National Constitution Center scholar-in-residence and UNC Law School professor Michael Gerhardt recently joined us to unveil his new book Lincoln’s Mentors: The Education of a Leader. He was joined by leading historians H.W. Brands, author of the new book The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom, and Judith Giesberg, author of Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of American Morality, in a conversation moderated by Jeffrey Rosen. They explored how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership, and how five men mentored an obscure lawyer with no executive experience to become one of America’s greatest presidents.
FULL PODCAST
Or, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
PARTICIPANTS
Michael Gerhardt is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence and scholar-in-residence at the National Constitution Center. He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is Lincoln’s Mentors: The Education of a Leader. Gerhardt has participated in both the impeachment trials of President Clinton and President Trump, during which he also frequently appeared on CNN as an expert and commentator on the impeachment process.
H.W. Brands is the Jack S. Blanton Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written 30 books, including The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom and Heirs of the Founders: The Epic Rivalry of Henry Clay, John Calhoun and Daniel Webster, the Second Generation of American Giants. Brands is a member of various honorary societies, including the Society of American Historians and the Philosophical Society of Texas.
Judith Giesberg is the Robert M. Birmingham Chair in the Humanities and Professor of History at Villanova University. Giesberg is the author of five books, including Sex and the Civil War: Soldiers, Pornography, and the Making of Modern Morality. She also directs a digital project, Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery, that is collecting, digitizing, and transcribing information wanted ads taken out by former slaves looking for family members lost to the domestic slave trade.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Abraham Lincoln, The Lyceum Address (1838)
- Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address (1860)
- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (1863)
- Ed. Steven Smith, The Writings of Abraham Lincoln
- Ed. Terrence Ball, Lincoln: Political Writings and Speeches
- Michael Gerhardt, Lincoln's Mentors: The Education of a Leader
- Michael Gerhardt, The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy
- H.W. Brands, The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and the Struggle for American Freedom
- H.W. Brands, Heirs of the Founders: Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Daniel Webster, and the Second Generation of American Giants
- Judith Giesberg, “Army at Home”: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front
- The Missouri Compromise (1820)
- Margaret Hogan, The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, "Corrupt Bargain"
- Emile Davis, Memorable Day: The Emile Davis Diares
- Live at the National Constitution Center, "Shakespeare and the Making of America"
- Live at the National Constitution Center, "What the Founders Learned from the Greeks and the Romans"
- Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
This episode was produced by Jackie McDermott, John Guerra, and Lana Ulrich. It was engineered by Greg Scheckler.
Stay Connected and Learn More
Questions or comments about the show? Email us at [email protected].
Continue today’s conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr.
Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.
Please subscribe to Live at the National Constitution Center and our companion podcast We the People on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.
To watch National Constitution Center Town Halls live, check out our schedule of upcoming programs. Register through Zoom to ask your constitutional questions in the Q&A or watch live on YouTube.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
Jackie McDermott: [00:00:00] Welcome to Live at the National Constitution Center. I'm Jackie McDermott, the show's producer. Professor Michael Gerhardt, the National Constitution Center's scholar in residence, recently joined us to unveil his new book, "Lincoln's mentors: the education of a leader." He was joined by leading historians H.W. Brands and Judith Giesberg in a conversation moderated by Jeffrey Rosen. Here's Jeff.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:00:28] Michael, I want to begin with a memorable scene in your book, which seems especially relevant at this challenging moment. And that is 1837. Lincoln's speech to the young men's Lyceum of Springfield. It is a time of mob violence. Elijah Lovejoy, an abolitionist minister, has just been murdered by a mob, as has an African-American man in St. Louis. And Lincoln uses the word mob or mobs eight times in this famous address. And he refers to an ill omen developing within the nation, by which he says, "I mean the increasing disregard for the law, which pervades the country, the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of the courts and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice." He goes on to warn that a demagogue may arise within us and inflame mob passions and says that only reason, sober, cool unimpassioned reason can save us along with allegiance to the rule of law. Obvious modern resonances. But this distinction between reason and passion was one that Madison had used in the constitutional convention. And you say in your book that Lincoln is warning against the dangers of mob-ocracy, embodied in the followers of Andrew Jackson, and instead embracing a vision of reason that he attributes to Henry Clay. Now, both Jackson and Clay are among the five mentors that you identify in this book. So how is it that Lincoln is denouncing Jackson and embracing Clay? And what can this speech tell us about the education of Abraham Lincoln?
Michael J. Gerhardt: [00:02:15] Well, thanks for the opportunity to answer that. Jeff, I'll try and keep my answers short. I do want to thank you and Lana, everybody at the National Constitution Center for having this great event. And I want to thank my co-panelists as well for taking the time to do it, and I'm honored to be here. And I appreciate the chance to talk about the book and other things. For Lincoln, he's a relatively young man at the time of the Lyceum address. Young in terms of our thinking. But not necessarily young for somebody at that time. And Lincoln has already struck out into politics. He's already trying to make a name for himself in politics. And it turns out that a couple of the mentors were running the Lyceum program and it invited him to give that address.
And so he's happy to do it. And yes, one of his targets is Andrew Jackson. And it was very common to talk about the mob-ocracy in association with Jackson or to associate Jacksonians with mobs. Jackson was King mob and there was a sense that, and this is traced to the fact that Jackson was the first capital "D" Democrat. Somebody who really was a populist, who really championed if we can put it this way, the common people. And he was trying to actually broaden the citizenry in some respects, by doing that. But Lincoln saw danger in that because Jackson ruled by fear, Jackson ruled, in his opinion, by having the mob go after people. And that didn't follow the rule of law, as you just pointed out. And, while Jackson's a target, I also think there's something else that becomes evident about Lincoln, not just at that time, but earlier, as well as later. I think part of Lincoln's genius is he's able to learn from people regardless of whether he actually idolized them or not.
He's able to sort of look at somebody he might disapprove of politically, but still see something valuable or worth emulating or worth learning from that person. And Jackson's that person. Clay, he had a lot of differences with Jackson, voted against him every chance he had, and yet later when he's president, he has Jackson's portrait in his office. He adores Clay from relatively early on, though he's raised among Jacksonian Democrats. And he's particularly enamored of Clay's rhetoric. I think in this speech the Lyceum address, we see Lincoln really trying to show his knowledge, and almost being too brazen in his displays of flourishing rhetoric and wild imagery.
He's going to learn to tame all that, eventually. But Clay is somebody he really respects for his rhetoric, he respects for his pension for compromise, and he respects for his American system. The Whig philosophy that Clay embodied, the American system was a system that Clay had imagined that would enable the country to be unified through a series of internal improvements, like roads or bridges. And so Lincoln, not only approves of that early in his life, he, he stands by that for the rest of his life. So he sees a lot in Clay to respect and emulate. He's going to try and learn from his rhetoric. But at the same time, he's going to learn as well from Clay's failings. Clay won't be perfect by any means, and Lincoln will see the imperfections. He is a tremendous judge of people throughout his life. And so that's how he's able to sort of borrow from each of these different leaders and find those things that make sense in his life and those things he's going to want to avoid later.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:05:43] Well, wonderful answer and great introduction to the book and so interesting to hear you say that he took from both Jackson and Clay a respect for their devotion to union and a respect for their use of rhetoric, which as you say, shows his ability to learn from those with whom he disagreed politically. Professor Brands, your book on Heirs of the Founders: Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster, the second generation of American giants of course, is a definitive exploration of the relationship and ideas of Clay and Webster, both of whom influenced Lincoln. So maybe begin by helping us understand the different ideas of Clay and Webster, so that we can have a sense of them, and then maybe help us put that Lincoln's concern about mobs in the broader context of the fact that this is a time when there are also mob actions against the federal armory by John Brown, which you write about in your book on John Brown and Lincoln, suggesting that in that circumstance mob could be used in the effort to inspire a slave uprising, which failed. Tell us about Lincoln's attitude toward John Brown's action and what it says about his distinction between reason and passion in the Springfield address.
H.W. Brands: [00:07:01] Sure. All that's a tall order. I'll take a whack at it and see what I can do. So, the first thing I think to remember in all of these, less Jackson, but definitely in the case of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln, is that these were men who made politics their profession. And they understood that in politics, especially in this era, one had to make compromises at time. Henry Clay was known in his era as the great compromiser. And whereas today, to call somebody a compromiser would almost be a slander, but in those days it was recognized that that's the way progress is made. In a democracy, you don't get everything that you want. And so Henry Clay prided himself on his ability to find something that diametrically opposed views, diametrically opposed opponents could get on board with. Henry Clay was the author of the Missouri Compromise. He was the author of the compromise that kept South Carolina from seceding from the Union in 1833. He was the principal author of the compromise of 1850. So Henry Clay understood this. Now, Henry Clay did have a philosophy and it was identified as the American System. Henry Clay believed that, he believed that various parts of the United States could sort of work together to increase the welfare of all.
He was, unlike Jackson, Jackson was a small government man with an important exception. We'll come to this. Henry Clay was a firm believer in big government. This was the essence of Whig party philosophy, it's one of the things that characterized Abraham Lincoln as well, when he was Whig and later, as he was a president of the Republican party. The willingness to use government to promote the general welfare, you know, as Lincoln said, the government should do what people cannot do for themselves or cannot do as well for themselves. Andrew Jackson was suspicious of the business classes. He was especially suspicious of banks. In many ways, Andrew Jackson was a man of the 18th century. He was the oldest of this bunch. He was born in 1867. So that made him 10 years older than Henry Clay and 32 years older than Abraham Lincoln.
And he, well, he was born at a time when there weren't banks in the United States. And so Jackson never got over that. And in response to the question about mob-ocracy here. I'm not meaning to defend Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson could defend himself quite well, sometimes with dueling pistols or a cane, but it's served the political purposes of Henry Clay, and I would say of Abraham Lincoln, to describe the supporters of Andrew Jackson as a mob. Well, in fact, what they were people who had been previously dispossessed in American politics. And yes, when they did come to Washington in 1829 for the inauguration of Andrew Jackson, they certainly seemed like a mob to the people who were there, but it's because they weren't from there, they were these Westerners who had rather rough ways, but it's important I think to distinguish Jackson himself from the people who supported him. And Jackson was perfectly happy to accept their votes. But Jackson, when he had an opportunity, if he had been so inclined, to call a mob into, let's say, contest an election in 1824, when he really did think that the election had been stolen from him, the theft was constitutional, but nonetheless, he got the most popular votes.
He got the most electoral votes. But he didn't win the election. And he called it a corrupt bargain, but he lifted no finger to call the mob into challenge the outcome of the election. So, these are men who played politics, hard. They had philosophies of their own. They sort of understood what they wanted. You mentioned Daniel Webster. I'll just say one thing about Daniel Webster. And he's an example of how philosophy's changed over time. Because Daniel Webster came to national attention during the war of 1812, arguing that since new England's interests have been trampled by the Republican party of Henry Clay and John Calhoun and James Madison, that New England might reconsider its attachment to the Union and Daniel Webster marked out this, almost a constitutional theory that didn't get quite to secession, but it certainly implied secession if New England's interests weren't taken into account. Now, this is important to keep this in mind because Daniel Webster is going to become the champion of the Union, the Union above everything else, within 20 years after that.
So Webster, probably of all of these men had the most malleable philosophy, but nonetheless. People's ideas on what the Constitution meant, what the Union meant, evolved over time. And it's really important that Abraham Lincoln is born amid these changing views. And of course, he's the one upon whom the greatest responsibility in all of American history for interpreting the Constitution will fall when he becomes president.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:12:19] Fascinating such a wonderful answer. And you said so much, including Webster's changing his mind about the Constitution and the Constitution being a touchdown for all of these people who approached it so differently, including Lincoln, who of course said that the Constitution had to be our salvation in the Lyceum address. And so interesting too about Jackson, who did indeed think that the election was stolen, but despite the charges of his leading mobs did not in fact summon one to contest it. Absolutely fascinating. Professor Giesberg, you had a great tweet yesterday about this panel. You said, look forward to talking about info, wanted Oregon Davis diaries, and many other scholarly projects that are shedding new light on the Civil War broadly conceived. As you hear this discussion about mobs, of course, the victims of the mob in many cases in the antebellum era were free men and women, African-Americans and enslaved people in Philadelphia and elsewhere. They're being set on they're being violently attacked and killed. What light can these new scholarly projects cast on the experiences of African-Americans, of women who were experiencing this history in the most personal way?
Judith Giesberg: [00:13:37] Right. Well, I want to underscore something that Dr. Brands just said about, you know, sort of what is going on sort of inside and outside the halls of, you know, of power and the places of governance, you know, we're sort of talking here about a study of, you know, either insiders or people who want to be inside. And certainly as white men, they have access to those halls of power and Lincoln, and, you know, in his Lyceum address, is seeking to sort of establish his right, you know, to be one of them. You know, so this sort of drawing this line between what is reason, what is passion serves his purpose you know, as an aspiran for public office.
But for all of those people for whom those kinds of aspirations were impossible to fulfill, namely disfranchised immigrants, women, people of color, you know, nobody sort of expected them necessarily, nobody would have been surprised by displays of lack of reason or of passion. So I think it's important to sort of think about the way in which all of this rhetoric was both gendered and raced at the same time. And then, you know, in the spaces in which all of these disenfranchised groups you know, experienced politics or you know, politicked, those spaces were the streets, where, right, where different groups of disenfranchised peoples jockeyed for you know, for little bits of power that they could have and that they could sort of you know, seize from one another.
So, you know, it's not surprising at all in the antebellum era to think about the streets as a pretty rough place, a place where, you know, violence broke out regularly, every time there was an election, where if you were a woman like Emily Davis who lived in Philadelphia during the Civil War, she wrote in her diary, you know, there's an election going on today. I'm not going outside, I'm staying inside. And she was pretty smart about that. Because these were violent encounters between these different groups of disfranchised people. She saw them, she recorded them in her diary. We know, you know, what happens in Philadelphia in 1870 and 1871, when you know, Pennsylvania's of color get the right to vote again. There's a lot of street violence that goes on in the city and there are sort of roving mobs and gangs of people who are seeking to disenfranchise African-Americans and Octavius Cato, that's what happens to Octavius Cato is he's attacked by you know, by one of these sort of narrow do wells who then never gets, never was punished for it.
But I guess that the point that strikes me about this conversation is sort of what gets to, you know, what sort of gets defined as politics is, you know, depends on where you position yourself. You know, if you're one of, if you're somebody like Lincoln or one of these five people who you know, that Michael has identified as his close mentors, you know, you're sort of vision and your impression of politics is, you know, is something that is a place of reason and the mob is politely uninvited. But for you know, for Irish, the Irish who lived in Philadelphia, who you know, were both victims of riots and sometimes were a part of the mob themselves. That was their sort of version of that, you know, that a lot of what was happening there was an expression of those kinds of politics, street politics, which, you know, which could have reverberations beyond the streets. Sometimes, you know, those kinds of violent episodes force those people in positions of power to respond and to make changes. So I think it's in particular, in this period that you can see lots of examples of that side of that sort of thing happening.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:17:58] Thank you very much indeed for that and for reminding us of the ways that the voices that as you said, were excluded from the political process may not have had the same attitude toward these classical tropes of reason versus passion that those who were political aspirants like Lincoln were. Michael, I would love for you to put on the table the core thesis of your book, which is that Lincoln learned from a diverse group of people, some of whom he'd never met and others of whom he knew intimately. And they are, we've talked about two of them, Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson, but you also highlight Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stewart and Orville Browning. Just so our wonderful listeners have a sense of the thesis of the book, maybe give us a few sentences on what Lincoln learned from each of these five mentors. And I think I'll just add a great question from the Q and A box from our friend Derek Webb, which I know you addressed in the book, Lincoln had a famously strained relationship with his father. In what way were Lincoln's mentors different from his father and perhaps even replacements for the supportive father figure he lacked in his youth?
Michael J. Gerhardt: [00:19:11] Well, the latter is a good question, I'll try and get to that at the end. And of course, one thing to note about Lincoln is I think it's not really much of an overstatement to say he's really kind of learning from everybody he's around. Stephen Douglas later describes Lincoln as predominantly a man of the atmospherics that surround him, which I think, Douglas knew him most of his life. And I think what that meant was that Lincoln sort of lived in, he was there in the moment. He would sort of be able to understand the dynamics of what was going on and only then would he be able to figure out, okay, what may be the path forward I can, you know, from this point. And so throughout his life, one of the things I think I might've identified, or at least found interesting, is there is a pattern that Lincoln's going back to each of these five. It's not so much that they are five more important than anybody else. They each have influence. And they were influences throughout his life.
So we mentioned Andrew Jackson, the founder, one of the founders of the democratic party. Henry Clay, one of the founders of the Whig party. Also, Zachary Taylor, the winning general of Mexican War whom Lincoln supports over Clay for the presidential nomination in the late 1840s. Clay and Taylor are in many respects the two most prominent Kentuckians in Lincoln's life, lifetime. And so if Lincoln's looking around the state where he was born thinking, okay, who might there be that would be prominent and who could become president from my state? They are Clay and Taylor. He likes Taylor's bluntness and down to earth quality. He doesn't dress up. He becomes eventually a great model for Ulysses Grant as well, but that comes later. And so but Taylor's ingenuity is also his really strong defense of the Union, even against threats of secession. Notice that each of the three, Clay, Jackson, and Taylor all have that in common.
John Todd Stewart is the person that talks Lincoln into becoming a lawyer. One of the people that does that. He's Lincoln's first law partner. He's also one of the first people Lincoln goes to campaign for, and Lincoln is not just campaigning for Stewart. He's sometimes substituting for him in debates with Stewart's first opponent, a guy named Stephen Douglas. And so Lincoln is learning by watching those debates as well. But he's also learning from Todd, both what to do and not to do. Todd was fairly, John Todd Stewart was fairly lazy. He was good in front of juries, but Lincoln, although it could be called lazy, will have to learn from books himself, which Stewart gives him. Browning's another lawyer, roughly a contemporary of Lincoln's.
But Browning is also somebody who helps guide Lincoln, educate Lincoln, first in the social world, but then later also he's in the state legislature at the same time Lincoln is, so they're working one in the House, State House, Lincoln, one in the State Senate, Browning, and Browning will stay in touch with Lincoln throughout his life. Lincoln will run, and Browning will be one of the few people that Lincoln will show his inaugural address to. He'll make an important change there. Later, Browning was appointed to take over Stephen Douglas' Senate seat. And during his time in Washington will interact a lot with Lincoln. They have a rather candid and sometimes tempestuous correspondence, but over the years. But Browning, but nevertheless Browning is still there, somewhere in Lincoln's view, as somebody who Lincoln likes to use as a sounding board. So that's kind of how they all come into play, at least at the beginning, why they become mentors and the book is largely about what they help do for Lincoln as mentors.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:22:46] Wonderful. Thank you for that. And we will, we can return to the question of the father influence on the next round, but that was, that was a great encapsulation of this book. Professor Brands, tell us about the contrast that you draw so vividly in the zealot and the emancipator between Abraham Lincoln and John Brown. You note in the book that the conventional accounts of Lincoln as a temporizer and a kind of cautious moderate may be overdrawn, that Lincoln had a passionate zeal for emancipation once he was convinced of it. And nevertheless, you contrast him, of course, with Brown who led an unsuccessful mob attack, if that's a word that you would use, on the armory, failed in his efforts to incite a slave revolt and was executed. What did Lincoln make of Brown's attempted mob action? Was Brown an example of a good mob, as Larry Kramer argues we saw during the revolution itself? Cause after all the Boston tea party was a mob attack on British tea duties that the founders thought were unconstitutional, so was Brown in that tradition? And help our audience understand the difference between these two men, Brown and Lincoln.
H.W. Brands: [00:24:04] John Brown would have been incensed to have his followers at Harper's ferry described as a mob. They were well-disciplined, they'd been trained, they were paramilitary fighters, but they didn't have a mind of their own. They had, he was their commander, they followed his orders. So in that regard, I would say that the raid on Harper's ferry was anything but mob action. And in fact, that's precisely what made it so alarming to southerners because it was concerted effort, clearly. John Brown had been planning this for many months, at least, and critically, he had been receiving funding from private individuals in the North. And so if it had just been a spontaneous uprising, that would have been one thing, but this wasn't, this was well planned. I mean, it wasn't well executed, but it was well-planned.
But you asked the question about John Brown and Abraham Lincoln. So I decided to write a book about the two, because I wanted to pose the question, I think that comes up all the time in the history of democracies, but it almost is in private life, and that is what does a good person do in the face of evil? So it's one thing for John Brown and Abraham Lincoln to agree that slavery is wrong, but that's only the start. The question in a political system is so what are you going to do about it? And they took diametrically opposite views of what to do about it. John Brown believed that slavery was so evil that almost no response to it was off the books that violence, even lethal violence, was justified in response to this horrible evil of slavery. You asked, what did Abraham Lincoln think of John Brown and the raid on Harper's ferry? First of all, he hardly knew of John Brown before the raid on Harper's ferry. John Brown was, he was known as Osawatomie Brown and this, because he led a paramilitary group in Kansas territory, but he was the shady figure.
He was wanted for murder, for the brutal murder, of five pro-slavery settlers in Kansas. But other than that, he had kind of disappeared because he was actually on the run and in hiding. But when Lincoln heard about the raid on Harper's ferry, he thought it was the worst thing to happen to the anti-slavery movement imaginable and, for Lincoln, these two were pretty closely allied, it was the worst, potentially worst thing to happen to his political ambitions because Lincoln could tell, anybody could tell by the autumn of 1859, when the raid on Harper's ferry takes place, that the Republicans are going to nominate and elect the next president, assuming they don't really alarm the rest of the country. The arithmetic of the electoral college was such that the Republican candidate was going to win. Their first nominee in 1856, almost won and their fortunes had improved since then. And so Lincoln was trying to keep a distinction, a very important distinction, between moderate anti-slavery elements, the ones he considered to be the heart of the Republican party, and wild-eyed abolitionists like John Brown. Abraham Lincoln believed that slavery would end only when the Constitution was amended or when the Southern states themselves decided to dispense with slavery as the Northern states had. And he thought that violent action like John Brown's would be counterproductive.
In the short term, it would fasten the shackles even tighter on slaves because their masters, fearing for their lives, would insist that what small freedoms these life people had would be denied them. And in the longer term, it would make it harder to achieve that constitutional ending of slavery that Lincoln hoped for. So, Lincoln made very clear in the months after Harpers ferry, that John Brown was not a Republican and the Republicans were not like John Brown.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:28:00] One of our group questioners, Steve Smith, asked you to say something about Lincoln's cool assessment of Brown and the Cooper Union speech, but we'll save that for the next round, along with some other questions. Professor Giesberg, you've written so powerfully about many of these women and as well as the African-American opponents of slavery, maybe you mentioned a few people in the last round, pick one or two that you think were especially illustrative and tell us the story and how their reaction to this unbelievable evil of slavery through their eyes.
Judith Giesberg: [00:28:35] Sure. So, I think one of the things I like about having worked on this diary that I mentioned in the in the last question written by this young woman named Emily Davis, who lived in Philadelphia, is because she complicates the ideas that we have about you know, sort of the free North and allows us to see these days that we're talking about here that Lincoln lived through, through the eyes of a young free black woman who you know, although free, lives within you know, a nation where were her sort of half free status keeps her quite vulnerable. I mean, you know, we know that in the city of Philadelphia free black children were kidnapped off the streets regularly and sold into slavery. And we know of Emily Davis' own family that her father and brother lived in near Harrisburg, so during the civil war, when Robert Lee's army of Northern Virginia came into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863, she was quite concerned that her family would be the next people, you know, could be victims of kidnapping from the army of Northern Virginia. And as she watches in her diary, she sees refugees coming into the city of Philadelphia, fleeing the army. She writes you know, evocatively in her diary, how concerned she is about their freedom, that whether, you know, they're free now in Pennsylvania, but that freedom is, you know, is a tenuous thing without you know, without a legal end to slavery in the country, which was not, which seemed like a, you know still a remote possibility in the summer of 1863.
So certainly what Davis' diary and her experiences as this woman living in the free city of Philadelphia, remind us is that you know, that freedom you know, her experience of freedom certainly didn't seem final and it certainly, didn't sort of free her of the concerns for her family. And it certainly didn't protect her from you know, the humiliation, the daily humiliation of racism in the city of Philadelphia, and segregation in the city of Philadelphia. So Davis follows all of these events carefully. She watches the progress of Lincoln's campaign. She predicted and, she was pretty smart, she predicted that Lincoln was going to win in 1864. She writes that in her diary, she says, I think he's gonna win. And, of course she was right. Although right, as again, as she's doubly disfranchised, it's not as if she can cast her vote for him or you know, or is anybody going to ask her for her opinion of the outcome of it.
But she appreciates the significance of events like the battle of Gettysburg. She appreciates the significance of Lincoln's reelection. And she celebrates the end of the war and the victory of the United States because she sees this as, you know, as sort of a further step in sort of resolving her status and the status of other people of color, whether they're free or soon to be free, that this was going to resolve this sort of you know, half free life that they live. And, these are the kinds of things she remarks upon in her diary. When Lincoln dies, she you know, is sort of giving us the real time experience of hearing this, you know, this person who she valued, that she understood, you know, had the fate of people like herself in his hands. She, you know, the nervousness that she waited for the, you know, after he was shot about his you know, the outcome of his injuries. And then when she finds out that he died, she like other black Philadelphians, turned out in the streets of Philadelphia and waited for hours to see his funeral procession. And was concerned about what this meant, you know, with the death of a man like Lincoln meant that, you know, the freedom that had been won in the civil war, would that be, you know, would that be reversed?
So I think the value of experiencing the, you know, the war and these events through her eyes gives us the sense you know, you can sort of smooth out the history of the civil war and this period. But when you live it through the eyes of a woman like Emily Davis, it seems much more raw. And it seems like it's, you know, these things could potentially have been reversed at any moment. So, you know, the value of looking at the war through their eyes, I think gives us you know, new insight into what it would have been like to be a person of color again, you know, sort of in the nominally free states. But yet sort of seeing that, that status as eminently up in the air and up for grabs.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:33:30] Fascinating. And as you put it, the nominally free states is exactly the right phrase and her experience so different from that of Lincoln and Clay casts illuminating light on the period. Michael, I would love your thoughts about Derek Webb's question about whether these mentors became substitute father figures for Lincoln, given his famously strained relationship with his father. And then I want you to talk about Lincoln's other intellectual influences as a child. You so interestingly tell us that he read the Bible and Aesop's fables and Parson Weem's biography of George Washington. And you tell us that he got from there that classical distinction of reason and passion and you quote Weems talking about Washington's true heroic valor, which combats malignant passions, conquers unreasonable self. And then you say that Lincoln read, and when I read this in your manuscript, I checked it out too, and it's amazing how classical it is. He read Lindley Murray's reader, which was popular throughout his youth, kind of every school kid read it, but it was full of classical moral axioms from the ancient Greeks and Romans and British magazines like the Spectator and Enlightenment, moral sources, all of whom inspire the founders. And then you say he read this history of the founding by William Grimshaw, history of the United States. So tell us about the way that all of those sources, which you so fascinatingly reconstruct, basically put Lincoln into the mind of the founders, gave them at least excerpts from the same classical moral axioms that shaped the founders and how that influenced his entire outlook.
Michael J. Gerhardt: [00:35:11] Okay. I'll do that as short as I can. I appreciate it. I'm sorry, Derek. I've gotten to your question sooner, but it is an important one when one's talking about Lincoln's life and his development. As Jeffrey said, it's probably well known that Lincoln had a strained relationship with his father. His father appears to be gruff, but at the same time is described as being a great storyteller. He was a kind of strict task master as far as Lincoln was concerned. And that was part of the friction that developed between them. Thomas was his name; Thomas I think was reputedly often kind of kicking Lincoln one way or another to get back to work. He didn't really have any patience for the reading that Lincoln seemed to like to do. Some people thought Lincoln was lazy. His father certainly did. But Lincoln even described when he left home as quote, his emancipation unquote. And I suspect at that time, that word was not exactly an accident for him to use. In other words, I think he might've even begun to envision himself as a little bit under the bondage of his father. And he finally broke free.
Right before he leaves for the presidency, he walks by himself to his father's grave. Nobody knows what of course he said or thought, but he didn't even take a break to go to his father's funeral. Whether Lincoln was looking for a father later, I don't know, but I don't I could be corrected on this, but I don't really find much evidence of that. I don't think he's, you don't ever see him in a situation where he's happily taking orders from somebody else, you know, he's happily sort of following the agenda of somebody else or just listening to the advice and just taking it in. Lincoln was very much an active listener. He would hear things, maybe agree, disagree. He could be critical. And that's hard to have in a son. And it is hard for a father to have a son who is going to be that critical. So, but I think Lincoln's looking more to cut his own path. Kind of a young man in a hurry, so to speak. He's trying to find a way to do that. And he's learning from the people around him, but others later will take some umbrage over that feeling as if he's kind of left them behind, but Lincoln was pragmatic.
However, I should emphasize that while he's pragmatic, he's also engaging with the biggest issues of the time. And so you referred to the books he read early on. Early on, I think reading those books inspired Lincoln to follow the path of politics, inspired him to be a hero in his own life. But they also filled him with a constitutional vision about the founding. And that vision then gets informed by his experiences and interactions with other people later. So eventually his vision is not just largely in alignment with Clay's. He's got to adapt that vision to the circumstances in 1860. That's when he's beginning to sort of really move. He's the moderate of the time, so to speak. But I think that turns out to be a winning position. And that's the position he has when he becomes president, but eventually you can see him learn from others around them being moderate here may not just be the best way out. That might not save the Union. I may have to do some other things. And then and so I think in the end, what we see Lincoln doing is learning from Madison and Jefferson. Jefferson's heir to some extent is Clay, although I think Douglas would have liked to be that as well. And so Lincoln is seeing himself in that, he's hoping in a sense to see himself in that lineage. And lo and behold, he does.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:38:44] Fascinating. Jefferson's era's Clay is such a resonant suggestion. And that leads me to ask Professor Brands, to what degree were the other 19th century influences that you write about like Webster, Clay and Calhoun, also heirs of the founders, and would you say that they're heirs of different founders and I'm interested in whether they too embrace this classical distinction that Madison and Lincoln put front and center between reason and passion, which of course was taken from Plato and Aristotle and refined by the Enlightenment. And the idea was that we have to use our powers of reason and reflection to moderate our selfish passions, like anger, jealousy, hatred, and fear, so that we can achieve benevolence, compassion, and empathy and serve the common good. I wonder if that trope was still really in common parlance throughout the antebellum period and through the civil war. And then if that's not enough, and I know I'm just throwing too much at you, so take whatever interests you cause we're gonna end on time, we did have that good question from Steven Smith, say something about Lincoln's very cool assessment about John Brown in the Cooper Union speech.
H.W. Brands: [00:40:00] Well, so, let me see if I can somehow combine my answers to the two. I would say that yeah, that pretty much everybody in this era noted a distinction between passion and reason. And for each person, the definition was basically what I do is reason what my opponents do is passion. Because they're emotional, I'm careful and cautious about this. And so, but I do think that it's a useful distinction between say, Abraham Lincoln and John Brown. Now, I don't want to say that John Brown was moved by passion. John Brown was as calculating as could be, but John Brown believed--I had to figure out on an adjective or a noun to describe John Brown, and I came up with zealot. And I'm not sure that's the best one, that's the one I've got--and, he believed so firmly in his view of slavery that it overrode everything else. It allowed John Brown to take the law into his own hands, to set aside the Constitution, to act as judge and executioner of people who differed with him.
Now, one could call that passion, but it's also a kind of taking reason to this, I'm going to say, to an extremist position. Now, if you agree with John Brown, then I don't know if you'd have liked to be called an extremist, but it certainly was an extreme version. Where's Lincoln? And Lincoln, as I mentioned earlier, Lincoln thought that was counterproductive. Lincoln believed that in a democracy, you operate by persuasion. You don't get to coerce people. You have to persuade them. Except, now the irony of all of this, the irony of Brown and Lincoln, is that Brown attempts to start a war to free the slaves. He fails in both aspects. His war doesn't start, the raid on Harpers ferry fizzles, and he doesn't free any slaves. Abraham Lincoln, the pragmatist, does his best to avoid a war and doesn't want to take on the issue of slavery directly. That's protected by the Constitution. Well, he fails in both regards too. He can't avoid the war. The war comes and he's forced then as part of the war to save the Union, to deal with slavery. So there's a well, history is full of ironies. And probably as much during this period as any other.
But Abraham Lincoln, I mentioned earlier thought John Brown was doing the wrong thing on the short-term merits and the long-term merits as well, as the short term, as I said, it's just going to make slavery worse for slaves then and it was going to make the extirpation, the final emancipation of slaves that much more difficult. Now, Jeff, I wonder if I could prevail on your patience, and let me ask a question of Michael Gerhardt, because I've been dying to ask this question. So, he's got this wonderful book about the education of Abraham Lincoln and his mentors and how Lincoln arrives at this person that he becomes sort of, as he becomes president. Now I'm a historian like Michael, and I know that we very often succumb to hindsight. So, we know that it's important to look at Lincoln because we know what Lincoln became. The question I want to ask Michael is from what Lincoln learns from his mentors and the other people around him, is there any reason to believe that upon Lincoln's election in 1860, Lincoln is going to emerge as the greatest president in American history?
This is a historical question, I think. But it's also fascinating. We've just gone through a presidential election and every four years, Americans try to choose a president from the best person among those who are available. And I would say that history shows that. Sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we don't. In the case of Abraham Lincoln, was there anything that would show that Lincoln was going to be a better president, for example, than James Buchanan. James Buchanan's resume was much more impressive than Lincoln's, but of course, James Buchanan is considered one of the worst presidents in history and Lincoln, the greatest. So if you didn't already know that Lincoln was going to be great, can you see from Lincoln's preparation, can you find the seeds of greatness there?
Michael J. Gerhardt: [00:44:09] I think it's going to be hard to find them. I think in fact, even at the time, remember when Lincoln is elected president, the first time, it's just with a plurality of the popular vote. It's not a landmark by any description. And newspapers are largely critical of him, calling him a coward, sometimes worse. And certainly the people around him are all thinking he's over-matched. And so, and he's got a cabinet, who thinks he's over-matched. And Lincoln himself, as late as 1864, thinks he's gonna lose his reelection. So at least for a while, he thinks that. So I think it's, it's hard, I think to look at that resume, so to speak or look at the path he's come and think, okay, from this path we know he's going to emerge as maybe the greatest president of American history. Having said that it's also true that the table's being laid, in a sense, at that time. He's got this big challenge.
How's he going to rise to it? Now, there are a couple of different ways he could do it. And one way is evident of one of his great attributes. I think he's educatable. He is somebody who's willing to learn, if he doesn't know it himself. That's not a bad trait to have in somebody who's about to meet the biggest crisis ever in American history. And so he will, he'll oftentimes get, not just everybody's viewpoints, but he'll read it himself, which is another attribute. Another is not just trusting what the experts say, but he's going to read it himself and try and figure out, okay, what, you know, what do I think is really happening? What we learn I think is those attributes are going to help him rise to this occasion. But some people think he speaks incoherently, some people don't get the message, some people think he's weak. And it's hard, but I think if within all of that, I think you see Lincoln not let that criticism slow him down.
He doesn't let that criticism overwhelm him. Some people, we can imagine, would be so overwhelmed by the criticism, they would just focus on that. But Lincoln doesn't. Lincoln focuses on the job at hand and he keeps doing that. And eventually, after about roughly eight generals, he finds it a general, Grant, who's going to do what he's finally been asking these generals to do, which is follow Lee. And finally beat him. Don't let him escape. And the man he finds, as I mentioned before, is modeled on Zachary Taylor.
So, but I think, I tried to be as careful as I could not letting any bias sort of enter into, in fact, I didn't really think about, okay, who am I going to find as mentors. When I went back and sort of thought about these patterns, I just try to read the diaries and documents and other things to see what was emerging. So I tried to stay true to that, although I'm sure ultimately not perfectly. But I think in the end for Lincoln, it's a surprise, time and again, for many people that when they think Lincoln's down, he's not down. Think about the Senate loss. He's not thought to be a front runner, but every time he seems to surprise people and it's those qualities, I think that we're only going to discover later are there, but many people at the time don't really see it. And obviously his assassination makes him into a martyr, which feeds into the legend. And we can't escape that.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:47:47] Thank you for that and thanks for the great question. Professor Giesberg, the last word is to you. And there's so many wonderful questions from our friends in the audience. And I'm going to note Mindy Cohn, who says, how does Frederick Douglass rank as a mentor with regard to his role in Lincoln's changing perception of African-American status? And maybe were there any other African-Americans or women who influenced Lincoln's changing perceptions?
Thank you to Mindy. That Judith Giesberg: [00:48:15] was the question I was going to ask Michael, right. You know, because we have Eric Foner's biography of Lincoln, and even Allen Guelzo's treatment of the two, you know, of Lincoln and Douglass, positions Frederick Douglass as a very important influence in Lincoln's life. I'm struck by the people you know, who you've laid out, Michael, who many of them who are slave holders, some rather significant enslavers, you know, I think it was Zachary Taylor had, I don't know how many enslaved people on his plantation in Louisiana, I think it was. And I would describe really I mean, you know, I was under the impression we were sort of talking about Jackson and Clay and Taylor and Stewart and Browning and, I think all of them maybe were slaveholders, maybe not Stewart. No. So I guess I'm just interested and, having just received the book I have not read it, so I'll look forward to getting some of the answers as I read it, but I'm struck by your description of him as, you know, being educatable, that's certainly the way that that Foner describes Lincoln, you know, that this is a man who evolved in his time in the office and became, and was very receptive to ideas around him. Not only from people like Douglass, but, you know, from African-American you know, friends that had back in Springfield, even from, you know, sort of interactions with Elizabeth Keckfield and, you know, and, Keckley and, others around him, you know who he met and who he met with, you know, in his time in office.
So I was wondering you know they're not identified necessarily as mentors or are they sort of his sort of second stage of mentorship as he enters the white house, that he sort of enters into sort of a new era of mentorship that get him to the point where we know he is by the end of his term, which is to, to see slavery as this, you know imperative moral evil that it is an imperative, right to be fixed.
Michael J. Gerhardt: [00:50:18] It's a great question. And the very short answer is I don't think there's any hierarchy of mentors. I think that he's learning from everybody as I mentioned before. So, one isn't necessarily more significant than the other, but you're absolutely right. He is learning from African-Americans and I try and talk about it at different times in the book. And obviously Frederick Douglass is one of them. He and Douglass interact more than once, you know, while Lincoln is president and Lincoln seems to be learning from each of those different encounters. And by the way, changing positions, you know, at first, when he's meeting with Douglass, he's not really giving Douglass anything he wants by the end, he's pretty much giving Douglass all that he wants, which is both reflecting how the war's progressing, but also showing that Lincoln is not afraid to really hear what Douglass is saying and try and maybe go that direction if that'll work. You know I think John is the first name, John Slade is reportedly the only person listening to Lincoln practicing the Gettysburg address. Slade's daughter will later write that Slade has mentioned that, you know, Lincoln would read it out loud, which by the way is exactly how Lincoln would practice.
He was constantly reading stuff out loud to people around him, practicing out loud. So he would do that. And we know that Gettysburg address, however short it was, may well be the greatest two-minute oration in American history. So and the person that seems to have been the primary sounding board there was an African-American who knew him, had known him for years. So, that's all part of the Lincoln story. The book is not endless. It's only about 500 pages. I wish I could get to everything, but I'd like to think I got to some of it.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:52:04] Thank you so much, Michael Gerhardt, H.W. Brands and Judy Giesberg for a wonderful discussion of the crucial question of Lincoln and his mentors and the civil war more generally. You've inspired us and reminded us that Lincoln was educable, and so are we! And so are you National Constitution Center friends, and thank you for taking an hour in the middle of your evenings to educate yourself about history and the Constitution. And you can continue that crucially important work by reading the books of the wonderful scholars that we have heard from today, including most recently the book that we're so excited to launch our friend and colleague Michael Gerhardt's, Lincoln's Mentors.
Professor Gerhardt, Professor Brands and Professor Giesberg, thank you so much for joining. Have a good night.
Michael J. Gerhardt: [00:52:52] Thank you.
Judith Giesberg: [00:52:53] Thank you.
Jeffrey Rosen: [00:52:54] Bye.
Jackie McDermott: [00:52:57] This episode was produced by me, Jackie McDermott, along with Lana Ulrich and John Guerra. It was engineered by Greg Scheckler. Please rate, review, and subscribe to live at the National Constitution Center on Apple podcasts or follow us on Spotify and join us back here next week. On behalf of the National Constitution Center, I'm Jackie McDermott.
