Introduce our extremely distinguished panel of americas leading lincoln scholars to discuss lincolns speeches and the american idea. Michael birmingham holds the chancellor naomi b lynn distinguished chair and lichen studies at the university of illinois springfield. Hes the author of several books on lincoln including and lincoln observed the inner world of Abraham Lincoln and the two volume american Abraham Lincoln a life as well as his new book, which hell be discussing tonight. The black mans president Abraham LincolnAfrican Americans and the pursuit of racial equality. Noah. Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter professor of law chair of the society of fellows and founding director of the Julis Rabinowitz Program on jewish and israeli law at harvard university. Hes the author of nine books including the three lives of James Madison genius partisan president and his latest book which will be tonight the broken constitution lincolns slavery and the refounding of america diana. Shall is professor of Political Science at loyola university, maryland and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute where she focuses on american political thought and history. She is the author of several books including what so proudly we hail the american soul and story speech and song and her new book is his greatest speeches how lincoln moved the nation welcome Michael Burlingame noah feldman and diana schaub. Michael berlin. Let us begin with you. Tell our friends why you argue in your new book that lincoln was the black mans president and you have you have several speeches of Frederick Douglass that you begin with including in 1865 eulogy on lincoln where he said no people at class of people in the country have a better. Reason for lamenting the death of lincoln then have the colored people. What is the significance of that . Speech . And why do you believe that lincoln was the black mans president . Well, thank you very much for your kind introduction and thank you for inviting me. I feel a little out of place because my book is focused the central theme im book is lets not focus on lincoln speeches and writings and policies in the light. Lets focus on lincolns interaction with black people both in springfield and in washington, but the title of the book comes from a eulogy that Frederick Douglass delivered on june 1st 1865 in cooper union the premiere site in the country to give up major speech. And it was covered widely in the new york press, but its been on accountably ignored by historians and anthologists of douglass speeches. And in this remarkable speech he says Abraham Lincoln was preeminently the white mans president the first to rise above the prejudices of his time and his country by inviting me Frederick Douglass to the white house to consult on public affairs. Lincoln was saying by that gesture that i am the president of the black people as well as the white and i mean to honor their rights as men and citizens. And its a striking contrast to the speech. That is very well. Known widely anthologized and commented on regularly and that is a speech he gave 11 years later. At the dedication of a statue the emancipation memorial in washington in which he said Abraham Lincoln was preeminently the white mans president. And i remember when i first encountered the speech in the douglas papers in manuscript. I was i was astounded i said surely i would have seen this speech in the five. I am addition of douglass speeches that the yale press published or the fourvolume study of philip phone or had anza which phone her and i went back to those sources and those speeches werent that speech wasnt included. Um, and so that got me thinking about lincoln and race in general. And then cape, missouri, very fine historian at Northwestern University published an article recently on the white house receptions and black peoples attendance at white house receptions and in my 2000 pageography. I had a little bit to say about that, but i thought cheaper saturday missed so much of the good information that she has unearthed and so i decided to plunge deeper into that subject and then that led me deeper and deeper into lincolns interaction with black people back in springfield and in washington and lots of people know about douglas lincolns interaction with Frederick Douglass because douglas described them in his autobiographies and some detail. Um, but but little has been done about lincolns interaction with other black people, and so thanks to the enormous utility of modern words searchable newspaper databases. I was able to take up a lot of new information. I got everything ive written needs to be updated. Thanks to these databases. And so and so what ive found is that both in springfield and in washington lincoln interacted with large number of black people all of whom commented on how respectful he was how kind and how generous and it wasnt just courtesy but it was also gestures an actions based on appeals that they made that indicates to my way of thinking that lincoln was an instinctive racial egalitarian. Fascinating. Thank you so much for that and thank you for calling our attention to the tremendous significance of digitized primary text which have indeed transformed Historical Research and our understanding of links of lincoln. No feldman, youve argued so powerfully in your book that the original constitution of 1787 was broken and as you put it in the New York Times lincoln fatally injured the constitution of 1787. He consciously and repeatedly violated core elements of the constitution and theyd been understood by nearly all americans of that time and through these act of destructions lincoln effectively broke the constitution of 1787 paving the way for something very different to replace this. Tell us more more about your thesis in the broken constitution. Thank you, jeff. Its an honor to be here with these distinguished scholars. I am a constitutions person rather than a lincoln person. So i came from the standpoint of the constitution itself and among those of us who work on the founding in 1787. Its for the most part there might be one or two exceptions commonly accepted that the constitution was a compromise document in which one of the central compromises was a compromise over slavery. And so we have the threefifths compromise famously. We have the guarantee that the International Slave trade would remain for at least 20 years, and we also have the fugitive slave clause which effectively required the states that did not recognize slavery on their own to acknowledge and recognize slavery itself. So thats the setting. For the way the constitution functioned from that time up until the civil war. There were moments where the constitutional compromise seemed in your breaking but congress for the most part managed to reinscribe that compromise with new variations the missouri compromises the most famous example of this and lincoln actually very much supported that structure of constitutional compromise throughout his political career because were mentioning speeches of lincoln ill mention in this context is very briefly something which diana has written about very extensively lincolns address to the young mens lyceum in springfield in 1838. The only passage i want to mention from that in a speech where a lincoln was actively defending the constitution is lincolns statement there that we should be aware of people like alexander the great or like caesar or like napoleon who in their seeking of greatness would be willing to enslave free man or to free enslaved people. That is to say an act that would be extraordinary and outside the bounds of constitutional norms would be wrongful. Hes clearly against this and cause the constitution acid then existed legally mandated the continued existence of slavery in those states that chose to have slavery. So thats lincolns view. And once he becomes president he confronts the reality that there have been secessions by at that point seven states and he has to decide what to do about that. And of course thats secession is a fundamental breaking of the constitution and lincoln responded by himself breaking the constitution in i argue three ways, which ill just mention each very briefly. The first is sort of surprising. We dont necessarily think of it as breaking the constitution, but the decision to go to war unilaterally to obligate the seceding states to return to the union was not under contemporary constitutional norms an obvious authority or right of the presidency or even of the whole government the Buchanan Administration in an official opinion by the attorney general embraced by buchanan in his state of the Union Address had said that although secession was revolution. The president congress indeed no part of the federal government have the authority to force the states back into the union because nothing in the constitution explicitly authorized it and because of the principle of consent of the government and on this principle the southerners in those states had chosen to no longer give their consent to be governed and so it violated that principle of consent to coerce them back in lincoln unilaterally and then eventually with the support of Congress Took up arms to force them back in. The second braking was the suspension of habeas corpus, which is the right that says if the government grabs you up it has to appear in court. Give a reason put you on trial and if youre not convicted let you go and lincoln unilaterally suspended habeas corpus early in the war and kept that suspension in place even after the Supreme Court via the chief justice or at least the chief justice the Supreme Court ratchet roger tony issued an opinion saying that this was unconstitutional because only congress has the authority to suspend habeas and i would say that that is still the view of almost all constitutional scholars and the Supreme Court itself after the war also repudiated the idea that without a suspension by congress that martial law could be applied within the United States where no war was going on and lincoln did that he did extensively and he imprisoned somewhere between 15 and 40,000 people. Theres a lot of debate about how many over the course of the war without trial and without the opportunity to to appear in court. This was the largest suppression of free expression. In American History by a huge margin and last but not least and much more upliftingly lincoln also broke the constitution as he understood it when he issue the emancipation proclamation formally freeing enslaved people in areas that were under confederate control. Lincoln himself when the war began reiterated his commitment to the idea that slavery was constitutionally protected. So i think well probably talk a little bit tonight about his second inaugural address and the gettysburg address. Those are the two that you see when you go into the Lincoln Memorial on either side of the enshrined president and shrined as a god. Its after all the Lincoln Memorial is based on a an athenian temple. We never hear about the first inaugural address and thats because the first naugular dress opens with lincoln saying that he has needed the will nor the inclination nor the constitutional power to change slavery, which he says is protected by the constitution and lincoln over time shifted in his view and in my book i spent a lot of detail time trying to show that shift and he came to believe that it was somehow within his authority as president as commanderinchief in wartime. To break the guarantee of Property Rights break the fugitive slave clause which quite literally would have said that anyone who escaped would have to be returned to sl. And under the conditions of the war linking any emancipation proclamation said that people who escaped would not be returned and would in fact become permanently free. So those are thats a morally good breaking of the constitution in my view, but breaking nevertheless. Thank you so much for that wonderful summary of your book and for calling our attention to the first inaugural diana schaub. Im going to do something which may or may not work which is to try to screen share because its so wonderful to have the text in front of us. Did that work for the lyceum address . Think that everyone can see it unless anyone objects and you parse it you your project is so inspiring to really do close readings of the lyceum address and the gettysburg address and the second inaugural. Theres theres so much here and of course, we dont we cant parse the whole thing. But this theme that noah mentioned of the rule of law and also the conflict between reason and passion jumps out but there may be other aspects of it that you want to call our attention to so tell us about how we should read the lysium address. But yeah, maybe i can just for a minute just Say Something about the overall thesis of the book and then and then turn to the lyceum. So yeah the book of holding it here. Weve each got books out. We should show them is a close reading i believe in close and careful reading of three lincoln speeches first the lysine address the speech that he gave as a as a young man, and then the two most famous president ial addresses the gettysburg address and the second inaugural and actually what i what im struck by is how often lincoln anchored his speeches in dates in significant dates. So the lyceum address begins with the constitution and the date of 1787 the gettysburg address is everyone knows for score and seven years ago. It takes us to 1776 the declaration of independence. Thats what the gettysburg. Is just anchored in and then the second inaugural and i dont think this is maybe been noted enough, but it is actually anchored in 1619 if you do the math the reference to you know, 250 years of the slaves unrequited toil that takes you to 1615. Hes of course rounding the number off. So lincoln is aware of the origin date of slavery on the american continent. So i argue that lincoln really tells the story of america and helps us understand america through these three significant dates those two texts and the relationship between those texts and and slavery in the United States. So i think the second inaugural really deserves to be known as as the original and actually better 1619 project. So but to go to the the lyceum address the speech that he gives as a young man. I think its a remarkable address. Its diagnosis of the dangers that lincoln sees abroad in the land at the time and more general diagnosis of the problems. That democracy is always prone to so what lincolns notes is the growing prevalence of mob rule throughout the nation. So theres kind of breakdown of law and order and this breakdown is triggered. I mean hes not talking about looting and rioting hes talking about vigilante justice acts of vigilantes on so these vigilantes are driven by their passion for justice, but they are, you know running roughshod over the you know, due process and and rule of law. So lincoln highlights this danger, he gives this diagnosis and then he proposes a solution and his solution is reverence for the constitution and laws. So is recommendation is lawabidingness and not simply lawabidingness but a particular attitude in which one obeys the loss this attitude of reverence. So thats his diagnosis of the sort of the present danger, but the second half of the speech is not about the present danger, but about future dangers and this is where lincolns analysis of passion is really developed and here he goes back to a, you know, a famous distinction that the ancient political philosophers always use the distinction between the few and the many and so lincoln says what happens if a person of the founding type springs up after the founding, what is that person going to do what outlet for their vast ambition will be available and this is where he gives his against the alexanders the caesars and the napoleons those who wont be content to be you know, the the 44th the 41st or the 42nd or the 43rd president of the United States and i can tend to be a custodian in the house of the fathers and this ambition is presented as morally neutral if there are good avenues to pursue like the freeing of the slaves that might be done if the avenues of the good have already been been tried. They will set boldly forth enslaving free men. So theres this this problem of inordinate ambition, and then theres also a problem on the part of the many and that is these negative passions of human nature. Jealousy envy hatred revenge and lincoln says at the time of the founding those passions were able to be harnessed toward good ends. You could hate the hate the hate the fish and achieve liberty for yourself, but now and in the future those passions will be dangerous. So i mean his denunciation of passion is very strong, you know passion may have helped us but can do so no more in the future passion will be our enemy. I think it is significant to note though that lincoln always means by passion the negative passions. So for instance, he doesnt mean bonds of affection. He doesnt mean friendship. You can look at actually the you know, the first inaugural which also says passion is the problem think of that last paragraph, you know passion may have strained the bonds of affection, but we dont want it to you know to separate us. So his so his solution then for the for this future danger is reason so hes got a double diagnosis mob rule the present danger future danger this problem of the passions. And then a double solution the solution to the problem of mob rule is reverence for the constitutional laws the solution to these dangers ahead of inordinate ambition and runaway passion is is reason should probably stop there, but i try to explain how these two solutions could perhaps fit together. How can he recommend both reverence and reason . That was wonderful. Thank you so much for that and i so fascinating to read it closel