Lincoln's Perilous 13-Day Train Ride to DC--For His First Inaugural

On this episode of Our American Stories, Ted Widmer sits down with Lee Habeeb to discuss his book, Lincoln on the Verge: 13 Days to Washington.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habie with our American Stories, and we
tell stories about everything here on this show, and our
favorite storytelling involves American history and always our history stories
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College.
And today we're telling the story of Lincoln on the
verge thirteen days to Washington. The author of this remarkable

(00:33):
story is Edward Widmer. Edward, thanks for joining us. So
November sixth, eighteen sixty, Lincoln gets elected and you write this,
you say in the book quote, could the news of
Lincoln's election be turned back as if it was a
piece of mail delivered to the wrong address. Many Southerners
thought so. Even many Northerners found that the news was

(00:56):
difficult to believe. Talk about these two reactions around the country.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Lincoln's a shock to everybody. He's only ever been a
one term congressman twelve years earlier, so that's not very impressive.
He's running against much more famous senators. There's a list
of twenty one likely Republicans to get the nomination published
at the end of eighteen fifty nine. Lincoln doesn't even

(01:23):
crack that list of twenty one. So that's how obscure
he is, but he helps himself. He gives a speech
in New York City in February, the Cooper Union Address,
that really impresses people in New York. And then he's
lucky that the Republican Convention is held in Chicago, so
he has a lot of friends in Chicago who help him,

(01:45):
and he gets the nomination. And then he's lucky again
because the Democratic Party, which is a much bigger party
than the Republican Party, it splits in half, and that
means the Republicans are much more likely to win, which
they do. There are actually four people running by the
time it's November. It just all the chips fall in
a way that's perfect for Lincoln to win the election.

(02:09):
And the South is shocked that this Northerner, I mean,
he's really a Westerner. He has cracked their defenses, their system.
For almost the entirety of American history. Since seventeen eighty nine,
when George Washington becomes the first president, the South has

(02:29):
really controlled national politics. They have had most of the presidents.
Even the few Northern presidents were generally under the control
of the South. And Lincoln isn't from their system. He's
an outsider, so they're really upset, and they know that
he's anti slavery. Just how anti slavery is not yet

(02:51):
really known, but they worry a lot that he's very
anti slavery. In fact, a lot of people in the
North worry the opposite, worry that he's not anti slavery enough.
The North is also a little worried because he just
doesn't seem presidential. His body shape is sort of wrong.
He's tall and skinny and angular. He just looks low born.

(03:16):
That was something people cared about in eighteen sixty. Does
he look statesman like? Does he look well educated? In
a word? No, he didn't look refined. He had kind
of rough country features. Apparently his voice was a little
bit odd too. He had a western twangy accent, and
even though he was very tall, he did not have

(03:38):
a deep voice. He had a kind of high pitched voice.
So they're just all these eyes, these millions of eyes
on this man coming through the country to become the
new president, and everyone is worried about him. Is he
made of the right stuff? Will he be strong enough
to keep the country together. So intense curiosity and a

(04:01):
kind of immediate celebrity for someone who was absolutely unknown
nine months earlier.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Let's talk about succession. You're right that it became more
real just six weeks after Lincoln was elected December twenty,
eighteen sixty, is when South Carolina left the Union. More
states would follow. What a mess Lincoln was walking into.
Talk about that. How did Lincoln react?

Speaker 2 (04:26):
It was the worst mess any president has ever inherited.
As you just said, South Carolina seceedes on December twentieth,
and so there's this weird period of about six weeks
between his election and the secession of South Carolina where
they begin to act like a country. They're not yet

(04:47):
a country, but they called themselves the Palmetto Republic. The
Palmetto is the tree that's on the flag of South Carolina.
And it was just a crazy time where nobody knew
if the US would hold together or not. Never happened
that a Southern state succeeded. It had almost happened in
eighteen thirty two when John C. Calhoun was a Senator

(05:08):
and he was upset by some financial policies of Andrew Jackson,
and he threatened secession, but it didn't happen. Andrew Jackson
in a very kind of intimidating way kept it all together.
But with Lincoln coming in, Lincoln is in a much

(05:29):
weaker position than Jackson. And Lincoln has very little experience
that one term as a congressman twelve years earlier. He
does not have relationships in Washington, so he's just kind
of walking into this catastrophe and he's not getting a
lot of help from anybody. The Senate is dysfunctional, the
House's dysfunctional. Washington is falling apart. The president before him,

(05:54):
who's still the president, James Buchanan, is useless. He can't
make up his mind. He's falling apart in meetings, nobody
knows what he thinks, and the Southeast is doing whatever
it wants to do. So when Lincoln is on the
train in February of eighteen sixty one coming in to Washington,

(06:16):
a third to a half of the United States of
America is no longer in the United States of America,
or so they feel, and he's got to respond with
what he feels. And that's going to be his first
inaugural address, and he's going to tell them, you're still
in the United States. You have not succeeded because the

(06:37):
Union is perpetual.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
And you've been listening to Edward Whitmer, and he has
told a fantastic story in his book Lincoln on the
Verge Thirteen Days to Washington and it chronicle is the
thirteen day train trip that Lincoln can give his first
inaugural speech in Washington, DC. It is a trip filled

(06:59):
with treach, opportunity, and so much more. It is a thriller.
If you love reading great stories about this country, this
may be one of the best books I've read in
the past year. Go to Amazon dot com and pick
it up, or go to a bookstore and pick it up,
and heck, buy a copy for someone else who loves
reading this book? Is that good? When we come back

(07:21):
more with Edward Widmer Lincoln on the Verge. Here on
our American Stories, Folks, If you love the stories we
tell about this great country, and especially the stories of
America's rich past, know that all of our stories about
American history, from war to politics, to innovation, culture, and faith,

(07:42):
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale. Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we

(08:09):
continue with our American stories and with historian Edward Widmer
the book The Story Lincoln on the Verge Thirteen Days
to Washington. When we last left off, Lincoln, an unknown
one term senator from Illinois, had been elected president and
the Union was splitting apart. He faced an existential dilemma.
Could he even reach Washington, d C for his inauguration?

(08:33):
Would there even be a d C when he arrived?
Talk about that? What was the mood like when he
left Springfield?

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well, the first day was filled with drama. There were
real fears that DC would be in the hands of
pro secessionist militias. There's an organized country coming together, the
Confederate States of America. But then they're also people walking
around Washington in sort of armed vigilante mobs who might

(09:07):
take over the capitol. They had announced that they wanted
the capital for themselves, or they might take over the
whole district. So as he's starting on the trip on
that first day, it's not certain that he will be
able to make it to Washington, and he's getting letters
from close friends who are in Washington saying we may
not be able to hold it. It's really a very

(09:27):
dicey situation. And the morning of his departure, it's February eleventh,
eighteen sixty one. It's the day before his fifty second birthday,
and it's kind of an overcast day. Some accounts say
it was snowing lightly, some say raining. I think it
was sort of in between. And he went out to

(09:48):
the small depot and he was pleased to see and
it was no surprise that a lot of the people
of Springfield had come out to say goodbye to him.
You know, he was a beloved member of the community.
It was an emotional scene, and he spontaneously gave a
short speech. It's about nine sentences, but profoundly beautiful and

(10:13):
as it turned out, really strategic too, because it put
Lincoln before the country in a new light. I'm not
sure at all that he intended that it just happened,
and in those nine senses, he just said, I've you
know me, I've lived among you for twenty five years.
We've been friends and neighbors. My children have grown up

(10:37):
among yours. I'm leaving one child buried here. I'm now
going with the hardest assignment any president has ever had
since Washington. With God's help, I cannot fail. Without God's help,
I cannot succeed. Please pray for me. And the words

(11:01):
were transcribed. There were journalists there at the platform, and
then one journalist got on the train with him, and
only a minute or two after the train left, he
got Lincoln to take a pencil and paper and write
it out all over again and give it to him,
and he was able to telegraph it all around the country.
So we think of that as a long time ago,

(11:22):
eighteen sixty one, but in fact, with internet quickness, they
were able to get the words of that beautiful short
speech with lightning speed, and the telegraph was called the
Lightning and it really humanized Lincoln. It helped people reading
the next day in the newspaper to think, this is

(11:44):
a human being, This is like a neighbor. I would
want him from my neighbor. I know people like this.
My children play with the children of this other family
over here, and he's kind of like us. And it
was a really brilliant political stroke. And if he didn't
mean it, to be one. He's just saying goodbye to
his friends and neighbors. But it made him seem like

(12:05):
an everyman, and that was a really smart way to
begin the trip.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Talk about the role the train and the telegraph, two
remarkable innovations. What roles did those two play in Lincoln's
plans and to Lincoln's advantage? And is it true that
the South sort of rejected that kind of change in innovation.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
The train comes in in the early eighteen thirties, the
telegraph is later. It's invented by Samuel F. B. Morse,
and it's one of the great American inventions of the
nineteenth century, and it immediately changes politics and business. And
they are perfect for train tracks. The wires want to

(12:50):
go straight and train tracks go straight. And it turns
out they're good for the railroad too, because you can
wire up ahead when the train is coming, helps plan
the scheduling of the trains, it helps plan the loading
of the freight, and so businesses love all of this.
If you're a textile mill owner or in any business

(13:13):
at all, and you've got a load of goods you
want to ship from New York to Philadelphia, or Philadelphia
to Pittsburgh. The telegraph is your friend. You send it
down to your business partner down the line, and it
just picks up everything. And business accelerates and westward migration accelerates,

(13:35):
and Chicago is booming in the eighteen fifties, and Lincoln
is deriving some of his lawyer work from the exploding
business culture of Chicago. And the big railroad of Illinois
is the Illinois Central and they hire Lincoln for a
lot of cases. So the North is just booming as

(13:57):
Lincoln's star is rising, and the South is growing. All
of America is growing, but the South is growing in
a weird way. It's not growing nearly as fast. It's
not growing demographically, it has a much lower rate of
increase from immigration, and wealth is concentrated at the top

(14:21):
with families that own a lot of land. It's not
an upwardly mobile society the way the North is. And
they're also controlling the spread of information much more than
the North. So the North just loves newspapers and telegraphs
and railroads, and in the South they have to bring

(14:41):
in railroads. They can't just reject something that's obviously so
good for business. But they build different kinds of railroads,
and they don't like the telegraph quite as much, and
they want to control information. And it's just a culture
that is not as comfortable different opinions as you would

(15:02):
have in the North, or with different kinds of ethnic people.
That's a point of tension. As the North is growing
so fast, the South is looking at it and it's
beginning to criticize the kind of society it is, where
anybody can say anything, and they're all these poor white
people who are starting businesses for themselves, and there's a

(15:25):
kind of unattractive word Southerners begin to use. They call
them mud sills, kind of you know, lower middle class
whites in the North. They don't like all the immigrants either,
and they really don't like the free people of color.
They're free African Americans in the North. And it just
seems like a mess up there to an aristocratic Southern

(15:49):
wealthy family. And it's not just social snobbery, it's also
political fear because so many people are coming into the
North that the South is worried that the North is
going to have a lot of political power, which is true.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
And what a time to be alive. But for Lincoln,
what a precarious time to be president. Assassination blots were
afoot following his election. Lincoln had only won thirty eight
percent of the popular vote in what was a four
way race. Talk about Lincoln leaving behind for a relative
of his wife, papers of a personal nature, and the

(16:26):
comment he made, a foreboting comment that his own death
was on his mind, Talk about that.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
No, it's shocking that our most beloved president became president
with such a tiny vote. I mean, the second lowest
successful vote in our history, less than forty percent is
really pretty bad. It's less than Herbert Hoover as the
loosing candidate won when he lost in a landslide to

(16:55):
Franklin Roosevelt in nineteen thirty two. So it's really not
very impressive. And how Lincoln turned that dismal result into
his powerful presidency and winning the Civil War and becoming
our greatest president is really an extraordinary conversion of a

(17:16):
bad situation into a huge triumph. He understands the seriousness
of what he's going into and he I mean, he's
getting a lot of death threats in the mail, and
the political news is bad, and the threats are coming
really close to home. There are things like drawings of
him with a noose around his neck. His wife saw

(17:36):
that and was very upset. He knows he's not coming back.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
When we come back. More of this remarkable story, a
remarkable piece of American history, Lincoln on the Verge. Here
on our American stories, and we continue with our American

(18:09):
stories and with Edward Widmer his book Lincoln on the
Verge Thirteen Days to Washington. When we last left off,
Lincoln had left Springfield, Illinois and a train bound for Washington,
DC to face the largest crisis in American history. Edward,
let's talk about New York City, a big part of
this trip. At the time, New York City had a

(18:30):
larger population than the entire Confederacy, but Lincoln only won
about thirty percent of the city's vote. It's a northern city,
but it had a lot of Southern influence. Talk about that.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
New York City is so much bigger than any other
city that it's almost like it's already a twentieth century city,
forty years before the twentieth century has actually arrived, and
no other city comes close. I think Philadelphia might be
the same and largest, and it's not that close to

(19:03):
New York size. And New York is interesting. These different
reasons don't all make sense together, but they're all part
of the picture of New York. It's very northern feeling
in some ways. It's teeming with immigrants, primarily German and Irish.
At that point, a lot of immigrants are living in

(19:23):
immigrant neighborhoods in New York City. That feels pretty northern.
And it's also filled with media culture, with newspapers and magazines.
And it's also Southern in powerful ways. And there are
business interests, primarily around Wall Street that love investing in

(19:46):
Southern plantations and in slavery itself. And it's also a
place where Southern ships come. One of the ways in
which slavery made a lot of money for the South
cotton was turned into clothing. And a lot of textile
mills are in Europe. I mean they're in the North too,

(20:07):
but huge numbers are in places like Birmingham, Manchester in
the north of England. France has textile mills. And so
the South is shipping it's cotton from its ports like
New Orleans and Savannah, and they would stop in New
York for a rest and then the ship would either
offload it's cotton or just keep going to Europe. And

(20:30):
so New York shipping is very involved in slavery. But
then also New York finance Wall Street is investing and
giving loans, helping Northern investors to make money by investing
in Southern slavery. So it's really important for everyone to
understand that the South wasn't the only evil actor. And

(20:54):
so our slavery was concerned that a lot of northern
business investors concentrated then as now around Wall Street, were
propping up the whole system of slavery and they paid
off politicians. New York's mayor at the time Lincoln came
through was a pretty pro slavery guy named Fernando Wood,

(21:14):
and Lincoln had to deal with him as he came through.
So it wasn't just people throwing flowers in his path.
There were a lot of aggressive behavior toward Lincoln as
he's coming toward Washington.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
And talk about the way Lincoln worked New York, because
my goodness, he went everywhere from Wall Street to a
night at the opera. How did he swing that when
he knew that the elites in that city were probably
looking at him as if he were some kind of
Western hick.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
I mean he and his wife were a little bit
uncomfortable in New York. I think she was more uncomfortable
than he was. He did awkward things. He wore the
wrong colored gloves when he went to the opera. You're
supposed to wear white gloves, and he wore black gloves,
and people laughed at him. I wouldn't have known that,
and he didn't know that. So, you know, he had
to endure a little bit of snickering at his expense.

(22:06):
But he could handle that a little more easily than
Mary Todd Lincoln could. But he was you know, he
had advisors who were helping him. One of his advisors
was the man he beat for the nomination, William Sewart,
who's a New York senator. He's actually from upstate New York,
but you know, he knows New York City too, and

(22:27):
he's got his friends helping Lincoln, and they are helping
to plan the train trip too. So I think Lincoln
had friends as well as enemies everywhere along the route,
and he always had friends among the people. The people
came out everywhere he was to look at him. And
my book benefited a lot from some descriptions and Walt Whitman,

(22:50):
who is a kind of working class carpenter and poet,
wrote a beautiful description of seeing Lincoln going into his hotel.
So I was grateful for some of the people who
kept diaries or just wrote about it in their journals
or later after the fact. And New York had, you know,
it had a great working class population in addition to

(23:13):
all of the financial types on Wall Street, and those
people were behind Lincoln.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Lincoln then goes to Philadelphia where he gives an important
speech an Independence Hall, the place where, of course, the
Declaration of Independence was written. The Declaration of Independence states
quote that all men are created equal. Talk about that
word all, because it's an important word to Lincoln. What
did it mean to him?

Speaker 2 (23:39):
All men are created equal. So the word all is
right there, and it strongly implies all human beings. So
it's a pretty loaded word all. And so Lincoln is
holding this truth against the South and saying you are
violating the spirit of our country. And it was a

(23:59):
very effect argument, and it was a form of soft
abolitionism that really worked for him at one over Middle America.
And yet he could keep running with it up to
and including the emancipation Proclamation and then the tremendous amendments
to the Constitution, the first of which was done in

(24:20):
his lifetime but following the Civil War, that made real freedom,
civil rights, the freedom to participate in our politics and
our society available to all people in the United States
of America. All of that came out of his reading
of the Declaration of Independence, and he gave a beautiful

(24:42):
speech to that effect in Philadelphia. He leads up to
it at Trenton, and then the next morning he goes
into Independence Hall and it achieves liftoff and says every
feeling I've ever had politically has come to me from
the Declaration of Independence. It's a powerful moment, and people
in the room knew it. They knew that it meant

(25:03):
something emotionally to him, not just politically, and that becomes
the Lincoln message at Gettysburg two years later. It's basically
the same thing. I mean, yes, he uses exquisite language
at Gettysburg, he takes liftoff even higher, but he's gone
a long way towards that message even with what he

(25:25):
says in Independence Hall in Philadelphia in February eighteen sixty one.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Lincoln would go on to add at the very end
of this speech the following words quote, I have said
nothing but what I am willing to live by and
if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.
He meant those words, didn't he Edward. I think everyone
listening to the speech believed. He believed those words talk

(25:52):
about that.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
There was a feeling in the room of something very
powerful had just happened. After he talked about what the
declaration meant to him, and then I'm glad you reminded
me that he added that incredible closing thought about assassination
would not stop him from loving his country and wanting

(26:14):
to serve his country. And what made it so powerful was,
in fact, he had just been told that there was
a huge assassination conspiracy trying to take his life. The
next day, as he went through Baltimore, and already he
was trying to figure out how to get around Baltimore
or through it without getting killed. Even with that heavy

(26:37):
pressure on him, he still was able to speak beautifully.
And then he's beginning to plan a secret railroad journey
that will take him through Baltimore in the middle of
the night by a different route than the one that
has been announced. So there are all these converging lines
in his head at that moment, and it's just it's
like a thriller at that moment.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
And when we return, those lines will verge. In Baltimore, Maryland.
The book is Lincoln on the Verge, Thirteen Days to Washington.
The author is Edward Widmer. More of this remarkable story,
the last part of this story here on our American story,

(27:37):
and we returned to our American stories and the final
part of this story of Lincoln's train trip to Washington
from Springfield, Illinois in eighteen sixty one. The book is
Lincoln on the Verge, Thirteen Days to Washington, and the storyteller,
the author, the historian, is Edward Widmer. When we last

(27:58):
left off, Lincoln had given an all important speech at
Independence Hall in Philadelphia, talking about the word all in
the Decoration of Independence and what it meant to him.
Now he was on his way to Baltimore, Maryland, the
biggest slave city in the country, and there it was
just a few miles from DC. There was also something

(28:18):
a foot in Baltimore that caused Lincoln to have to
change updates.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
Talk about that well. His destination of Washington, d C.
Is a very southern city, and I argue at the
beginning of the book that there was a bit of
a mistake made in seventeen ninety when Alexander Hamilton and
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson probably made a secret deal
to move the capital to the Potomac River in return

(28:47):
for some legislation that Hamilton really wanted. In seventeen ninety,
it was just too southern. Baltimore, to the north, is
the biggest city in the slaveholding part of the country,
so Washington is south of other slave places, and it's
just really hard for Lincoln to get there as an
anti slavery politician. So in the winter following his election,

(29:11):
there are all these rumors flying around the country that
there may be people trying to kill him, but no
one really knows when and where until a remarkable woman
named Dorothea Dix finds out all of the details of
the plot. She's a mental health advocate. She's actually from
the North, but she's accepted in southern circles. But while
traveling through the South in the fall of eighteen sixty,

(29:32):
she picks up the intelligence that a huge plot to
kill Lincoln is focusing on Baltimore. And on railroad tracks
and bridges coming into Baltimore. They might blow up a
bomb under the train as it comes through, or they
might try to shoot Lincoln or stab him as he's
transferring from one station to another. That's how you got

(29:53):
through Baltimore. You got off at one station and did
a transfer in a horse and carriage to another station,
and then kept going. And so she goes to the
head of the railroad and tells him about this plot.
The head of the railroad hires this detective, Alan Pinkerton,
to come from Chicago East to infiltrate the plot. And

(30:13):
he brings a very strong woman as one of his agents,
since she's a genius of disguise and impersonation, and they
get all the intelligence up to Lincoln's entourage, and Lincoln
understands he doesn't want to do it, but he understands
he has to go in the middle of the night
because that's safer than trying to force his way through.

(30:34):
He doesn't have a lot of security with him, and
he makes it, and he goes through all night and
arrives at Washington at six in the morning.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
Lincoln finally does make it to DC. And you paint
this picture of DC at the time. You talk about
the throngs of people who were there to see him,
including African Americans, people who hate Lincoln, and sharpshooters trying
to keep Lincoln safe. This is a remarkable display of
American diversity, not only in the people, but what's on

(31:03):
everybody's minds. Talk about this final part of the trip
and this great triumph in Washington.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
The day of the first inaugural speech, there was a
lot of fear in the air that the danger was
still there. Paper I read I read only a few
days ago. I reread it describing a fear that someone
would try to shoot him as he was giving his
inaugural address. And you think about it, when you're a president,

(31:31):
you have to give that inaugural and you want as
many people to see you as possible. It's a democratic ritual,
it's our main democratic ritual. But that also makes you
incredibly exposed. You stand out on the east portico of
the capital and people can see you for half a

(31:52):
mile around, you know, And so they did their best
to protect him. There were army sharpshooters on the roof nearby,
and there were plane closed police in the crowd. But
still people could get close to Lincoln, and so there
was a great fear that day, but he made it,

(32:15):
and you know, he consistently made brave decisions. He was
picked up by the outgoing President, James Buchanan in a
horse and carriage and he was offered the choice, we
could have a closed top or an open top, and
he said, absolutely, open it up. So he was a
brave person on the way to the Capitol and always

(32:38):
standing standing straight up as he gave the speech. And
he always wanted to fortify the larger not just the country,
the United States, but what democracy meant to people everywhere.
And because of his courage in propping up American democracy,

(33:00):
other friends of democracy in other countries really took heart.
And even though he was assassinated, as we all know,
he was assassinated after saving American democracy, and in France,
people like Victor Hugo were inspired by America's success at
keeping the democratic system going. And in the late nineteenth

(33:22):
century you see real progress in France and in Western Europe.
And then when World War One breaks out, I mean
many decades after Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson calls it a war
to save democracy, and the triumph of democracy in the
twentieth century, especially in World War Two. I really think

(33:43):
can be linked to Lincoln's courage in these dark days
in eighteen sixty one.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
You're right as you close out quote nearly eight hundred
thousand brave young men gave their lives and service to
their conflicting ideas of the nation. No America and was
untouched by it. It touches us still. Yet the Republic survived,
sustained by the same perseverance Lincoln showed on this trip.

(34:10):
From the moment he arrived, things improved. Democracy refused to die,
It deepened.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Talk about that, well, thank you for reading that. I
remember working hard on that language because I wanted to
include the South. I wanted to include Southerners, even those
who fought against Lincoln and the United States of America.
I wanted to include them the way he did, and

(34:38):
he was very clear in his second inaugural address that
they were included in his idea of America. There were
two truths that he fought the war over. The one
is that all men are created equal, really important truth
about human beings and their capacities. And the others that
the United States of America is a permanent union of

(35:04):
its states that they cannot secede unless all of them
agree to it. And that was a kind of legal
fiction of sorts. You could argue that not everyone agreed
with that when he said it at the beginning of
the Civil War, but he made it true by winning,
and now it really is true. I mean, now we
are inseparable. And I wanted the South to feel included

(35:28):
in this story. It's their victory too, because we made
a great country together before the Civil War and after
the Civil War. And that's why it's such a hard
war to talk about, because some people would like to
say it was pure treason to fire on the flag

(35:48):
of the United States, and the cause was not good.
They did fight with incredible bravery and skill. But I
think the overall population, you know, think of the women
enduring so much suffering, and the African Americans who were
suffering in you know, unbelievable ways as they were asked

(36:11):
to do more and more to support the economy of
the South while not having any rights. And finally at
the end they were asked to fight, but again not
with any rights. And yet I share with Lincoln a
feeling that we wanted them to feel like Americans as
soon as the war was over, to be repatriated and
to be included in our history, to be included in

(36:35):
a meaningful and affectionate way. It's strongly tainted by racism,
by the I don't think you can separate it from
slavery and the terrible injustices that were done to black
people under the flag of the Confederacy. But I think
we can appreciate Southern courage and ways in which Southerners

(36:57):
themselves worked out some of these things, which they did.
I mean, Northerners helped sometimes, and Southerners did it on
their own sometimes too, and Northerners, like I tried to say,
had plenty of problems of their own as well. So
I do love Lincoln, and I think his vision of
history was correct. And democracy is beautiful, and immigration has

(37:20):
been a good thing, and being color blind has been
a great thing in America. And when we finally included
women and who gets to be a part of this
great democracy, that was a good thing too. But in
the spirit of inclusivity, I like to include the South also.
We can just learn from all of their mistakes, northern

(37:41):
and Southern, and Lincoln wanted us all to be together
in his final speeches, and so I wanted to end
the book in that spirit.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
And you've been listening to Edward Widmer, and his book
is Lincoln on the Verge Thirteen Days to Washington, and
it's a terrific read. Go to Amazon dot com, pick
it up for yourself, pick up a copy for a friend,
anyone who's interested in this nation's history. Lincoln on the
Verge the story of his thirteen day trip to Washington, DC.

(38:11):
That story here on our American Story