. i would say every small town op had two newspapers. i heard reg introduced as a veteran of the illinois state register. were you the register with the journal register? so he was. he worked for the democratic newspaper in lincoln's day in his hometown, the register was the democratic paper. the state journal was the republican paper in st louis. the republican was the democratic paper and the democrat was the republican paper. that's a relic of the jeffersonian era. the new york times was the not only the republican paper from 1851 on, it was the closest to william seward and then to the lincoln administration. the new york tribune was a republican paper, but kind of off off of lincoln's beat on on occasion. quixotic and mercurial. so the difference is from today's print papers was alleged to be nonpartisan, is that the print press was openly partizan every small, medium and large city had at least a and i'm leaving out the whig era, a democratic and a republican paper. and if you read, as i have for years and years, descriptions of the same event. take the lincoln-douglas debates. you know, one quick example, and then i'll yield after the first debate. the the republican papers said that lincoln supporters carried him off on their shoulders in triumph. the democratic paper said lincoln was so exhausted, dead from his encounter with the little giant that he had to be carried off the platform. so that's the difference. you mentioned the new york times. henry jay raymond was actually the chairman of the republican party in 1864. he was not only chairman of the party and editor of the new york times and chief propagator, artist of the 1864 campaign. so he would be david axelrod, too. he wrote a book that came out for the campaign of lincoln's greatest letters and speeches. raymond was also doubled, tripled, quadrupled. as a republican candidate for congress during that same year and won much to his regret because he hated being in congress, but not to be outdone, the chairman of the democratic party in new york property in new york purchased the new york world. so both national chairs owned new york dailies during the 1864 campaign. yeah. so let's go back to lincoln's earlier life before the civil war. i want to come over to reg, the democratic party was formed in illinois by stephen douglass around 1836. douglas at that time was 23 years old. and this is going to be lincoln's first encounter with the democratic party. can you tell us about douglass, his efforts to start the democratic party? why did he do it? how successful was he? and what do we know about lincoln's reaction? let me begin by thanking harold holzer. it's nice to know that he recognized that there were actually two men in the lincoln douglas debates. so thank you, harold. as as john said. douglass was very young entering politics and was very successful on his entrance in politics. he actually believed later talked about it, but believed that there were five estates in this country. and i'll preface that simply by saying, you know, jefferson and madison said government should not extend beyond the the appalachians to begin with. and then the mississippi, because government couldn't handle all of that responsibility. douglas gets elected from quincy in 1843 with the idea of expanding the nation from making it an ocean bound republic from atlantic to pacific, and the importance of party was to douglas what would achieve that expansion? that was the fifth estate we had the legislative the executive and the judicial branch, and then we had the fourth estate. the press. and in douglas's mind, there had to be a fifth estate because those were not institutional in a sense. the fifth estate were parties that were the amalgam were the glue that could hold the country together. and it was the party. he believed that could carry the message. and actually extend the nation. douglas believed that the expansion of the nation was the expansion of liberty. lincoln saw douglas for the first time in 1834, when douglas was in vandalia, the second state capital, campaigning for a bill which would change the nature of how states attorneys were appointed. lincoln nudged his seatmate when he saw douglas was five foot four. lincoln being six foot four. he nudged his seat. means that that's the least man i ever saw, and he disparaged him. only one more time. that was when douglas almost beat john todd stewart for election to congress in believe it was 1838 when it was 1835. anyway, when douglas lost, there were 36,000 votes cast. douglas lost by 36 votes, and lincoln knew douglas would contest that which he did for a year. and when lincoln finally saw that douglas had ended his campaign to try to get a real reelection, stewart simply said no. he'd already been certified by the secretary of state. lincoln said, i'm never going to talk again about that young man. it's such a small matter. i never intend to address it again. so there were two times that he disparaged douglas. but lincoln in the long term had great respect for douglas. douglas certainly had great respect for lincoln. lincoln pursued douglas for 26 years. lincoln nearly lost all of the attempts he made for office. he was asked once to run for governor of illinois in 1840, and he declines saying a whig will never win statewide office in illinois. and he pointed to steven douglas's democratic party. douglas believed the party was the glue that could hold the nation. certainly hold his own state, and certainly hold his political career in his fist. hmm. matt in your book, the cacophony of politics, you call the democratic insiders wire pullers. can you talk a little bit about what you mean by this term wire pullers? and what did these insider ers on the democratic side think about lincoln? well, i used the term wire pullers in a way that i think we're probably probably with now in terms of people who have a role in shaping events and shaping decisions and so on. i spent a lot of time with the correspondents. i mean, barlow's correspondents, part of what goes on to basically be my colleagues out of his campaign and i spent a lot of time reading democrats ideas, not just barlow's, who are sort of comparing notes on politics, on the future, on what's going to happen next. part 1860. prior to 1864 and these are people who are not necessarily in all the smoke filled rooms, but these are people who are committed to the party. they're not they don't share everything in common. but they they have this long term sense. i think these democrat ads generally have a very long view where the civil war is kind of a bump in a long road. and in that sense, when it comes to lincoln, i think it's probably worth knowing and probably not fully known, is that although the the press that's linked to the democrats is in many cases very hostile to lincoln and calling him a term tyrants, so often these people in their private correspondence commonly understand lincoln to be a moderate. you know, they these are small c conservative. and they repeatedly say that this is a guy we can work with. this is the problem for lincoln is that lincoln is being controlled by radicals, by, you know, abolitionists in his cabinet and in his circle. but lincoln himself is in general a patriot and a moderate and that's what i get from that. the private correspondence. but it also comes out in acts of public statements that, you know, we tend to keep thinking of the democrats as being this party of of lunatics. and certainly there were lunatics in the democratic party. but there's an awful lot of public statements. one of my favorites is sherman, who was the the mayor of chicago and a democrat. and sherman writes a very i mean, he gets reelected at all times because it's an annual election. and he has a great statement about where we stand. and you know, politically where he is. you know, look, i've got he's got all these things interested, but he says nationally, you know, we are conservatives and because we are conservatives, we oppose the president for a whole shopping list of things that he was doing that sort of seemed to violate the constitution. but on the other hand, he is what we would call a war democrat. and there are lots of examples like that where i think a lot of these people really believe. even in the first part of the war, that lincoln was sort of a conserve, a tough man surrounded by radicals. all right. so the democrats, this lunatic. so i'm going to use that to transition to my next question. coming over to me now. i well, i wanted to talk about the makeup of the democratic party during the civil war. the war begins and the democratic party divides. you have a peace wing of the party on the one hand, and then the war democratic wing of the party. many of them become republicans. now, elizabeth, i don't know if you've ever heard this before, but it turns out that ben butler voted for jefferson davis 55 times. have you heard? so i just learned it yesterday, but i can't remember where i heard it. how appropriate is it for us to think about ben butler as a democrat? can you tell us about his background before the war? and what is it that changed him? i have heard that he put it that way. i also want to mention that he also was five foot four, but he never got called the little giant. maybe we should think about that as you name for him. what he did. he was i would say, prior to the war, he was a true, loyal democrat as he understood that he came to the democratic party probably through the connections that his father had, although he never met his father. he then became a democrat and involved in the democratic party in lowell when he was beginning his career as a lawyer there and he did go to charleston and voted for jefferson davis. all those times because he believed that the party should win, that 1860 election at that point, i would say. and there it's a complicated calculation he makes. and i'm sorry to sound like i'm just promoting the book, but really i do lay that out. what it was the calculation that he made. he wasn't pro jefferson davis as much as he as i understand it, was looking for a candidate who could actually win that 1860 election for the party. but once the south began to secede, he became disloyal to the party or loyal only to the war. democratic side of the party. and he was infuriated with what was happening in the splitting of the party. and then he moves into the war as a very clear, i think, war democrat. but when the as the war progresses, it's really the war itself and his experience of the war and the ways that he understands that the republican party more clearly represents his views about things. and the democratic party, as he understood it, has kind of drifted away. he remains a democrat technically, but he's moving over to the republican side. and ultimately then he does become a republican, but later on he becomes a democrat again, and then he becomes a green back and anti-monopoly party. but it's i have seen many people say he was a person with no principle, as i think i tried to say yesterday, he wasn't a person with no principle. he was a person who believed that principle was more important than party loyalty. he really didn't care what the party was. eventually. if the party didn't represent the principle, as he believed in, by the end of the time, he was a republican. he he didn't leave the republican party until long after many of his greatest fans and allies were begging him to leave the party because the party had abandoned them. and that particularly includes black republicans in the south who were saying, leave the party. the party is doing nothing for us. leave the party, create your own party. and he thought about doing that as well. yeah. did you want to add something that i couldn't tell? i could, but i'll pass. i. so let me follow up, elizabeth and talk fast forward four years to the election of 1864. so we know in 1860 where he stands in 1864, there are some sources that suggest that lincoln may have offered the vice presidency to butler and that butler turned it down. can you talk about the reliability of those stories? and i know historians hate the sort of you know, what if question but if butler had had been the vice president and then become the president in the wake of the assassination, what do you think he would have been like as a reconsider action president? can i ask you to come back to. sure. all right. we'll go back to you. i would just call on photogenic that would be my answer. and that's what he would. i can't save this man. i'm trying to save. maybe it's a sign. i don't know. all right. i'll come over to harold, then you'll come back to me. i would like. sure. there was a lot of suppression of free speech and free press during the war. can you talk about why lincoln allowed for the crackdown of the democratic press and what sort of effects did that crackdown have on the politics of the war itself. well, there were waves of suppression, although my research showed that the suppression lasted an astonishingly long time through. i found one example from january of 1865, when i did my book, the waves were for the following reason the the after sumter. and after secession broadened lincoln. and while the lincoln was had never quite had his hands on the early suppression he had plausible deniability as the army, the state department, the interior department, the the attorney general's office did, th