Welcome back to part two of Abraham Lincoln. In the last episode, we ended with Lincoln talking about how he would have to take power from the south because his generals had informed him that without total devastation, they would never stop fighting. In this episode, he's going to discuss the different plans that could result in freeing the slaves. Although he was not an abolitionist. He knew that slavery was wrong. A little later in the podcast.
We'll talk about why it was necessary to break some significant laws to keep the United States together. I was not an abolitionist. Mrs. Lincoln was Mary Todd and, but the thought of the abolitionists from day one was to free the slaves. But if I had done that, what would I have done? I would have had. The freed slaves would come to the north looking for a job. And whose job would they take? They would take your dad's, your brother's, your uncle's job.
And that would create more problems Then solve. So when the war became so bad, I need to find a way of, in other words, taking the strength from the South. I decided to do the emancipation proclamation. And what that did was free the slaves in the territory and rebellion as president. I have the right to take property from anyone that is doing a treasonous act.
So the Emancipation Proclamation said the areas in rebellion, which would be most of the South, but not western Virginia, because they were not in rebellion. And therefore I did not take their slaves. Natchez, I did not take their slaves because they were owned by people in New England, in the northern states. So the Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves. It freed slaves from the states that were in rebellion. Territories that were in rebellion. Territories, right.
Because if you divide Virginia up, you got the mountain people and they weren't in rebellion. Okay, I'm with you. Right, right. So there were, I believe, 30 counties in Virginia, of Western Virginia, that were fighting to stay with the Union. And eventually they became a state. And of course that's another story in itself. But , that was what I did , with the Emancipation Proclamation. Let me back up. , there's a couple things that, that you said that I'd like some clarification on.
, . , two things. Number one, it took two years just to catch up. Considering that the wealth was in the south. The food was in the South, and now all the talent was in the South. Every, all of the wisdom from West Point is in the South. And then basically, as far as from a military standpoint, you're kind of left with the scraps of what was left. Is that correct, first of all? Yes, and it's not that there weren't great generals. They just didn't fight.
And McClellan was probably one of the best generals. The problem is he would not fight. When it was time to go in Peninsula Fair and others, he always said he didn't have enough horses, he didn't have enough men. He said that he was always outnumbered. Someone asked me once, how many men does the Confederacy have? And I said , a million , and he says, well, how could that be? And I says, well, because every time we fight a battle, the generals say that we're outnumbered three to four to one.
And if we have four hundred thousand men, then they have a million, two hundred thousand. How can you say McClellan was a good general? If he didn't want to fight. I mean, I understand you could say that he was a good man and he cared about his soldiers, but how can you say he was a good general? to be the most frustrating situation of all, a general that wouldn't fight. Oh, it was for me. It was terribly frustrating.
And at times I said, I would you loan me your men just so I can see whether they can fight or not? And I called him his bodyguards. I went one time to his house. The try and convince him that we should, get out there and fight in and I pushed him when he did the peninsula affair. He really didn't want to do it because he was bound and determined. He was outnumbered to the one. He had 100, 000 men and he thought Lee had 200, 000. Lee had about 80, 000 and so he outnumbered him.
If you just fought like he had better men and he could beat him, he would have. . I don't think he was a coward. It's two, two factors maybe. One, he loved his men. Because if you're going to fight a battle, you bring your officers together. You tell them what you're going to do and what each one has to do. And when they go out, you know that some people are not going to live through it. And, he loved his men so much.
He didn't want to come back in the evening and know that one of his generals and a thousand or two thousand or ten thousand of his men had died during that day. And therefore he made excuses rather than fighting. One time I was so frustrated with it, I went out to his camp and I wanted to talk to him and encourage him to fight. And he wasn't there. And there was a carpenter there. And he said, Mr. President, can you help me? I says, what? Well, what's the problem?
And he said, well, General McClellan asked me to build him a privy. And he says he did. Well, what's the problem? And he says, well, I don't know whether to build him a one hole or two hole. Well, I imagine , if you build him a two hole, by the time he made up his mind, it would be too late. Oh, so where does Grant come into the picture? ? Well, Grant was successful at Vicksburg, the day after Gettysburg, and it looked very promising, and he was victorious.
So I finally, after I'd gone through a whole slew of generals , and of them were able to do more than what McClellan did. And I was looking for someone that would be successful in coming, so I brought him to the east to do what he had done in the west. And when I did that, I had a group of People from the community come in and say, , you can't bring General Grant to the east because you just can't. And I said, well, what's the problem? He says, well, he drinks too much. And I says, he does.
What does he drink? And he says, well, I don't know. He says, would you go and find out what he drinks? And I will get a barrel of it, give it to every one of my generals because he fights. And so when I brought him to the east. , there were people that were apprehensive about it. He did not want to be in Washington as other military leaders had been because he wanted to be out with the men he wanted to fight. And he was what I call a bulldog.
The first battle that the major battle was the wilderness , and they fought for 7 days. They had tremendous losses in the public was just thought he was getting slaughtered. And when they were done, he told them in the pack up and we're going after Lee and. The soldiers kind of looked at each other and said, this is different because we're not going to go back and just practice being soldiers. And he said, let's go, because I believe the men wanted to fight and they wanted to win.
And they knew, even though McClellan may have loved them, they weren't fighting and winning. And when Grant did that, he went and eventually cornered Lee, because he knew Lee was the object, not Richmond. And he was able to do at St. Petersburg the same as he did at Richmond. at Vicksburg, and that he surrounded them, cornered them, and basically starved them out, and kept them from getting their supplies, which led to the surrendered Appomattox Ford house.
Grant, so what was the relationship like between you and Grant? It was very good. I told Grant, do what you're doing, and he was successful at what he did. I knew that if I tried a couple of times, I tried to tell him what to do, or I told him, I don't think it'll work. He went ahead and did what he normally does. He was successful and I complimented on what he did. And I says, keep doing what you're doing and just keep going. Kept my hands off of giving him instructions.
With McClellan, I had to push him, or I had to prod him, I had to try and talk him into doing it. With Grant, once I realized he was going after Lee, and he wasn't going to stop until it's done. Even if he lost a large number of men, or things weren't going great. He just, he was not going to give up. Describing grant as a bulldog seems very accurate. I'm wondering about these losses though.
I mean, grant is driving into these battles to win at all costs, and Lee seems like he , had the same approach. Whatever it took as these losses were mounting, you had the. You had to be getting pressure from all sides. You had to be hearing from the abolitionists, from the people that wanted war, from the people that didn't want war. How did you manage to satisfy everyone? I didn't. That was a problem. Everyone when it wasn't going well had a solution.
, and McClellan was one of them, just let him go, and let them have it, or come to some solution that that will bring the war to an end, because as the body count mounts the country is getting really upset. When it comes to 1864, when I need to run again, it looks as though I have no chance of winning. And several things happened because of that. One is that I took a piece of paper, and I folded it over so the blank part is showing to my cabinet. And I said, each one of you needs to sign this.
And they said, what is it? And I says, just sign it. And what it was, is our resignation. And they understood that, or figured it out. And I thought that if we lose, why would we continue fighting?
For Just we would resign, let McClellan, which was a candidate that was running against us and basically his platform was let South go, About that time General Sherman from Ohio had this idea that if we would go into the South and go fast enough, in other words, not worry about a supply line, but forage for what you need to survive on, and just devastate the South. He knew that unless you punish them , to such an extent, that they would not survive.
That they lose the will, the fight that . It'll go on for years. So he goes and divides the South and just destroys Georgia and he didn't exactly like me, but yet he was the one most responsible for me winning the election because without his success, , in the South as he did I would not have been reelected. Secondly, because of that, the Republican party was looking to put someone else on the ballot other than me.
And so I looked at how am I going to get enough strength so I can be on the ballot, because my thought is you can't. Change horses in the middle of the stream. And so what I did was formed the union party. It was kind of a branch of the Republican party and I chose or we chose instead of Hannibal Hamlin as my vice president, the first term we chose Johnson.
And he had been a governor of Tennessee just before the war, he decided he wanted to be a senator and they didn't want him to be a senator, but they also were, didn't want him to be a a governor again, but he had people loved him enough that they were afraid not to make him a senator. So he's the only senator from the states that seceded that actually sat there when their state had left the union.
And then I, because he had been former governor, I appointed him as a military governor of Tennessee with the task of keeping Tennessee, even though they voted to secede from actually leaving. I'll just keep them in the union. And then when I needed a vice president because one, he was a Democrat, which would get me votes that , I would need to win. And he also had kept Tennessee in the union and he was the person that would be, you. Politically, the best person to be the vice president.
Now. He wasn't the best vice president. Matter of fact, when we went to be inaugurated one story is that he was on a lot of medication. The other story is, which may have been the real one, is that he had been drinking too much. And therefore he was installed as vice president, not in the public. But then again, these people that are drinking, you're recruiting them now after grants. Oh, of course.
And the reason for that is it was more of a joke than anything, but it, I mean, if you fight a battle and 10, 000 of your men. How do you handle that? Yeah, seriously, you have a couple drinks for sure. Yeah, the stories of Grant drinking a lot are exaggerated. He did drink, yes. , And I believe he did it because he was devastated by the number of men that he had lost that he cared about. And I think you have to understand what do you do?
You don't, I mean, you celebrate a victory, but the cost of that victory is one that creates a lot of sorrow. Sure, you need something to dole your senses because, I mean, the strongest person that has ever walked the planet walks onto a battlefield and sees screaming, dying people and, , they don't just ignore it, , you feel that.
Yeah. Let me ask you, okay, you were just talking about the re election and concerning the re election in 1864, there's something that I've never been able to figure out. So, the North and the South are still divided, and it's time now to vote for a President of the United States, and even though the South has seceded, in your mind, it's still the United States of America. You're just trying to hold it together. They think they're another country, you're thinking not so much.
This is what I think, and tell me if I'm wrong. So, my question is, when it comes time to vote for who's the president, , all the people in the North voted. Were there votes in the South for a Northern president?. Well, when they were not in the union, no, they would not vote . So during that presidential election, there were no votes from the South. They were only votes from the North.
, and when you had said McClellan ran against you, we're talking about George McClellan, the man who didn't fight, right? Right. Yeah, the one I fired twice, right? Okay. So now he's running, right? it looked like he was going to win because the people were upset about the war. By that time, there were probably 500, 000 or more people had lost their lives on both sides because we're all Americans and , there wasn't a family that wasn't affected by it. And yet.
Families were divided on whether they were for the north or the south, and it was just a tremendous drain on the country, plus normal life and normal activities were very difficult, because main working people on a farm, if they're out fighting, who's going to help them? Take care of the crops and planting. It's either the women that are left or the young ones. And it was a real challenge.
Yeah. President Lincoln give me a little latitude to ask a question that's gonna sound very insulting, but it's just curiosity and I've always wondered this. When you are elected president, the South believes that you are going to abolish slavery. And Immediately, , some of the states started seceding. Trying to secede before you're actually in office. First of all, is that correct?
Yes. Okay. So, the whole nation, this division, was it just a powder keg waiting for a spark and the first president that came in that had any thoughts of maybe abolition, , would've lit that powder keg and you just happened to be that person? Is your election partially responsible for the beginning of the war? Probably correct on both. Because my campaign against Stephen Douglas, when we debated, was stopping the spread of slavery. They interpreted that as eliminating slavery.
This is obviously a big changing point in your life. There are going to be people that haven't picked up a book in many years, but they love listening to you. Can you tell us who Stephen Douglas is exactly? Stephen Douglas , came from a very wealthy family, well educated active in politics. He would call the little giant. He was five foot four, I believe it was, but not very tall but a very stout man. Very strong voice, very good speaker and had held many offices, state and nationally.
He was a U. S. Senator when I ran against him in he was well heeled. The interesting thing is that when Mrs. Lincoln Mary Todd came to town and her ward was Nyan Edwards with his father would have been a governor of Illinois. came with the idea of finding a husband because her older sister was married to Nyan Edwards, Elizabeth, and then, Another sister came and went to one of their parties and met someone and got married.
Now it was Mary's turn to get married, and she comes and at the parties, the dances that they had, Stephen Douglas was there, as well as myself and other people. Eligible back bachelors and would attend and dance with her and like, and he got to liking her quite well. Now, Mary had the idea that someday she'll be a president's wife and she told her people her family and the like. And of course, you can imagine they would say, oh, yeah, but she really believed that and she shared it.
Well, Stephen Douglas knew this and he proposed to her and when he did. Mary said, well, I will be a president's wife someday, but not as Mrs. Douglas, because you're not presidential material. Now, Mary had a reputation of being outspoken, a tomboy and a number of other things. , so. Douglas was turned down by her, yet he came from this very wealthy family, very rich political background, that would mean that he would be the next, President of the United States, when I debated him.
And because we knew each other, and we, as young men in Springfield, as it's growing, we would get together and discuss political things and the like. We would have debates and other, just what, Men in a community would do and we knew each other very well and we had debated each other many times and his reaction was with Lincoln. I'm okay until he starts telling his stories and, but he did not want to debate me.
So , when he will go out and talk to groups about being Senator of Illinois, I would go afterwards before they would leave and say, Hey, come here. Let me tell you what I think or tomorrow at such and such a time, let's get together again and we'll do it. And I did this enough times that he decided he would have a debate. If I had not debated him, I believe he would have been the 16th president of the United States . Yeah, because I heard these debates were a spectacle.
I heard they were drawing huge crowds. It was like a prize fight match. It was. It was. And we would speak for three and a half hours. We'd speak for an hour and a half, and then an hour. And that's the way it was divided up. Each debate of the seven would rotate who was first and who was second, and you would have a chance to go back and forth. And they were so contested that at times, Stephen Douglas was so upset with me one time that he said, I believe you're two faced.
He didn't know what else to say. So he said, I believe you're two faced. And everybody laughed. They just thought it was really funny. So when I got up, And said with him, I said, well, , if I had another face, do you think I would be wearing this one? And then everybody laughed. So I got the last laugh on it. And it went on that way all during the debates.
And another time he got upset with me and he says, well, Lincoln and it wasn't the, you weren't considered to be a great person if you drank a lot, and particularly if you sold liquor. So he said, well, Ezra Lincoln, when he had a store, he had a license to sell liquor. And everyone laughed because that was not something that would be admirable. And so when it was my turn, I said, well, , Judge Douglas says that I had a store and sold liquor.
And yes, I did have a store and we did have a liquor license. And one of my best customers was Stephen Douglas. And then I, I followed it up by, I don't have the store anymore, but he still frequents places where he can get the liquor. Oh, man. So we went back and forth and had some good discussions.
Well, because Douglas was so well known, and the reason I emphasize that, because he was so well known, the papers came out and the people came out because they wanted to hear, the next president, and they recorded everything that he said, but they also wrote down what I said. And what I basically said was a man. That raises a crop by the sweat of his brow, should benefit from that effort. And the people of the North re related to that.
And they understood that I was saying that the slave raises crops but he doesn't benefit from it. And because of that, I was encouraged to run for president after I lost the Senate race. And because of that. They thought that I , would abolish slavery, where in reality, I was not an abolitionist, as I believe I indicated before. If we free the slaves, where are they going to find a job?
Yeah. I believe in, and it was another story, but when, with the Western Virginia, when they became a state, one of the things that I did several months before, after they had, wrote up a constitution, they wrote up all the things that they wanted to do, Congress Accepted them as becoming a state, but I said that they could not come in as a slave state because of Virginia was a slave state and they had slaves. They had to have a plan for gradual emancipation.
And Senator Wiley came up with the plan. And what his plan was that every slave child owned by those in western Virginia had a certain date from birth to 10 years old would be free. And then there would be another date where those from 10 to 19 would be free. , in other words, it was gradual. It wasn't all at once. And what would happen with that is that, okay, you own all these slaves, and you see these young children that are born, and the young ones are going to be free.
When the war is over, what I would do is let the South know that this is their labor force and that what they need to do Is educate their slaves, their former slaves, they need to, continue to have them on their plantations , so they can survive because they don't know how to survive on their own and that you work with them. Now, I sent a letter to the South. Encouraging this toward the end of the war. I said, I need your help.
What I need for you to do is to start schools and educate your slaves. Do not let the North come down and do it. Don't let Stevens and Sumner come down and do that. And in addition to that, you need to Give them a path to citizenship. In addition to that, you need to take some of your common ground land. And give it to the slaves so that they,, former slaves, so that they are your equal. And with that, and there is a letter that I wrote to Southerners that expresses that exact thing.
Because Sumner and Stevens wanted to come down. And the method that they ended up using would not be one that would be favorable to them because they want to punish you. Well, in the South, they had to receive a letter like that and think, are you out of your mind? We're going to educate them. There are equals. That is exactly the opposite direction they were going. And, but yet, if they had done that, not all slave drivers were terrible and, but not everyone would, wants to hear that.
, if you have a slave that you train to be a blacksmith and he takes care of your horses he's a special person. You have a slave that serves you dinner every night, that's a special person. And. You build relationships with them. Now, but you can't build a good relationship because they're not equal to you because they're property. But yet, with some of them, there were some unique situations.
I've had so many of these conversations now, and I've spoken with Grant, and one of the people that I spoke with is Jefferson Davis. And Jefferson Davis was, it was his opinion that you made this war About slavery when in fact it wasn't about slavery at all. It was about the South's legal right to secede from the union. And he had a pretty strong case that the South legally had the right to do that. What are your thoughts on that?
Well, he also said the reason they left, if it wasn't for slavery, it was because they did not have the rights that they felt they should have. And . I would have talked to him had he sat down with me and would have said, okay, who was the president when all of these things are going on before I was elected? You have Buchanan was a Democrat. Many of your people, in other words, were senators in House of Representatives, and both were run by Democrats. So you have.
All houses, in other words, Congress and the President are Democrats. If you have all these issues, why didn't you follow the procedure that is expected to happen in Congress, where you talk about problems, you address those problems, you find answers to them. And if you had done that, if it's states rights is the reason you left, and not slavery, Then why didn't you address them and find answers for them? And since you didn't do that, now you're saying it is slavery.
I never said the freed the slaves, as I indicated a few minutes ago, because I was not an abolitionist. I, what I did when I had the opportunity to address it, I said that you need to come up with, and I didn't come up with a plan, but I said you need to come up with a plan of a gradual emancipation.
Many of the slave owners treated their slaves very well, not all of them, , but even with that, you still, at the end of the day, you couldn't go where you wanted to, when you wanted to, the same as those that are free. So slavery is wrong. Was it your intention at some point to send the slaves to Liberia ? Is Well, early on, there were a couple things, and that would be one of them, I'll share the other one also.
I called together Frederick Douglass and other , freed men, that had bought their freedom . I called them together and I said, when this is all over, because the common understanding at that time is that the slaves were not allowed to be educated, therefore they weren't. Their lifestyle was different than everyone else. And I said, because of that, you would be.
Probably happier if you had your own colony or own place to live, and a suggestion was that either setting up a colony in Africa, where we'd help you with that, or off of Panama, setting something up. Right away, they jumped all over me. They says, wait a minute, we Are the generation was born here in America. We weren't born in Africa. Why would we want to go back to Africa? We're Americans. We want to stay here. We want to be part of this great country. And it kind of blew me away.
And I, and it was shocking to me because I most certainly misread what I thought would be a good solution. Now, another solution that I tried is I convinced legislature to stop the fighting. 87 days and because each day that we fight the war, it costs us 3 million. So the 3 million times 87. It's a hundred and seventy some million dollars. We take that money instead of fighting and we buy your slaves. We pay you for your slaves and they're free. Now you pay them. And it was not accepted.
So I tried every way I could to prevent the war from occurring and finding a way, a solution to the problem. If the South had just sat down with me , and talked. and work with me, I believe we could have , avoided the conflict that we ended up having. You know, I'm just being the devil's advocate based on what you just said there, but my understanding that the South did put some sort of compromise in front of you that you rejected. Is that incorrect?
? , the only compromise I can recall was the one where they would keep their slaves. Right. And then they would come back into the union. And when we had the meeting, it was on a boat and we talked about them coming back into the union. But the slaves would be free. I see. And there was no compromise on that. I see. So basically we're saying, yeah, look, why don't we just find middle ground where we get exactly everything we want.
. So, I couldn't have more Respect for you as a president and in history your reputation is, if you even understood how highly you are regarded by , all future Americans, it is as high as it could be. And yet there are those that would say in your time that you stretched the legalities of your office, or the limits of your office. An example of that would be when you suspended habeas corpus. What can you tell me about that?
Well, I had someone introduced to me that was a legalist, knew the law very well. And suggested that in wartime, there are things that you have to do for the sake of saving the Union. And that means that you break what would be the normal rules. If you follow the normal rules and allow people to debate in the talk and give their views and stir up trouble, then We, as a nation, will not survive this conflict. Therefore, those that are talking out, they have to be stopped.
Otherwise, we cannot survive. And because of that, I put them in prison. In particular, the governor of Maryland. I was advised to tell him that if he interfered with the soldiers coming through their state, that he would be thrown in jail. And he wanted Maryland to withdraw, but I need to keep him in the Union. And I threatened to throw him in jail if he persisted , in acting in that particular manner. And. Non war times, it was illegal, but to save the Union, I had no choice.
If I didn't do that, we would not be talking today. Yeah, it's just like Grant, winning at all costs. I'm guessing where Grant and his army were probably destroying railroads. Well, nobody wants to destroy a railroad. , but at the same time, you have to do What you have to do to win the battle. Otherwise, you have nothing at the end. So I guess that makes a lot of sense to me.
. When Sherman was going through the South He had lived there for a few years before the war, and he knew the South, he knew the people, he knew what they valued and what they didn't, and he knew that unless it is totally devastation, they will not give up, and he was willing to do that. Without him, what would have happened is the North would finally have given up and let the South go. Whether that would have been a better answer or not, I don't know.
Jeez. President Lincoln you've given me so much of your time. I just have a few questions I'm trying to wrap up here, because, , I have so many questions, so I'm going to ask you just a couple more quick things, and then I'm, again, I'm so thankful for all of your time. Well, thank you for the opportunity. I've heard stories of a lost speech.
And it's a speech that is rumored to have been so incredible that even the reporters in the room that would normally write down what you were saying, they couldn't write. They just had to listen. And so, people don't even know what was said. Do you have anything that you would say about that? That is, , quite an honor that someone would think that you were saying something that was important enough that they would put the pencil down.
It did take place I'm honored that I was able to say something that is profound enough that people thought it was worthy of listening to and not recording. Sounds like we're just going to leave that one for history. Yes. Ha. So, the Though I'm sure in the future some people will put it together and give their rendition of what they thought I said.
Okay. When you put your cabinet together, this is fantastic, if this is true, when you put your cabinet together when you were first elected, did you put a bunch of people into your cabinet that didn't agree with you and didn't even like you? Yes, I did. Yes. I knew that this is the first time the Republicans had had the office. When I was nominated, there were eight Republicans. Key candidates in the country that had a chance in suiting Seward and Chase and Bates and based my cabinet.
I was not one of the eight. The only reason I was elected was that the. The convention was held in Chicago. Chicago was an up and coming town, so they came there. And the wigwam was built for the convention, and there were those that managed my position very well. They did not follow my directions, because I said, don't make a promise to anyone, because I don't want to be holding to anyone.
But they did, and one of them, an example, was Cameron from Pennsylvania and Cameron was a scoundrel, former governor of Pennsylvania on the 1st ballot. He had 40 votes for him. Favorite son. The second ballot, they gave all 40 to me. Because of that, other people that would give votes to me saw that Pennsylvania saw enough in me to make it possible to be within reach of being nominated. For that reason, I had to give him a cabinet position. He didn't last a year because he was a thief.
, he was a scoundrel and I appointed him as representative of Russia, which was a very good position to give him. I got him out of town, so they didn't put him in jail. And I brought along Stanton as my Secretary of War and both of them worked out well for me because he came back and was a good supporter of me. Cameron was and Stanton was an incredible Secretary of War. The cabinet was put up to, it was a team of rivals, but they all wanted my job.
Chase one time had a group of congressmen that he would get together with on a regular basis, and he would just tell all kinds of things that happened in the cabinet that didn't, but were presented in a way that made him look good. And one day I asked that group to come To a meeting, and I had the cabinet in a different room, and I went to his supporters and with the cabinet there, and I asked him about some things that he had said, and he realized he was cornered.
And because of that, about the same time, I had people that were all over me because of things that Seward was doing. Secretary of State. And so when it was done, both of them gave me the resignation. Now, I didn't want either one of them, but I said it reminds me of the youngster when I had was riding a horse and had to carry two pumpkins and I would put a bandana around both of them, put a stick through them and could carry one of them.
Both of them while I'm riding my horse, and I said, now I've got both of them on each end of the stick. So I have them , where I can live with their independence that they have, but also to where they will do what I need them to do, and they'll be on my side. And that was the way I was able to handle the team of rivals. The group that had their own opinions, but yet we pulled together for what needed to be done for the importance and for the benefit of the country. That's amazing.
Like, that's the hard way to do that, to get people that have their own way of thinking, it's a risky move, but obviously great one. Well, can you tell me When you think of the Gettysburg Address, when you think back about that moment, what do you think? Well, I had been asked to speak two weeks beforehand because the invited delegates distinguished people and they forgot to invite myself. So they asked me kind of the afterthought. They thought, first of all, I wouldn't accept, which I did.
Secondly, they wanted me to speak to them. For a few minutes, which would have been 10 to 20 minutes. . I had for a long time thought, why are we fighting this war and how can I let the public know this? And so the beginning of the address, I talked about our forefathers, , the plan that they had.
That this country and who we were, and that's what I said, four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and this was my opportunity to do it. Edward Everett spoke before me for over two hours, and when I got up, I spoke less than three minutes. Which was too short, but who knows what he said. Yeah, no, you're so right. , that speech lives to this day.
People know those words. Have you had dreams, I heard that you had dreams about your death? Yes, , I had a dream a couple times that I was in my night shirt and walked down the stairs. And when I arrived down there, there was a soldier by a casket. And I said, well, who has died? And he said, the president has been assassinated. And it troubled me. And one day after that, a few days later, I told Mary. And after I told her, I wish I had not because it was something that was
unsettling and especially for her . And . I had , another reoccurring dream. And the dream was before Gettysburg and other major victories was a sailing ship sailing rapidly through the water with a full sail. Yeah, well, I, my very last question, and I am so thankful for your time, Mr. President, and my last question is that we are all often very critical of ourselves, , There's no reason for you to be. You've done everything that any one man could do in a Even if you stopped here.
And my question is, looking back at what you've done so far, the war, your presidency, your life, if you were going to do something different, what comes to mind? Well, probably would deal with McClellan. Had I realized that he was not going to fight, and it took me two years to finally get to that point, if I'd made a decision earlier, Grant probably wouldn't have been the right person because he probably wasn't, his experiences out west had to happen first.
I don't know who I would have put in, but if I'd tried earlier, maybe. I could have found someone that would have been effective earlier. Or if I just tried a little harder to sit down with some of the leaders from the South and be able to convince them of let's just talk about this rather than start killing each other. And I guess the worst possible solution would have been just let them go. Maybe we would have been able to come back together at some time later.
But then again, it would never be the same as it was. , our nation was blessed because we were one country. And that before then, , when I would call for prayer and fasting. In it, I would say that God has blessed us beyond belief, of our rich resources, and our forests, and our people, and the land, and the lakes, and the, just the whole country itself, and that God has blessed us, and that I believe that we won the war, because God wanted us to. I believe the, in God we trust.
Trust on our coins is a way of telling God that we are followers of him because our whole philosophy cannot exist if we don't have a belief. If we don't have faith, how can you treat people equally and be fair with them and have the values, the core values of what the Bible leads us to do? Sir if there's, is there any other last message that you'd like to leave with everybody?
, I guess if I look into the future, we were saved to be one union, one country, and as we prosper in the future, Will we be there for a purpose , the same as I thought as a youngster that God saved me from drowning and from a horse killing me so that I would be there at the end , in the war that we needed to hold us together? Will us being one country, And the strength that we have and the wealth that we have be something that will benefit the world because we are the great country that we are.
I think that's a great place to leave it. President Lincoln, thank you so much for your time and all the good that you have done and I'm wishing you the best. Take care. Thank you very much. God bless you and God bless America. What makes Abraham Lincoln's life so extraordinary is that he was able to solve the one problem that his predecessors could not. The founding fathers knew that slavery was going to be an issue.
Yet they kept passing the problem to future generations because there was no easy solution. And in the end, that problem was handed to Abraham Lincoln. One of the things that I admire about Abraham Lincoln is his ability. To make the absolute best of a challenging and sometimes impossible situation his debates with Stephen Douglas were not only a masterful display of Lincoln's ability To move people with stories and speeches, but also they allowed him to put his name on the national stage.
By riding the wave of Douglas has already established popularity. As president when needed, he was flexible and crafty. Reframing the civil war is a moral issue of freedom. And when he needed the courage to end slavery, even when the giants of history before him could not, or would not, he went all in and changed the world forever. If Lincoln had been the tiniest bit less courageous. Patient resilient, intelligent wise or resolute.
If he had been deficient in any of these traits, it probably wouldn't have been enough. Any other leader stepping into his shoes at that time probably ends with two countries, the American north and the American south. But luckily when our country needed possibly its greatest American, he was there. Thanks for listening. And don't forget that each time the calling history podcast receives a five star review. A vending machine somewhere gives a free snack. I'm Tony Dean. And until next time.
Um, history.