♪ ♪ (theme music plays) RUBENSTEIN: Hello.

I'm David Rubinstein.

I'm gonna be in conversation today with David Reynolds, who is a distinguished author and historian, and he's a person who's written a new book on Abraham Lincoln called Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times.

Uh, welcome to our conversation, Professor Reynolds.

REYNOLDS: It's great to be here, David.

Thank you.

RUBENSTEIN: So let me ask you the obvious question.

Uh, there have been about 16,000 books on Abraham Lincoln, uh, why did you think the world needed one more book on Abraham Lincoln?

REYNOLDS: A lot of those books are, are wonderful, superb, particularly the recent books, uh, there are some great biographies.

But one can read really all of them and not know that the most important period in American cultural history was happening was the period of Melville, Hawthorne, Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson.

Of course, we sometimes hear about Frederick Douglass and sometimes about John Brown, but that was going on too.

And, uh, and so much of the culture had been left out.

Uh, there've been some great biographies that, uh, follow the facts of his life.

But, um, Emerson said about Lincoln, that he's the one hero, uh, American hero who spanned the entire range of culture.

From the very highest, he could quote, quote Shakespeare by the page and many other poets, to the very lowest, he liked bawdy jokes.

And he, in the middle too, he like sentimental, sappy parlor songs and everything.

So, he really straddled, uh, uh, the whole range of culture.

And that's really, really what has been missing, from the previous books.

RUBENSTEIN: Many people who have written about Lincoln come away saying that they admire him more after they studied him than they did before.

Is that the case with you as well or not?

REYNOLDS: Yeah.

And I really didn't know what to expect because Lincoln has always been sort of a nice figure, a wonderful figure in the landscape of, of, American culture.

Walt Whitman compared him to the star that's always shining in the culture.

But I never really thought of him in terms of a cultural figure and speaking to his own contemporary culture, and how much that culture then informs our own culture.

So, uh, and I really came off, uh, admiring, uh, him because he lived in such a profoundly divided time and he directed, uh, the union, uh, during the war that killed nearly 800,000 Americans.

And yet he made it through the war with very firm principle and also with a sense of compassion as well.

So yeah, I, I did come out admiring him more.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's talk about his persona first.

Um, he was not well-educated, only one year of school, but well-read, um, he had an evenhanded personality.

Um, what, uh, do you think has made it possible for somebody that wasn't, uh, formally educated to be so well-read and so well-educated?

REYNOLDS: A lot of his friends said that he was just infinitely curious about the world around him.

It's true he had a very scattered education, three months here, three months there, age 7, age 13, and it's just, just very scattered, so very, and it was on the frontier, very rudimentary.

However, he got ahold of whatever books he could.

And more than that, he just observed the world around him.

It reminds me of Frederick Douglass, who didn't have a day of schooling and became a great, great writer, or Walt Whitman, who didn't go beyond age 11 in school, like fifth grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, and yet, uh, he uses more vocabulary words than any, uh, other poet, uh, in, uh, in, in English except for Shakespeare.

And a lot of people back then were autodidacts, uh, and most of the great writers, uh, at that time were autodidacts and, and Lincoln really is the quintessential autodidact.

RUBENSTEIN: So, um, his personality, as I said, was even handed, he didn't tend to lose his temper a lot.

Uh, where did they get this kind of even tempered, uh, nature, would you say?

REYNOLDS: He got it from combining, uh, strong rationality with a sense of heart at the same time.

He never, he rarely gave himself over totally to the heart and yet he had a kinda what some people call it kind of a tender heart.

Uh, but at the same time, um, his, well, we would call, we would call his cerebral cortex, his, uh, frontal lobe, his reason, was often in control and he really tried to achieve moderation.

He kinda bounced off his frontier culture, which was very violent and full of drunkenness.

He bounced off of that.

Then he bounced off of, uh, the 1830s, which were full of tr, he called it a mobocracy, full of mobs, uh, mainly mobs that were attacking African-Americans or abolitionists.

He bounced off that culture and, he learned how to kinda control himself in the face of, uh, this kinda wild culture around him.

It's what I call, uh, taming the wild.

He was also very physically strong.

He could, um, that, that kind of helped, uh, because in a sense he could physically could beat anybody in wrestling and in athletics, uh, at the same time.

And in a way that was a, a form of kinda control of his wild environment.

RUBENSTEIN: What about his famous reputation for being honest?

Was he really more honest than other people, or was that a figment of some public relations, uh, effort?

REYNOLDS: He played up his honest Abe.

Um, he was direct and, and yet, and yet, if I may say, he hid, uh, quite a lot too.

Why?

He was a, a very canny politician at the same time.

He was a little too honest early on in, in the, uh, 1830s when he was a, a young politician and he learned how to be fra, frankly, a little more cagey, not deceptive, not deceptive, but kind of cagey.

And when he didn't want to say something, he just didn't say it.

RUBENSTEIN: So, let's talk about the relationships he has with the most important people in his life.

Let's start with his father.

It was often said that he didn't have a good relationship with his father.

You say in your book, maybe it wasn't so bad.

Is that right?

REYNOLDS: Yeah.

His father, uh, uh, Thomas Lincoln was a temperate man.

He was a virtuous man.

He was known as a good citizen, in the neighborhood is very, very strong.

Um, and kinda like Abe, although he was short and stocky.

He was a good worker.

A hard worker as both a carpenter and as a farmer, but he had kinda bad luck, bad luck in real estate in Kentucky, and then in Indiana.

And finally in Illinois, uh, uh, where they all moved, they did begin to separate a little bit 'cause frankly, he became not what we would call poor white trash, but I mean, he, he, uh, did kind of sink a little bit in Illinois at the same time that Lincoln was becoming, uh, a lawyer, uh, an established lawyer.

And although Lincoln still had a kind of affection for him and at the end wrote, wrote, uh, when he was, uh, in bad shape, wrote a very tender letter to him.

So, uh...

But it is true that they had a little more of a falling out when they live, uh, were in Illinois.

But Lincoln said, "Look, I had a joyous, uh, childhood.

I had a joyous childhood.

I, I can't complain."

RUBENSTEIN: Lincoln's mother died when he was relatively young, his father remarried.

What was his relationship with his biological mother and with his stepmother?

REYNOLDS: Yeah, he called his, uh, biological mother, his, um, angel mother, the mother who would become an angel.

She, she died when he was quite young.

He didn't really have too many recollections, but they were quite fond.

And he became also very, very fond of his, uh, stepmother because, uh, she, uh, was actually like him temperamentally.

She was, um, both reasonable and moderate and kind of a, a sweet and understanding person, uh, albeit at the same time, quite strong, so he really had a deep affection for Sarah Bush Johnson Lincoln.

RUBENSTEIN: What about his relationship with his wife, Mary?

Um, it, it was often reported it was tempestuous relationship.

Um, you point out in your book, it wasn't quite as bad as people say, is that fair?

REYNOLDS: It was, uh, it was a love affair, a lasting love affair.

And uh, in 1862 in the White House, he looked at her at a, at a function.

He said, "You know, my wife, Mary, is just as beautiful as the day I married her.

And I love her just as much."

And was it tempestuous?

Yes, it was.

Um, she, uh, could have outbursts of passion.

She could get angry, uh, at him and at other people.

Some people feel that she was mentally unstable.

Uh, she was certainly passionate and very strong-minded.

At the same time, uh, his law partner, William Herndon, uh, who didn't like Mary Todd Lincoln said, you know, without Mary Todd Lincoln, he would not have been president.

She was such a driving ambition.

More than that, she was such a support politically for him.

And even though she had been raised in a slave holding family, she abandoned the whole pro-slavery program and became an abolitionist.

And, uh, uh, in the end she kind of rejected her Confederate relatives.

And when they died in battle, she said, you know, "I wish I could grieve for them, but if they, if they remained alive, they would only want to kill my husband and kill his cause."

So ultimately she was a good person.

And they had, uh, a good relationship.

RUBENSTEIN: So what was Lincoln's interest in politics?

Why did he want to get into politics?

He, he was elected to the Congress, served one term, um, and that was it until he was elected president.

Why was he interested in politics?

And was he really good at what you have to do in politics?

REYNOLDS: He learned how to be good.

Uh, actually he was very successful as a state legislator, uh, in the 1830s in Illinois.

Then he went to the House of Representatives, uh, in the 1840s, served one term, as you mentioned.

He wasn't particularly distinguished in that term.

And also he's criticizing president James Polk and criticizing the war against Mexico and everything.

So he didn't really emerge from that with a strong record.

However, um, in 1854 with the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act, which opened the western territories up for slavery, he really said, "I have to jump back into politics."

And that's when he jumped in full-time.

He ran for the Senate twice, the Senate.

He didn't make it, did not make it, but he gained a national reputation and as kind of a dark horse candidate.

He won the 1860 election for the presidency.

RUBENSTEIN: So some people will say, and I'd hear, like to hear your views, that Lincoln was nominated as president, uh, by the Republican Party for three different reasons you could say.

One is he became a national figure as a result of the Douglas-Lincoln debates, uh, in the 18, 1858 Senate election.

Is that a real, uh, factor in his getting nominated and getting to be well-known, those debates, even though he was not elected to the, uh, Senate?

REYNOLDS: Yeah, he actually won the popular vote, but they had kind of a, almost what we might call an Electorate College, or district, uh, you know, decision.

So, uh, he actually lost that election, but the debates were nationally, um, reported in, in the, uh, newspapers and that, that really made him famous.

The reason that they made him famous was he, he was so wonderfully eloquent in knocking down the pro-slavery Stephen Douglas, and Douglas was so famous at that time.

So for this, uh, you know, kind of Rube or whatever, this, this country boy, country man from, uh, uh, the backwards originally to, to face down this, this little giant as, as, uh, Stephen Douglas was called, was amazing.

But also, uh, the second, uh, thing that you were gonna mention, I believe was the Cooper Union Address.

RUBENSTEIN: Right.

REYNOLDS: And, uh, that was in New York in 1816.

And, and that really did put him on the map.

He said, "The Cooper Union Address really helped to get me elected."

Because in that address, he, uh, there was this big argument that, uh, the constitution was pro-slavery.

He said, "Let's take a count, a head count of the founding fathers and the ones that were at the constitutional convention, the majority of them envisaged the eventual extinction of slavery."

Yes, some of them were slaveholders, uh, and so forth, and yet they were, most of them were on behalf of the ultimate extinction of slavery, well, very, very persuasive, uh, speech and that really made him famous.

And then the third thing was his image of, of Abe at a state convention in Illinois, uh, in 1860, his, uh, cousin once removed, John Hanks, brought in some rails that Lincoln had one, once split and suddenly he became Abe, the Illinois Rail Splitter.

And, uh, this is the image that really sold him to the popular, the popular audience and, and the popular electorate in 1860.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, in the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln said, "I am not going to get rid of slavery.

In fact, it's in the constitution so I can't change it."

And in fact, he was supporting Buchanan's effort to have a 13th amendment, which would actually, uh, reaffirm that slavery was part of the constitution.

So why was it that people in the South were so determined to secede and believe that he was going to get rid of slavery?

What was that all about?

REYNOLDS: One reason why he was elected was that he was a moderate, at least publicly, politically, he was a moderate.

He didn't want to be associated with radical abolitionism.

He was shocked when, uh, he was elected 'cause seven southern states left the union, and soon followed by four more.

But, uh, his rather conservative stance on slavery at the beginning of the war was really his effort to try at all costs, to retain the union, to retain the union.

And yet he was faced with the, the reality of secession.

Also the constitution could be interpreted at that time as saying, "Okay, we have to leave slavery where it already exists, but it can't be, can't extend into the west, into the federal territories.

It cannot extend."

And that, that was his position, uh, in defense of the constitution as it stood at that time.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So when Lincoln is elected president, um, he doesn't actually take office until March because in those days you weren't inaugurated until March.

So he wins the election in November and he takes office in March.

What does he do in November, December, January, February, as he gets ready to become president?

REYNOLDS: He is in Springfield, uh, Illinois, where he lived spending lot of time in the state house.

He had an office there and, uh, meeting a lot of politicians that were, he was considering for the cabinet, thinking about that.

And also watch, watching national events, but frankly not speaking too much publicly 'cause he didn't want to inflame this situation, that really was kind of getting worse and worse with more and more states seceding.

And he thought that it was best at that point to in general, uh, be quiet.

Uh, in general to kinda keep a, a low profile at that moment.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, Lincoln is famous for, um, giving some terrific speeches, the inaugural address, the first one.

The second one is even more famous than the Gettysburg Address.

He had a very unusual writing style, you could argue.

It was very simplistic.

He didn't use a lot of fancy words, and he generally tended to be a brief speaker.

Uh, in those days, sometimes people measured your success as a speaker by whether you spoke for two or three hours, he didn't tend to do that.

Why did he tend to have shorter speeches, and where did he get this writing style that was relatively very crisp and clear, and I would say simple?

REYNOLDS: Among, uh, the cultural influences on him was poetry, he loved to recite poetry.

And poetry condenses meaning and it condenses feeling and message.

It condenses it and it expresses it in very resonant, powerful language.

And really his best speeches are prose poems.

The Gettysburg Address is only 272 words or so.

And so it's one of the shortest speeches, and yet it's the best speech, uh, in American history because it concentrates, uh, so much meaning, the meaning of America, uh, in, in this, as you say, rather clear language, also rhythmic, uh, language, and poetic language.

RUBENSTEIN: In the Gettysburg Address, um, he did something that some people say was a bit of sleight-of-hand.

In those days, as you point out in your book, uh, the founding fathers were often thought to be the pilgrims, or the Puritans who really came to this country, but he makes the founding fathers, the people who gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and so forth.

And then he makes the important part of war being equality in effect everybody's equal as opposed to let's just have the union be, coming back together.

So can you talk about that so-called sleight-of-hand as Gary Wills has called it, and, and why he was so determined to elevate the, the Declaration of Independence?

REYNOLDS: Yeah.

Well, the Declaration of Independence saying all men are created equal, and when he says four score and seven years, our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, uh, you know, a, a nation conceived in liberty, uh, and founded on the, on the proposition that all men are created equal.

In one sentence, he pushes America totally into, into the preamble of the Declaration of Independence beyond the Constitution, even into the idea of equality.

And so many other people saying, "Oh, it was the Pilgrim fathers who stood for, they were rebelling against England and they, they came to America and they stood for liberty.

They stood for morality and all that."

And a lot of people saw the war as being, being between the Puritans, who are the New Englanders, and the Cavaliers who were the Southerners.

And Lincoln refused to call the fathers of the country, the, the Pilgrims.

He wanted to make, uh, actually the preamble of the Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, the real fathers, so that he could, uh, then, uh, create this kind of sleight-of-hand and direct the war, toward equality.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's talk about the war, the Civil War.

Uh, Lincoln is reportedly upset with his generals from time to time 'cause they didn't seem to be very aggressive.

They weren't doing very well until he finally found Ulysses S. Grant.

Why was he so patient with his generals?

REYNOLDS: Well, he was kind of a tyro at the beginning.

He didn't really know too much.

And he was impressed by McClellan who, uh, was high in his class at West point.

He was dashing.

He was dapper.

And McClellan was a wonderful, uh, inspirer of troops.

The trouble with McClellan is that he was very dilatory delaying on the battlefield and very indecisive on the battlefield.

And Lincoln, he went through a lot of generals.

And even Mead who won at Gettysburg, he was very angry at Mead for not pursuing Lee and finishing Lee off.

So he, he, you know, got rid of Mead and then he got rid of McClellan finally after Antietam.

RUBENSTEIN: Was he upset that Grant was, seemed to be an alcoholic?

Did that bothered him?

REYNOLDS: Well, the thing about Grant is that he went on binges.

It is true.

He went on binges.

He gen, generally drank more or less alone.

He d, he didn't really let that interfere though with his battlefield performance.

He was sober when he had to be.

And Lincoln called Grant, my bulldog, my bulldog.

Once he gets his teeth, teeth into something, he's not going to let go.

RUBENSTEIN: Lincoln's signature achievement, other than hoping to win the war, was the Emancipation Proclamation.

So why did he take so long to issue it?

And why was it such a, uh, kind of legal, uh, form?

It wasn't, didn't have the beauty of the Gettysburg Address.

Why didn't he explain why he was doing it in beautiful, simple language?

REYNOLDS: He had to be very, very, uh, cautious and very careful with the Emancipation Proclamation, because there were plenty of moderates and conservatives in the North that he would alienate, uh, if he, issued this, uh, prematurely, and he had to wait, uh, for the Battle of Antietam, which was a kind of victory, at, at least a semi victory for the North, at least McClellan stopped, uh, Lee from coming through Maryland.

And then he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, but he really had his eye on the border states.

And that's why in, in the Emancipation Proclamation, he says, "Okay, the border states can keep their enslaved people.

But, uh, I hereby uh, liberate and emancipate forever, all the enslaved people in these seceded states, the rebellious states," uh, 'cause he really wanted to retain those border states that were really on the edge of leaving the union.

And so we had to make it very kinda conservative actually because, um, it does only emancipate some of the, the enslaved people, not all of them.

And, uh, it is very kinda dry and legalistic.

It's not moralistic whatsoever.

And he called it, he called it, uh, military necessity, I'm doing this for military, as almost like a weapon, because the enslaved people of the South were being used, manipulated by the Confederacy to, uh, help, help out the Confederacy.

Uh, and, uh, so he, he in essence, at least on paper, wanted to get rid of that weapon for the, for the South.

RUBENSTEIN: Do you think it's fair to say that Lincoln was a racist or he was not a racist?

REYNOLDS: Uh, he was not a racist.

There have been people like Lauren Bennett and so forth who say that racism was the center of his being.

First of all, uh, unfortunately even abolitionists back then, Theodore Parker said some things about, about race that were really, uh, you know...

I can name so many abolitionists and anti-slavery people who, uh, harbored a certain racism.

When he was running for office in Illinois against like one of the most racist people around, Stephen A. Douglas, who kept, uh, you know, hounding him and saying, you know, he made a few comments, "Well, I've never said that, you know, African-Americans should serve on juries or should vote or do this or that," in kind of a laundry list fashion.

And some people cite that as being, uh, you know, evidence that he was a racist and so forth.

Then when he met the black delegation in 1862, he kinda said some conservative things there.

He said several things before the Emancipation Proclamation, "Oh, I could never, uh, issue an Emancipation Proclamation.

It would we be, be totally worthless."

He taught that to ministers and he was very conservative at that time because he was trying to prepare for the Emancipation Proclamation.

So he kind of put on a kind of public conservatism, uh, but underneath his, uh, affection for African-Americans came through.

He was, uh, constant from sp, the Springfield years right up through his presidency, a personal affection and respect for African-Americans, and ultimately becomes the very first president to publicly call for the vote for African-Americans.

RUBENSTEIN: In his last public speech, Lincoln did suggest that perhaps, uh, Blacks who had served in the army or during the war might be entitled to vote and perhaps others might be entitled to vote if they were educated and so forth.

That is what supposedly, um, caused John Wilkes Booth to decide to move forward with an assassination.

Uh, did Lincoln have any premonition that he was gonna be assassinated or that he was gonna die early?

REYNOLDS: Yes.

Um, he had assassination threats from the very, very beginning when he was, uh, going from, uh, Pennsylvania down to Washington through Baltimore.

He had to take a secret train because there was a very viable assassination threat.

And he finally accepted to have kind of a guard around him as he drove around Washington and everything.

But the evening that he was killed, he only had a little valet out front.

He didn't really have any particular guard out, out in front of his booth.

Uh, uh, so, uh, yeah, he kind of unfortunately laid himself open to assassination and, uh, it, it really is a pity, but at the same time, the assassination sort of canonized him and sanctified him.

And he really becomes a martyr as a result of the assassination.

RUBENSTEIN: One final question, suppose you had a chance to have dinner with Abraham Lincoln and you could ask him one question at that dinner, what would be the one question you'd really want to ask him?

REYNOLDS: I would say, uh, "Lincoln..." because he didn't like Mr. President.

He didn't like, um, Mr. Lincoln.

He didn't like Abe by the way, I would say, "Lincoln..." if I was a friend with him, "Lincoln, can you tell me that, on the day that Lee surrenders to Grant, April 9th, you spent several hours reading Shakespeare and other poets?"

I think I would know the answer, but he, 'cause he was reading poetry about death, but these were just general poems about death and dying.

And I believe his answer would be the following.

"You know, I directed a war that in which perhaps almost 800,000 people died, I'm thinking of them right now.

I'm thinking of those that have died."

I think that would be his answer.

And, uh, 'cause he has such compassion and he had lost his dear, dear son, Willy, during the war and so forth.

And, uh, earlier he had lost a son.

I think that would be the answer.

So, but that's definitely the question I would ask.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, I'd like to thank you for a very interesting conversation.

I always enjoy talking about Lincoln, particularly with somebody that has my favorite initials, DR.

So, um, thank you, uh, for this conversation.

REYNOLDS: It's wonderful, David.

You had wonderful questions and I love discussing Lincoln.

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