BARACK OBAMA: Lincoln declares a house divided shall not stand. We can’t have a nation that’s half slave and half free. It does mark a turning point in his mind. He recognizes that in his political life, he’s going to have to object to slavery in a way that is tougher and more controversial. ALLEN C.
GUELZO: Lincoln begins to campaign through the State and invites Douglas to a series of joint debates. Douglas writes back and says, I’m under no obligation to meet jointly with you. I’m the incumbent senator. I’m the most famous politician in America at this moment. Why am I going to give you space on a platform with me?
But Douglas can’t resist.
[applause] Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for coming out. Appreciate you. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Douglas comes in as the champion.
He comes in a train with a special car decorated. He comes with servants, with secretaries. Ma’am. Good to see you. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: And Lincoln has to walk from one debate to another.
The reputation of Lincoln and Douglas were both on the line here. They literally are setting up the conflict in the nation. From when we were both young men and no one can compete with him in wrestling, or a foot race, or on whisking his grocery store, we served on the State legislature together. And then Mr. Lincoln submerged for a time until he reappeared in the hallowed halls of Congress, where he distinguished himself by his opposition to the war with Mexico, taking the side of the common enemy against his own country.
[booing] And he, again, submerged. He came up again in 1854, this time in cahoots with Fred Douglass and his abolitionist friends just in time to create this Black Republican platform.
[booing] That’s right, Douglas. Hit him again. Lincoln, you’re two faced.
[laughter] If I had two faces, do you think I’d be wearing this one? [laughter] DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: This old rivalry has come to roost. Very good. Very good. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Lincoln felt that his life had been a flat failure compared to Douglas’s.
Douglas had gotten further than he had, and now, they’re running against each other for the Senate.
Now, I am no giant like Judge Douglas. I’m a mere mortal. Now, his ambition, it far exceeds my own. His party, they all expect him to be president one day, and then they will all reap the benefits of his greatness.
But nobody has ever looked at my lean, lank face and expected me to be president. [laughter] DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: People come to these debates with all the fervent love and attention that they would bring to a giant sporting event today, but these were more important than any sporting event could have been. I am here to talk about basic principles. Now, if the Negro is a man, why, then, my ancient faith teaches me that all men are created equal and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man making a slave of another. [applause] Well, let’s talk about principle.
I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, than I do for all the Negroes in Christendom.
When a white man governs himself, that is self-governance, but when he governs himself and he also governs another man, that is more than self-government. That is despotism. Mr. Lincoln and his ilk want Negro equality in all things.
If they get their way, Negroes and whites will be permitted to marry. Negroes will serve on juries. Negroes will vote. [booing] CHRISTY COLEMAN: During these debates, Lincoln is not an abolitionist by any stretch, but he’s inadvertently making their arguments as he’s looking for logic in the constitutionality of all of this. TED WIDMER: And he goes way back to Euclid.
Euclid is very much about how you prove something beyond any shadow of a doubt, and he’s working toward crushing the fallacious arguments on behalf of slavery.
CHRISTY COLEMAN: But like most people of the day, he absolutely fervently believes that Black people are inferior, whether they’re enslaved or freed. Just because I believe the Negro should be free does not mean that I want to marry one. As a nation, we began by declaring that all men are created equal. We now practically read it, all men are created equal except Negroes.
Soon it will read, all men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics. Negroes, like many other men, may not be equal in all things, but if they are men, they are entitled to their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
[applause] The real issue, which will last long after the tongues of Judge Douglas and I are silent, is the eternal struggle between these two principles, between right and wrong. [applause] CHRISTY COLEMAN: What Lincoln does so brilliantly is he takes that core language to the Declaration of Independence and turns it into a nation’s moral compass. And he couples that with constitutionality, and he couples that with scripture.
He has a really powerful argument. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: This is where Lincoln makes his name, one debate after another. Everything had prepared him for the repertoire of talents that he was able to show in these debates. He’s telling stories. He’s funny.
He can talk philosophically. He can talk politically.
TED WIDMER: The Lincoln-Douglas debates helped Lincoln. It raised his profile, lifted him up a lot, but he loses the election. CAREY LATIMORE: One of the things about Lincoln that’s amazing is that he loses a lot, but the great ones in life take a loss and they come back.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Even though he loses this election, once again, the loss becomes a platform for him to grow. Underlying it all is there’s a passion that he has, a passion for that cause of anti-slavery, which is coming to a head. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: The day of the general election, he’s restless all day long. He’s been so familiar with disappointment that he just fears something bad will happen. About 9 o’clock, he and Judge Davis and the friends go to the telegraph office to hear the returns coming in.
Finally, at midnight, the word comes in that New York has gone Republican. Then the church bells ring, people gather in the streets. This new guy had won. And then he runs home as he says to tell Mary and famously says, “Mary, Mary, we are elected.” CLINT SMITH: Southern States had been saying, if this man is elected, we will have no choice but to secede.
And as soon as he is elected, South Carolina decide to have a secession convention, and by December of 1860, they decide to leave the Union. BARTON A. MYERS: In February of 1861, seven US States seceded. The Confederate government is formed and puts Jefferson Davis in place as president. CHRISTY COLEMAN: They’re seceding for one thing and one thing only, and that is the preservation of slavery and its expansion.
HAROLD HOLZER: Lincoln believed, over optimistically, that there was a way to get these Southern slave-holding States back in the Union once he actually got to Washington. TED WIDMER: On February 11, 1861, Lincoln begins the train journey to Washington, DC. It would have been nice to take the shortest route, but he couldn’t go through Kentucky, the State he was born or Virginia because it was too dangerous.
He wrote a letter to a friend that he was worried he might be lynched. So he has to go on this very winding roundabout route over 1,900 miles.
Whenever Lincoln comes in anywhere, everybody comes out to see him. CAREY LATIMORE: There’s hope, but there’s also this fear. People would have known that the Southern States had seceded. These are difficult times, and there are credible assassination threats against Lincoln. TED WIDMER: There was intelligence of a massive conspiracy to try to assassinate him as he came through Baltimore.
The leader of the plot had a system of drawing lots– pieces of paper with a red dot on them.
And those who got a red dot would try to kill Lincoln with guns and knives and grenades. But Allan Pinkerton, who was a railroad detective, penetrated the conspiracy with operatives. Davis. Mr.
Pinkerton, it’s all true. Anyone who picked one of the red dot is an assassin. How many have red dots? Eight. It’s worse than I thought.
The door is locked from the inside? Yes, ma’am. Key, please. My uncle is an invalid. He requires absolute privacy.
Do you understand? [dramatic music playing] We’ll take a special overnight train. I’ve cleared the tracks and had the telegraph lines cut from here to Baltimore. These men intend to create a diversion with the police and starve you to death. That’s all?
Like Julius Caesar. You need to take this seriously, Abe. You have fierce enemies. If I sneak into the capital with fear, I’m sure in good people, there’s reason to fear.
Sir, the worst thing that could happen is you don’t make it to Washington at all.
You can’t risk being recognized. Take care of it. [dramatic music playing] This is my associate, Miss Key Warren. Mr. Lincoln, it’s an honor.
Miss Warren, I am far too plain to pass for your uncle. Not at all, sir. I take comfort in the idea that common folk are the best looking. That’s why the Lord made us so many. [train whistles] Well, this is not how I planned to get to Washington.
HAROLD HOLZER: Lincoln goes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Washington at night, in secret, wearing a disguise. He arrives in Washington 6:00 AM unannounced, and he was attacked in the press depicted in these crazy disguises including kilts, doing the McLincoln Highland Fling and just ridiculed. Not a good thing for a president who is coming to Washington to exhibit courage. Frederick Douglass says, at least now, Mr. Lincoln knows what it’s like to travel on the Underground Railroad.
EDNA GREENE MEDFORD: When Lincoln ascends to the presidency and he issues his first inaugural address, African Americans are waiting in anticipation to see what he’s going to say. Because by this time, seven states have seceded from the Union, and African Americans are thinking, this is our opportunity. This is the time to end slavery. You’ve got this Republican who has won. He’s not an abolitionist, but you’ve got enough Republicans who are ready to move on these people who are seen as traitors to the country.
MARY FRANCES BERRY: His first inaugural address is a moment fraught with tension. HAROLD HOLZER: There were still very serious fears of assassination. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Fellow citizens of the United States, in your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen and not in mind is the momentous issue of civil war. HAROLD HOLZER: Lincoln wanted the speech to be strong without being threatening, to try to stem the tide of secession. The government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict without yourselves being the aggressors.
HAROLD HOLZER: He says federal forts and armories would be protected. And at the same time, he says, I’m not a threat, and he promised to enforce the hated Fugitive Slave Law. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. HAROLD HOLZER: Lincoln had shown this speech to William Seward, and Seward made corrections. And then Seward looked at the ending of the draft, and it says, “It’s your choice, my friends in the South. Will it be peace or a sword?” And Seward says, “You can’t end it like this.
” So Seward writes out a really good idea.
Lincoln looks at the suggestion and displaying as much brilliance as an editor as he showed as a writer, he recast Seward’s proposal into poetry. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union when, again, touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. [applause] HAROLD HOLZER: In July, 1861, only a few months after Fort Sumter, the Union forces under McDowell marched South into Northern Virginia for the first encounter of the war, very close to Washington. It happens around the town of Manassas.
The battle is alternatively called Bull Run because that was a creek on the battlefield. DOUG DOUDS: Lincoln’s expectation going into the first Battle of Bull Run is that the war will be settled in this one battle.
The South will win its independence, or the North will put down the rebellion. Both armies are green, not a lot of experience. When Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion, they are limited to a three-month enlistment.
The Militia Act of 1795 by which he calls them forward says, it’s only three months. That’s the way we’ve always done it. You know, the crosses comes along, and we call in all the farmers to get your musket over the fireplace. And when the war’s over, we send them home to be farmers again. DOUG DOUDS: Lincoln recognizes that his men are not well trained.
But politically, it would have been an abject sin to send all those soldiers back home if they hadn’t been used in the first place.
The reality is the overwhelming sentiment on both sides was let’s get an army out there and get it done. And so Lincoln and other leaders were pressuring the Union Army under Irvin McDowell to get up there, and let’s fight. CAROLINE E. JANNEY: Even though it seems so foreign to us, there was a great deal of excitement.
There was a great deal of war enthusiasm. Keep in mind the technology of the time, with no way to see a battlefield.
People had seen paintings and sketches. And the notion was that these men are in formations and firing at each other, but it must be relatively safe. There are people who were literally showing up there with picnic baskets on their wagons to look at the armies fight down on the hill.
TIMOTHY B. SMITH: Congressmen, and senators, and the social elite of Washington had come out to view the battle.
This was a major spectacle. This is major entertainment. CAROLINE E.
JANNEY: And people really thought this would be their only chance to see one battle, the Union Army Cross Creek. They wage and attack against this very formidable force of Confederates. Even during these difficult times, these trying times of war, we must remain strong and keep our faith in Him. Sir, news from the field. DOUG DOUDS: Lincoln is waiting to hear how it’s going.
And it starts as a Union advantage early in the morning.
After Church, Lincoln spends the rest of the day in the telegraph office. This will be his source of information. TOM WHEELER: The arrival of the telegraph, what Lincoln used to call lightning messages, changed the nature of information. Suddenly, what was known in one place could be known in other places almost instantaneously.
STAN MCCHRYSTAL: Before, you’d get a dispatch that would come in every few weeks or something. And so you really had to give almost complete autonomy to military leaders in the field. Now, he’s connected by a wire. HAROLD HOLZER: The day began very well for the Union. They routed Confederate forces and pushed them back.
And not until the late afternoon did the Confederate forces counterattack. TOM WHEELER: General McDowell has a pretty good plan. The problem was he had a very green army.
And so on the battlefield, they had a difficult time maneuvering. The South had many of the same problems.
But then the South was fortunate because, during the battle, the railroad allowed the South to move reinforcements up which reached the battlefield at a critical moment. GREG JACKSON: Federal troops hear the terrifying rebel yell, this high pitched yelping. Union troops described it as otherworldly. It had enormous results, let’s put it that way. CAROLINE E.
JANNEY: The Confederates start pushing back. And the Federalists cross back across the creek and a mad dash. They have been completely routed. HAROLD HOLZER: Citizens of Washington, who had gone down in their carriages and set up picnic baskets on the bluffs overlooking the battlefield, they were having a high old time for lunch. And then when the battle turned, their picnic baskets were upended.
They fled in disarray. And the Union troops had to march back in this searing July heat, humiliated. TOM WHEELER: For Lincoln now, the defeat is not something that happens hundreds of miles away that you read about.
You see wounded soldiers, defeated soldiers, soldiers who’ve thrown away their arms, come streaming right back into the capital. So the idea of a disaster became tangible.
You could see it. You could smell it. What does McDowell say? That the day is lost. [music playing] It’s probably his first military error.
And on that day, Lincoln realized that this was not going to be a brief war. It was going to be a long war. [music playing] And if slavery’s not wrong, nothing is. I must have everyone on board– the military, public, and the cabinet. CHRISTLY COLEMAN: Over the summer, Lincoln is talking to people about what will become the Emancipation Proclamation.
He’s talking to his war department. He’s talking to the State Department. EDNA GREENE MEDFORD: Abolitionists were clamoring for Lincoln to do something. They were saying, the Confederacy has these Black men impressed into military laborers. Free these people, you know, we can use them to help us win the war.
Black men had been saying it all along, White men and women started saying it as well.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Lincoln still believed that the Constitution made it impossible for the government to emancipate the slaves, because Constitution protected property and property was slaves. BARACK OBAMA: For political figures who have a moral compass, there is a constant warring inside you of “When do I just blurt out what I think?” versus “When do I bite my tongue and see if I can work something out? Am I betraying the ideals that I care about?
Or am I playing a long game to advance them?” STAN MCCHRYSTAL: There’s a clear learning curve, as he learns the strategy of what will be necessary to win a war of this magnitude and this complexity. He exercised war powers like few presidents have ever in our history. And they were pretty upsetting to people, but he understood that he wasn’t just the president, he was the commander in chief as well.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: So that’s when he begins to think about the fact that, I don’t have the constitutional power to emancipate the slaves in the Union as president, but maybe as commander-in-chief I can emancipate the slaves in the South as a military necessity.
But Lincoln would have to persuade the cabinet, the army, and the people that the Emancipation Proclamation was the right thing to do. That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of the state shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. What kind of villain do you think the papers will make of me? It won’t be pretty. I expect abuse from the Democrat papers, but the friendly ones, they’ll see the wisdom.
I worry about enlistment.
They’ll say it’s a war against slavery, not for the Union. Well, my word has gone out to the people. I won’t take it back. [music playing] GREG JACKSON: Lincoln’s the master of this, at taking battles and being able to spin them for his needs politically.
So that was enough for Lincoln to be able to issue the Emancipation Proclamation from a position of strength, as opposed to weakness. So Antietam was on September 17th. By September 22nd, Lincoln was issuing the proclamation. That preliminary proclamation said you have 100 days to either come back into the Union, or I’m going to free your enslaved laborers.
RICHARD BLACKETT: Many in the world, particularly in Britain, saw it as just another political move to undermine the Confederacy, and he wasn’t genuinely committed to it.
But on the other hand, for many in Britain, that becomes the moment when Lincoln emerges as the great emancipator. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: So Lincoln had waited until the Battle of Antietam to announce that he was going to issue on the Emancipation Proclamation in January. And between September and January, the blowback was so great that many people thought he might not sign it. The Republicans lost lots of seats in the midterm elections. The conservative Democrats, who were against Emancipation, doubled in number, leaving the Republicans with a thin majority.
What people in the North feared is that now the South would never come to the bargaining table. This would mean the war would be prolonged forever. Lincoln’s aware of all of these things. He’s being political about it, but he’s also being thoughtful about it. RICHARD BLACKETT: On New Year’s Eve, people are gathered in Black communities throughout the North.
People are just waiting on tenterhooks. There was what we call “watch night” where Douglas was with a group of abolitionist friends waiting to see if Lincoln would keep his word. [interposing voices] Well, no telegram yet. He said he’d sign it today, and I believe he’s a man of his word. I can wait a few minutes longer.
I don’t want folks to think I doubted this. [music playing] My whole soul’s in it. [music playing] DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: The morning that Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, there’d been a big New Year’s reception at the White House, and he had shaken hundreds of hands.
So when he went finally to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, his own hand was numb and shaking. He put the pen down.
He said, if ever my soul were in an act, it is in this act. But if I sign with a shaking hand, posterity will say he hesitated. So he waited and waited until he could sign with an unusually bold and clear hand. CLINT SMITH: It cannot be overstated how consequential this document was. With the stroke of a pen, Lincoln, through the authority that he has in that moment, frees millions of enslaved people in these Confederate states.
[music playing] It’s coming over the wire now.
[cheers and applause] KENNETH MORRIS: There was a great celebration that broke out. You know, Douglas was said to have a great baritone singing voice, and I’m sure he was out there singing at the top of his lungs in celebration that this document was finally signed, which would change the balance of the war. EDNA GREEN MEDFORD: Lincoln believed that the founding fathers had meant for slavery to end, but that they didn’t believe that they could just end it overnight.
That it was like a cancer, so widespread you might not be able to cut it out without damaging the patient, but you can find ways to contain it.
But by this time, he’s not asking for the consent of the people, he’s not asking for colonization, he’s not asking for anything gradual. MARY FRANCES BERRY: Lincoln knew that saying, now the war is over, you guys go back, be slaves, was a nonstarter, that the Emancipation Proclamation was a fit and necessary war measure, but when the war was over, it was no longer a legal measure. CAROLINE E. JANNEY: And this is why you need the 13th Amendment, you have to change the Constitution. EDNA GREEN MEDFORD: You’ve got almost 4 million people who are enslaved, and there was nothing to prevent Southerners from re-establishing slavery in the South unless this 13th Amendment was issued.
He realized that something had to be done that was permanent. And so he is determined that this Amendment is going to pass Congress, and it does. CHRISTY COLEMAN: He came to recognize the inconsistency that a nation conceived in liberty would have slavery. EDNA GREEN MEDFORD: To the extent that America has any kind of standing in the world now is in part the consequence of people knowing about Lincoln and his views on slavery, and his views on freedom. He has evolved in his thinking.
And it’s the war that has done it. MARY FRANCES BERRY: By the time the 13th Amendment came along, war was dragging on and on. More Americans died in that war than in any other, both sides. And a lot had happened to him and to the whole country by that time. CHRISTY COLEMAN: He’s seen the death, he’s experienced extreme personal loss.
Early in the war with the death of Willie, all of this has moved him. And he’s carried the weight of a nation on him.
[sighs] [music playing] ALLEN C. GUELZO: All these people wiped out by the war, he must write letters consoling those who had lost members of families, fathers, brothers. And all of this grinds him down.
You see it in his face, the hollows of his cheeks sink more deeply in. He said at one point that there was a tired spot in him that no amount of rest could touch. BARACK OBAMA: Those photographs are haunting. Etched on his face is a testimony, a record of the stress that he endured. Every president ages during their presidency but nothing like Lincoln three or four years after he assumes office.
It gives you a sense of the burden that he was carrying. HAROLD HOLZER: How can any human being accept the casualties that were piling up and take personal responsibility without resigning or killing yourself over this tragedy, unless you could find a higher power that was instrumental in causing the war to go on for so long. And Lincoln writes a memo to himself that has become known as a meditation on the divine will. If God wills that this contest continue, it will continue.
It must be divine providence forcing us to have this bitter confrontation over the future of our country.
But Lincoln never joined a church. He was not a believer in organized religion. MARY FRANCES BERRY: As he prepared for the second inaugural address, he wanted to make clear to everybody that he, Lincoln, understood that the war had been a war to free the slaves and not just a war to save the Union. And he wanted to make sure that everybody understood that slavery was done forever in the country. Fellow countrymen, four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending Civil War.
All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. ALLEN C. GUELZO: And Douglass was there in the front row, listening to Lincoln’s inaugural address.
There’s a great photograph that shows Lincoln at the lectern, Douglass with his big hair, that’s how you can recognize him, and in the balcony as is John Wilkes Booth. Yet if God wills it, it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk.
And until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword. BARACK OBAMA: What you see in the second inaugural is not a certainty of victory, but a certainty of the rightness of the struggle. An almost biblical, righteous, prophetic vision of why the struggle was necessary.
As was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous all together. His consciousness of something bigger than himself and the need to recognize that a form of pain had existed in America for generations before he came along, and it would not instantly be solved. BARACK OBAMA: It’s a statement of the need to rewire the country, to change its moral axis.
He’s now telling a new story about what America should be– who are we, what we believe in. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.
Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan. To do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations. [music playing] [applause] April 14, Lincoln woke up in a great mood, feeling probably more cheerful than he’d felt ever in his life. He went on a carriage ride with Mary.
And then they get back to the White House, and there’s a group of his friends who are there.
And they’re just leaving, but he said, no, stay, I want to talk to you. And they kept talking, and they were telling stories, and he’s reading funny things. He no longer needs to escape to go to the theater.
But at 8 o’clock that night, they tell him, you have to go. It had been in the newspaper that morning that he would be at the theater that night.
And now he had to keep his word to the people who might come to the theater thinking that he would be there. ACTOR: Some gals and mothers would go away from a fellow when they found that out. But you don’t valley fortune, Miss Gusty? ACTRESS 1: My love, you had better go.
ACTOR: You crave affection, you do.
Now, I have no fortune, but I’m filling over with affections, which I’m ready to pour out all over you like apple sass over roast pork. ACTRESS 2: Mr. Trenchard, you will please recollect you are addressing my daughter, and in my presence. ACTOR: Yes, I’m offering her my heart and hand, just as she wants them, with nothing else. ACTRESS 2: Augusta, dear, to your room.
ACTRESS 1: Yes, Ma the nasty beast. ACTRESS 2: I am aware, Mr. Trenchard, you are not used to the matters of good society, and that, alone, will excuse the impertinence of which you have been found guilty. ACTOR: Don’t know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you sockdologizing old mantrap.
[laughter] [gunshot] DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Just think of it.
For Lincoln, finally, this punishing war has come to an end, and he’s able to feel a sense of the country is going to go forward. I’ve done my part as a leader. And he only has five days to appreciate that before he’s killed. It drives me crazy.
TED WIDMER: No American president had been killed in office, and the shock of the assassination was profound. It just unleashed a tremendous outpouring of grief. His coffin was carried by a new railroad car that had just been built for his use and was called the United States.
[train whistle] If there was a chance to see the funeral train on the way back to Springfield, everybody wanted to be there. In city after city, there were crowds like Americans had never seen before.
DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: People connected to him. They know where he came from, how hard that fight was. They saw a man who was a good man who became a great president. Lincoln’s biography is a tale of America at a time when it is not yet fully made. The roughness and the self-made aspects of it, the ambition and the hunger.
HAROLD HOLZER: He’s the living proof that Americans can rise from poverty to triumph, the promise of the American dream, which is that all men should have an equal chance in the race of life.
TED WIDMER: He reminded Americans of something they were forgetting, that the Declaration of Independence is a special piece of paper. It obligates us to respect the human rights of all Americans and of all people. CHRISTY COLEMAN: That’s a journey that he takes by the time he is assassinated at Ford’s Theater. He has moved to a much higher calling, understanding, and belief in terms of what the nation could and should be, despite his own prejudices and concerns when he starts.
BARACK OBAMA: From a contemporary lens, I think it’s entirely right and fair to look at some of Lincoln’s writings and say he was limited and constrained by his times in ways that are disappointing. And then I can also say, yeah, but look at what he did. That was really important and took courage and took skill. He was not just ahead of his time in terms of vision, but helped to drag the country in a new direction. He dared to change the rationale for the Civil War from preserving the Union to removing the greatest stain of American democracy– slavery.
ALLEN C. GUELZO: Lincoln’s legacy was to show us that democracies can survive severe contest within, and they shall not perish from the Earth. DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Lincoln had hoped that he could accomplish something worthy so that he would be remembered after he died.
It was that hope that had powered him through his dismal childhood, his string of political failures, and the darkest days of the war that his story would be told. It will be told for generations to come.
.
