well, as you've probably guessed, based on the furniture layout down here, we're going to do this next session a little bit differently. more of a conversation between and our speaker instead of a lecture. it's honor to introduce to you

all, dr. ted widmer, who's distinguish lecturer at the mccauley's macaulay honors college, the city university of new york dr. widmer worked in the clinton white house as a speechwriter, writer and senior advisor, and since then he's led organizations, including the c.v. starr center, for the study of the american experience, the john carter brown library at brown university, as well as a research center at the of congress. he helped the new york times disunion series, which i know many of you enjoyed throughout the sesquicentennial. and his latest book is lincoln on the verge. i have my copy right here with me. 13 days to washington is the recipient of book from the lincoln forum, as well as the society of presidential. and it's going to be the subject of our conversation today and. it's a wonderful book. let me get that out of the way. i recommend it to you all.

it's a captivating story. i really like how vividly it conveys the human drama lincoln's journey from illinois to washington, d.c.. february 1861. he's going to take up the presidency of the united states during, what, of course, was one of the most volatile, maybe most volatile, precarious of american history. so a fantastic topic. and i thought could start just by asking you to tell us a little bit about how you chose topic and what the main goals of the book were when you set out to write them. well, thank you so much, paul. wonderful to be here. i enjoyed the talks to this point and. it's so nice to have conversations all weekend long for me. this book came about from a number of sources one honest source that it has pretty little to do with serious history. civil war historiography. as i grew up loving trains, i

used to like to go with my dad to watch. i was trained as a kid and a train rider. i grew up in providence, rhode island and in that era in the seventies, i mean, it was sort of the you know a difficult time, put it mildly, for amtrak. but you could still catch an evening train from providence that came washington in the morning. and i never quite got over that magical feeling of coming out of union station after sleeping not very well and seeing the capitol dome. that was a profound moment in my childhood education and walked around in that more tolerant. i think we walked out of union right into statuary hall, the capitol, when you could do that and it was just a great day and. so in this book had some retention of childhood memories in the enthuses so many of us grew up with. even before we go to high school

or university, why we history? i think probably a lot of you have feelings like that. but then another answer you the disunion series in the new times that i felt very lucky to be involved with as a writer. paul was also, but as a kind of early planner of it. the two editors who started it called at the very beginning and said, can you help line up historians? and so as write in there at the beginning and i mean it was thrilling for a lot of reasons many of us on the academic side secretly longed to be writers for general audiences. we don't quite know how to do it. we were trained to write very esoteric. as i look at my own graduate school training, no one ever told me, how do you write for more people out of our tiny fraternity, we all want to do it. we just don't really know how and this was a great moment where we could try to write in a more journalistic way, for more

readers, which i really think is a good thing do. and as i was helping to line up other writers. i began to think, well, i think i should probably write something to. and i asked if anyone was following the story of lincoln. we started disunion in november 2010. it the 150th of lincoln's election november six, 1860, and i wondered if i could follow lincoln through the months of november and december and january, then into february and, as i was studying him very closely, i realized the train journey in february was a great opportunity to write in a daily way, which is not how historian right historians think about years and decades and centuries. i was thinking i would try to follow lincoln on 13 days in a row and write different essay on each of those 13 days. so lincoln leaves springfield today and he goes to indianapolis, and here's what

happened. it made sense in a newspaper kind of a way. and as i did it it was really exciting work. i a lot of different kinds of sources i quickly realized i had bitten off more than i could chew and. by the end of the 13 days of daily posts, we were using words like a post. this was kind of a bloggy exercise. it was only in the online york times, not in the paper. and i can talk about why in that era, the new york allowed this to even happen. it was kind of a miracle because history not really news but they thought the online new york times was so they didn't care what went in there. so they let us put. a lot of civil war history now, the online new york times is everything and the printed paper it's getting hard to even find it. so i wrote my 13 blog essays and got to the end and was

exhausted, but i felt that something important had happened to me that loved this experience. got a little bit away from my more academic way of thinking, and that was a good feeling. not a bad feeling. i, i let it stiff the way we do. and i finally proposed it as a book topic and i was lucky that a publishing in new york said yes. and that was the beginning of my journey, which was quite a journey it took about nine years for me to write this book and i'm still a little embarrassed by how long it took. but i did a ton of research. well, it was worth it in the end. thank you. and you mentioned that can be difficult for academic authors to write in a way that appeals to people who don't happen to have a ph.d. in history and i think we all sympathize with that. i think you rose to the challenge with this book and succeeded admirably. and one of the ways i think he did that is by capturing the sensory experience of lincoln's journey. so, you know, you feel like

you're there with lincoln reading book, looking out the window as you're traveling across country, you have some great material on the sounds and the smells. it was like to be on the train. what it like when he made all those stops? how did you manage that? was that big challenge for you? everything was a challenge. this book you i mentioned my love of railroads. i, i got a little lost in my research. i remember one period i probably spent two years just studying railroad lines. in 1861. it was almost like a mathematical problem. did the lines go? and how can we recreate them? i mean, it was really fun. but then i to dial it back and write something readable for people. so i remember i was teaching a class at brown university about ten years ago, a small seminar on lincoln. brown has a very good lincoln collection, so i was always

lucky in my research in my one year at the library of congress was. also really helpful and a student i was beginning to develop the book idea and i was always trying see what lincoln looked like what did someone in small town write as lincoln came through? and that was probably the only time that person saw abraham lincoln. and i began to realize these 13 days were the time that most americans saw lincoln, because not that people lived in washington, d.c., or visited washington, d.c. and so i had this line of research i was very interested in, and i don't want to fail to thank the people behind the database, which is called chronicling america, which was funded by the national endowment for the humanities. it's some massive of 19th century newspapers, and that was incredibly helpful to me. i could just do a lot of research from home on my laptop, reading any newspaper in any small town in ohio,

pennsylvania, new york that lincoln's went through. so i was always trying to look at lincoln. but then a student in my class said, well, what's lincoln's scene? what's he seeing? as he looks out the window? and it was a an astonishing and i hadn't even thought to reverse the camera in that direction. so i tried to really look at what every town appeared like. we we have such good photo resources. we heard an amazing talk from garry about how closely you can look at an individual photograph. i thought that was amazing. the high resolution in our ability to zoom into the background and i began to really look at photographs, small towns and the people in the margins. and can you see any african-americans and can you see any women and? there's also very good imagery in the the weekly newspapers that have illustrations. frank leslie's harpers, they're covering lincoln's trip very

carefully, although most of the articles don't appear until two or three weeks after the journey has completed. but there are excellent. so i was trying to get what america looked like to not not just abraham lincoln. yeah. thank you. this was not an easy time for the lincoln and a number of ways but one of the ways that really struck me reading your book was how physically grueling this two weeks was for lincoln. the thousands of hands he had to shake. i think you counted he delivered somewhere around 100 speeches in those 13 days at various stops along the way, he was often kept up late, woken up early bands playing outside the room, people banging on his door trying to get. and how did he handle that physically right picking up his shoes which were left outside the hotel door for cleaning i mean every kind of invasion of his privacy was happening

throughout the 13 days. and it was physically grueling, as you say, his hand was always exhausted, you know, throbbing the pain of shaking thousands of hands every day. and this conference perfect for my book because it my book is about the the difficulty a journey. they're not easy and we just heard about the incredible story of john c breckinridge at the end of breckinridge is important in my to but also there is a catharsis this and in a good journey and i we have this in my my story of lincoln's 13 days he grows does a lot as a political figure even as his body is in pain and exhausted that i felt like politically he's growing in strength. he's very weak in a lot of ways, even the election he wins 38% of the popular vote and has a lot of republicans who are angry at

him, who can't understand how he got the nomination and the victory, including his principal rival, seward, in new york. he's got to come through new york on the way to washington. and then, of course, there are all those northerners and southern democrats. and then the states in secession. some are obsessed, see it and some have not yet. he's got so many problems in. he's getting on to the train. his pretty limited ability to stay in contact, people around the country. so he's just a man in a middle of a 19th mile journey trying singlehandedly to keep a country together that really doesn't even want to stay together. there's a great deal of entropy, just nobody can solve the problem of a country splitting in half. and it's not just southern states versus states. there are terrible internal problems in every that he goes

through, including in new york city. it's not entirely clear the city of new york will stay in the state of new york and in the united states of america there are just so many loose threads. but he he in stature and in power through all these fascinating ways which there was no political playbook for this. there had been very few journeys like this and certainly there had been presidential journeys. washington but not in an era rapid telegraphic communication where every word uttered by lincoln is beamed around the nation. so he had to be very careful about his words. but that's where i think he really triumphed over adversity. he spoke so beautifully about the country he was trying to save that we see early glimpses the lincoln who will speak at gettysburg and in the second inaugural address and that

lincoln is very powerful although he didn't make a couple of missteps along the way. he did the telegraphic reports those he he did so i mean that for me added to the charm of the story he's lincoln information if he were perfect he would be less interesting but he he gave a fuze plan and speeches that went very he gives a speech on the economy in pittsburgh that is dull. you don't want to give a dull speech you're a politician but also showed didn't understand economic matters very thoroughly and few times his tendency to make light of a situation and harmed him on the very first night of the journey he's in indianapolis. and he gives one speech that goes well and then he can't help himself. he gives a kind of improvised speech about the southern theory

of union and how it's like the difference between a free love, understanding of a marriage and actual marriage and and almost a dirty joke. and that really is received very poorly in the north as well as the south. it's he seems like this course westerner who doesn't fit into normal american society, which is not i mean, he was not yet understood to be a literary or political genius. he's just this unknown, relatively unknown westerner, most americans have never seen him and he's telling dirty jokes on his way to become the president at the most fraught time in american history. so he created some problems for himself to. one one of the biggest problems not of his own making was what faced in baltimore and he mentioned the difficult moments in places like new york that didn't compare to the fears

about assassination attempts in baltimore, evidence of which mounting throughout the journey. so what kinds of precautions were taken how did that influence the way he traveled in those last legs of his journey? well, this is where story really got exciting for me. mean all of it. i was careful reader of lincoln's when i was writing he was the gold standard so i cared about his language. i cared him. but then as the story sort of unraveled, you know, when you're writing a book, elements of the book that don't think are important at the beginning, later grow to be very, very important. and the idea that his life is in peril added a great deal of excitement to this journey. so it's not only a journey of physical, grueling and growth, but it's a journey that may end

in his murder. it has almost a shakespearean quality. and i had heard or like all of you, the rumors of problems in baltimore. but as i really read much about it, there was a great deal of evidence not about an assassination plot in in baltimore, but about a plan, hostile takeover of washington during the very long waiting period from, november six to march 4th. i mean, it's months and is a southern city by southerners in that time, the buchanan president with breckinridge as vice president and how they missed that opportunity. still surprising to me because, the capital was not well-defended and they might easily have taken over that one building or the entire city with

a militia of a couple hundred. and there were people trying to do that. former governor henry wise in virginia, there's a lot of writing in journals and in even in newspapers. in december, january, about the expected takeover of the capital. but it never quite happened either to heroic southerners who refused to let it happen. one is general winfield scott, who, after a certain amount of tension surrounded the capital with his men and that that was important. but breckinridge himself is a kind of hero of the union, even though he is the vice president in terrible administration. you buchanan presidency and then joins confederacy. but there is a accounting of the electoral on february 13th, 1861 much like the counting that was

scheduled to happen on january 2021. and there was a mob trying to get into the capitol exactly january six and winfield, a southerner, refused to let them in the capitol and john c breckinridge southerner refused to allow any miscount of the vote, even though he would have benefited. he was a candidate for, the presidency, and if someone lost electoral votes or took them, it would have benefited him. he refused to allow it. he presided over an honest vote, not unlike mike pence in 2021. so i kept coming across fascinating parallels with current events as i was deep in my historical research. yeah, so there are probably lessons for today and there about the transfer of presidential power, the perils of political violence, what kind of impact do you think your book

has had in that regard? well, i've been delighted in many ways by the kind of second and third wave, if i can use that word. my book appeared early april 2020, which if you'll recall, was about two weeks after covid hit. and it was a catastrophe and one reason i was so eager to accept polls invitation is i never had a book tour. i couldn't meet anybody. i wanted to. but everything was canceled. and it was a nightmare. an author waited ten years for this book to come out, and then i couldn't see anybody. thank goodness. zoom technology. she came in right at the right moment for me, so i was able to do a lot of zoom book talks but this is almost my first one in person. but then something that i had no control over that was the the just the controversial 2020 election and it's long math and

then the creation of the commission to look into january six and i began hear only in the last year or so that people in washington were reading my book precisely because it it threw some light on events of january six, 2021. and i heard that jamie raskin liked my book, the maryland democrat, and he has written a memoir that mentions the book. interesting. it was for him be reading about 1861 while thinking about 2021 and that that was wonderful and senator maggie hassan of new hampshire also tweeted out a plug for my book, which i appreciated i've never met her or jamie raskin. but then the most meaningful of all was liz cheney, republican, former congresswoman from

wyoming, was the vice of the january six committee, and she began speeches throughout 2022. so very recently and talking about what my book had had meant to her. and i was very moved and and excited and i thought, well, that's great. i'm sure i'll never meet her. and a few days after forming that thought, i got a call on my cell with a wyoming phone number, and it was congresswoman liz cheney and she said, i just want to thank you for writing the book and i want thank you, congresswoman. and she said, oh, please call liz. and i've now met her only, only once. but she's deeply about the civil war. we had a wonderful hour long meeting. she's to the university of virginia. i was talking about that with carrie janie last night, and she's going to add something to our understanding of the civil war. i feel confident and if any of you have read the january six,

the report of the committee it's free and online and each of the leaders of the committee was given a chance write a preface and hers is all the civil war. it's about her great great grandfather who fought in an ohio regiment and how much the civil war has always meant to her. and so was she felt like she was honoring that love of country and all that americans went to stay one country between 1861 and 1865. so she may appear at a future one of these these gatherings. that's wonderful. thank you. thank you. let's see that book. one of the things i enjoyed about it among many is the references make to the classics. and so every chapter of the book. so as a chapter, each of the 13 days and each begins with an epigraph. the odyssey by homer. you also mentioned the influence of euclid on lincoln's thinking

how important reading euclid was him and the way his whole approach to life. so how did understanding the classics help you in understanding lincoln and his world. well, thank you, paul. that was an element that crept. it was nowhere. my original post for the new times. but again, i have a kind of family connection. i had a grandfather who would assign me to read homer's iliad and the odyssey and it was torture for a teenager but you know how you do these you don't want to do stuff like cod liver oil. you were kind of understand in some way it might be good for you. and then decades later, i remembered it with fondness and know what what's not to like this blood and guts and sword fights and betrayal and everything we love in any kind of a story.

and so some of that began to come back. and i it really was the odyssey more than the iliad although the book begins a small town in kansas called troy and that was intended i don't hit this point too hard but it was intended to echo the iliad as well as the odyssey and. i was a little bit remembering there's a wonderful book by robert penn warren, who's a poet and a literary critic. but in 1961, he wrote one of my favorite civil war books. it's called the legacy of the civil war, and he calls it our american iliad. the you know, the battle was between the greeks and the trojans are kind of civil war. and then at the end, the battle for troy, which is, you know, a kind of a victory for the greeks, but it's a bit like vietnam, like everyone is damaged, everyone post-traumatic stress syndrome. and then odysseus has to come back through greece to try to

find his family and. i had the feeling of a kind of a traumatized veteran in search of the person he been before the trauma as as just trying to find his wife and his son and i thought there was a bit of that same feeling for lincoln. the trauma is beginning, but as odysseus is going through all of these sort of magical situations, gods who are trying to kill him, you feel like he's trying to understand his own country, greece. and i thought with lincoln going through all of these torture situations in the north as well as south, there's a feeling of a a very powerful warrior who doesn't fully understand his own strength, but is figuring himself out and is learning a lot. the country that he's traveling through is also, in some ways captive to the powers of gods, that there are forms of destiny that are very interesting.

lincoln himself writes about how the fates have controlled him, and so they just echoes of the way the greeks about themselves that i thought were i didn't want say it into dogmatic away. i thought that little glimpse here in there of the little poem from the odyssey at the beginning of each chapter was was enough. yeah, i think that worked really. and for me it made a nice bookend. charles frazier's novel cold mountain. oh, yes. at the end of the civil war. and of course, he uses the structure of the odyssey as. a i forgot that, but i remember loving book, so i must you know, we also unintentionally plagiarize from other people that i must have that a little bit. i love that book. when it came out. yeah, that's a good way. so it's a journey. clearly shapes lincoln said it changes him in important ways. how does that go into the kind of president he becomes over the next four years? well, that's wonderful question.

i think he's a regional politician in 60 who i mean it's not luck it's skill and luck mine delivers him the nomination people that are prepared politicians and then the the election and i think it deepens him as a president of the entire american people the southern people. he comes close to the south. he insists tenacity. he can see kentucky on the other of the ohio river and the ohio river is quite important to. me in this in this book. so i think seeing so many different of americans and african americans are present, there's an african-american and i was quite struck in the talk we just heard by the african traveling with breckinridge because there is one with lincoln a young friend named william about whom we know very little but they appear to

genuinely have been friends. and there are interesting in the presidency where lincoln intervenes to help johnson he gets him a job. then johnson he asked johnson to go to get with him on a journey that fascinatingly mirrors the train journey into washington and i've just been reading i brought with me martin johnson's wonderful book writing the gettysburg address. and there's an incredible chapter, the train trip to gettysburg. and it feels a lot like all the things i was i was writing about. so he's traveling in a mixed race delegation and his wife and children are with him, but he's just meeting families everywhere, families with divided loyalties and families that are their young men are going to have to off to war, which, of course, is is true cities as well as small towns and traveling through the

farmland. he out on the back of the platform, waving at the farm families come to the side of the tracks. so but i also so he sees lot of different kinds of americans and that helps i also think the unusual pressure of having to speak which might have crushed a lot of second rate polity issues somehow deepens him. it's a kind of. difficult test of physical and intellectual will resources that he passes and the speeches get better and better and better. we have mentioned a few clunkers, but he begins to discover this interesting fact which is he has he's very well organized, he's very conscientious, and he he prepares one written speech per state and he thinks that will be the big speech and he usually gives it in a state legislature with the governor.

so it's sort of here's my message to indiana, here's my message to ohio, here's my message to new york. they're quite boring. they're they're the way you know, even lincoln could write a boring speech. but under the pressure of the trip, he's got to speak and over again to crowds that just form that you know there's anxiety on the faces looking at him and he deliver or something profound and very beautiful and he begins to about himself and in my careful reading of a lot of oratory, i have not seen presidents talking about themselves or, their feelings very much, and farewell address as he's leaving springfield is masterpiece of improvised with no no paper in his hands. highly emotional or personal a message to the the small crowd

probably one or 200 people guessing black people as well as white people. a light rain falling about what living in this small town has always meant to him. and he mentions the the children he and wife raised in that small town and the child are leaving in a cemetery. that small town. it's incredibly powerful oratory you might not even want to use the word oratory, because that sounds sort high end and official. it's a personal communication from a family man to, his friends and that speech as he's the journey was beamed around the nation by telegraph. it sent a note out to all americans. this is a very thoughtful person. he's not a random western politician. he's us in a lot of ways. and this is a family separation as well as a national separation

and as the train winds way through new jersey and then pennsylvania, he just keeps finding a a deeper register. you know, it's like a different gear inside of him and in trenton, new jersey, he gives two incredible speeches about what american revolution meant to him. then he goes the next day into independence hall in philadelphia and talks about the declaration of independence. and that's the roadmap that he will be. and talking about in the july 4th, 1861, message, the american people, which is a very important lincoln document. he talks a lot about, the declaration of independence, and then, of course, at gettysburg, it's only two years later and it's in the same state. but i think the the wheels in his brain are already turning toward gettysburg as he's in independence hall in 1861. so somehow the trip is bringing

this literary voice that we didn't know existed. and there's not really much in the earlier lincoln of the 1850s, something happening in the early weeks of february 1861, to bring this literary voice. and maybe even more immediately, he's building up towards his first inaugural address. and that train, as well as the gettysburg address and others. and maybe you could tell a story about how the inaugural address got lost along the way have been, well, this is a moment. i mean, i hope there's tragedy in the story, including i mean, survives the assassination attempt. and i, i forgot tell you some of the other sources besides ellen pinkerton. but there are there are some. but there's comedy, too. and a good has comedy as well as tragedy. i often thought of the chevy vacation films put out by national lampoon as guy who can barely control his own family,

let alone the united states of america. and robert lincoln is always out getting drunk with his friends, often including hay and tad and willie are not well behaved in the cars and that's noticed. but one of the first night of the journey to come into indianapolis, i mentioned and lincoln has a black valise that holds the absolutely precious only of his inaugural address that has he has made a couple copies to show friends back in springfield. but it's his only copy and there is no there's no staples to go make photocopies and he gives this precious release, robert, and says, hold onto it. and robert does what any teenage son would do. he stashes it in a hotel, goes to the clerk in the hotel and says, can you just put this behind the desk? i'm going out to have a few drinks with my friends.

and a few hours later, lincoln sees him. so i need my valise. i need to look at speech. and robert says, i put it, i gave it to the desk clerk at the hotel, and lincoln's face changes a look of horror. he runs down and the descriptions him hurdling the desk. kind of an awkward image but with his long legs and he just goes behind the desk and starts opening. he sees huge pile of black valises that all look the same, and he starts opening one of them pulling out, had some socks and t one had a bottle of liquor and people can see him doing this. he is the president elect and he's like on his hands in these opening valises and he found the right one. so it was wasn't lost but he's working on the inaugural during journey there important edits coming in including orval browning suggests some crucial changes that soften the language

of the inaugural so that, too, is a kind of a journey. he's writing the inaugural as he's getting closer to washington. yeah. so the the field of lincoln studies as i'm sure you're painfully aware, is very crowded. so many books written about lincoln than on any other american figure and you've found a really great to explore with this journey. washington but i was wondering whether are any full biographies of that you found especially useful in understanding the man? well, they're supposed be 16,000 books about abraham lincoln, and that makes. probably 15,900 short of reading. i mean, probably around hundred, maybe after ten years of work. so there's some, you know, we can't ever read everything. there's just too much. i was very grateful. to michael burlingame, whom i've only just met, i not know him

during the writing of this book, but he he has his magnificent two volume biography, which he online for free. many of you, i'm sure know that. but he he put an even larger version of that two volume biography online for free with the footnotes. that was a real gift to the lincoln. i've enjoyed all of. harold holt shares many on different aspects of lincoln, especially his the way he was depicted in the press in older books. i always i still carl sandburg not exactly current, but i find him always readable and very moving. and it's seems to me that the that sandburg was writing in the world war two era is not irrelevant because america was in trouble and lincoln is a good president. when we we are in trouble. i ed histories are no more than 100 years old.

but she's fascinating. she's fascinating as an early female biographer of lincoln and as a very dogged, you know, and invested native reporter, interviewed a lot people who knew lincoln. she actually was an investigative reporter who often exposed de rockefeller in standard, but also loved lincoln. and in, you know, more recent writers like james oates and his it was a lot of really great work right now on lincoln and the path reconstruction even he was killed of course everyone knows before reconstruction really began there were there were hints of his thinking. and there's a lot of great work, including james holt's work, crooked path to abolition. could there be any kind of sequel to lincoln on the verge? i know you mentioned that there had been, you know, kind of the

presidential journeys to washington that were not nearly as dramatic. are there any other of journeys american leaders took that were even half exciting and as consequential as one, you know, i sort of snuck in another journey. this book i was basically done. he arrives washington and he's not killed. and that's the beginning of the presidency. and i was basically done, but i was very interested in his journey to city point virginia and richmond, virginia, late march and early april, 1865. it's a haunting, much of it by water, which sort of echoes the early lincoln as a flat boat pilot on the ohio river. so i described that over maybe ten pages. it's not a full book. i i'd love to see of an entire book just lincoln's late journey to virginia as. the confederacy is falling up.

we heard description of that moment in the breckinridge age talk, but lincoln really goes to the front lines and in physical danger is walking through. and there people think see sharpshooters in the windows pointing guns at him. but then nothing happens. but that's a pretty amazing i'm aware a a colleague i was a little bit involved with the development of this project. i'm not the writer, but eisenhower goes on a fascinating journey in 1919 he's an officer back from world war one and the army this is sort of funny but but also fascinating the army wants to know if it even can get a motorized tank division across the united states because the roads are so bad that they're not even sure a tank can get from the east coast, the west coast of the country, so big and so. a young officer, eisenhower, is

given command of this. funny, it's almost like a mad max movie where all these are in tanks and they get down and stuck and but they make it almost didn't make it out of utah. they did make it. and it's interesting, because, of course, eisenhower is, the president during the interstate system. so that's that's a good one. but the journey a great device. i didn't even know what a good device it would be project sort of fell into my lap because of disunion but now i am thinking about others. the wartime journeys of franklin roosevelt are fascinating and. an old man in a wheelchair is going farther than any american president has gone. he goes to casablanca, goes to cairo, he goes to tehran. he goes to yalta and yalta, very close to the fighting in

ukraine, to today. and so those are good. and i think john f kennedy many journeys. he wasn't president for very long but he he used presidential travel to his advantage and there's one trip he gives the famous speech in berlin. you know i am i am a berliner which we now understand means i am a kind of a donut. and that i'm very a homecoming of sorts to ireland. and so that presidential is fascinating. and i you know, now that i'm saying that, i have to confess another piece of this book that i think was in my memory was i during the short time, i was a speechwriter for president clinton. i got to to some pretty exciting. and so that too is somewhere in the back of this book the feeling of being in a motorcade and hundreds of thousands of people they certainly weren't

waving because i was in the motorcade. but but i got a little feeling of what what an american president means the world. and what it means is not only the force of the personality of that person, but a great love for democracy, which is still so powerful all around the world, we're seeing this incredible, heroic struggle of the ukrainian people right now that are their democracy and it's not just our forces it's people who've held the office. it's what country stands for. it that i think is so powerful around the globe so. there are a lot of presidential journeys presidents from both parties or are carrying same torch. and i think that will be more books on presidential. great idea. i certainly hope so. why? i could ask you questions about this book and talk about it all day. i do want to make sure we give the audience chance to raise any questions want to so free to

raise your hands if you have a question and the students will deliver the microphone once, momentarily. do you call them partnership? what are you so sure? i see a hand right here or that's thought. we can do that. one of them will come to more of our days. trip home is probably the most critical or probably the last one where he had to get through the expected assassins in baltimore and as is i mean, i this story already was known so i didn't reveal it but i think i may have deepened it a little bit. and i you asked me earlier about it and i, i forgot to say found the fact that allan pinkerton had this brilliant female operative, kate warner, who got a lot of the secrets of the assassins. she's just a fast it's great to have strong women characters in

a civil war story. and the woman who discovered the plot was dorothea dix, a mental health advocate from the north. but very well liked in the south because she helped each state as well as northern state deal with its mentally ill people. and i've, you know, kind of wondered wondered about the importance of a mental health advocate as the country is going crazy. she's an interesting person, but she discovers the plot and helps to tip off northern authorities so that last night it's a kind of remarkable where he starts the day in philadelphia and gives speech i mentioned in independence about what the declaration means to him then he goes out to harrisburg gives another speech and starts a night of subterfuge. he gets on a secret, small, unmarked white train that goes

back to and that connects the overnight ordinary commuter train through baltimore washington. and he's just in a back compartment like everybody else. and frederick douglass later reading about this, said, how fascinating lincoln understood exactly the feeling of a slave escaping from the south to the north. he's hiding in a compartment, hoping people won't recognize his face, trying to go in the opposite direction. frederick douglass had done exactly that. he got on a train in baltimore disguised as a sailor, went to the north. and so they go all night. they go through baltimore at about four in the morning and this was the most dangerous place, not only because there's so much anti lincoln feeling in baltimore, maryland, a slave state. and one of the arguments of my book is our capital is in a terrible location. and the founders made a big mistake. it should have been somewhere

like philadelphia or or maybe harvard to grace maryland. i thought that would be a good spot. right on chesapeake bay. some southerners are similar, but washington's too far south. it's too dangerous and it's very unhealthy city to because of toxic water. in six. so but baltimore's also very because he's got to get out of a train or that the cars are from the engines and pulled by horses very through the streets of baltimore until they can connect to another locomotive about a mile away. so as the car is being pulled at the speed of a horse, that's when he was most vulnerable. and but but no one saw him. and he made it through. he arrived at about six in the morning in the train station very near the capitol. and so that that, i think, was the most exciting all the days. thank you for question.

we have one there and one here. thank you. your presentation found very interesting that on a trip from going way north in the north and drove down south. the inauguration was in march and virginia and seceded into april. but obviously virginia was totally left out of the trip. that was an easy way to go. we go clarksburg on the b.a. in washington or harrisburg. now so, so called say west virginia. that goes for one second then all that and also as a side virginia was the only seceding in the confederacy and lincoln was on the ballot and he got like 3000 votes. i think he carried hancock county. it was on the library. oh, that's fascinating comments on that and the trip. i can tell i have a fellow railroad enthusiast in the room.

wonderful question. well, you i think, know this already, but it was an embarrassing predicament. it was just too hot for him to travel virginia, which would have the straightest route. and kentucky also. so he really could not travel through the state of his birth for fear of losing kentucky. and in the early. of 1861, keeping the border states in the union was the number one political problem. so there was not going to be any of emancipation in 1861. and in fact, the 13th amendment that lincoln proposes in early in his inaugural address, which is still on the books waiting awaiting protects. the later 13th amendment that was passed abolishes slavery. but he's trying protect slavery

where it exists to keep the border states in in the union. and he decides that going through kentucky and virginia he's just it will cause more problems than it will solve. so he's got to go on this very route through indiana ohio quickly, going into pittsburgh and back into ohio, upstate new york, new york city, new jersey, philadelphia harrisburg, back to philadelphia down through delaware and maryland to d.c.. and so it's a little bit embarrassing that he can't go through kentucky and virginia. and the fact that he has to hide his identity last night of the trip is very embarrassing and his enemies make a lot of that they call him a coward. and this false story is spread around the country by the new york times. in fact, of all the news that's fit to print, but they spread a malicious rumor that is not true

that he's wearing a scottish outfit to disguise himself so cartoonists go making fun of lincoln. it's very at a time when he's trying keep the country together. but i became convinced that one of the great achievements of early 1861 and, you know, one of the nice things about taking a long time certain ideas, time to settle in, like a lot of things felt true me at the end of this book that i didn't even think about at the beginning. but the nonsense session of virginia in january and of 1861 is critically important so. by the time he gets to washington, virginia is still in the union and when he gives his inaugural address, he's looking out over the potomac river at virginia, which is part the united states of america. and i think that gave some crucial breathing room because washington is really far south.

and i mean, i sometimes thought it was not unlike west berlin in the 1950s and sixties, like this little island of a kind of sovereignty that belongs to another country far away. it's it's weird. washington is surrounded by virginia and maryland and neither place likes lincoln or. the cause of the union very much so he's just got to get to washington and the fact that virginia does not leave the in those early months is is really important. it does course later secede but so he just was too unpopular you are correct about the the tiny but significant vote in virginia and then also i think if you want to call missouri a southern state, there are some in saint louis that vote for him in 18. not not very many, but i think some german-americans voted for him in saint louis. but the study of the vote, it was in the

south for lincoln is really fascinating. so was there a second part that i didn't answer? i just said that there's one county in virginia, right? i think it's hancock county and they have 3000. right? right. thank you. so i think we had someone back there first. yep. and then we'll get to you. yes. and i apologize. said this here, but we just have the question how many stop exactly was the first part? the second was i was curious to know what's the smallest town the smallest area that he actually stopped to and maybe little bit of a decision process played actually about where to choose, make the stops and you know why you stop at one place versus another. wonderful question. i'm not sure i can give you a precise answer. they were working out an idea of the trip. there's a railroad man who was

sent out to with lincoln and he some authority to communicate by telegraph with all the the lines to to clear the road and sometimes there's a pilot train running ahead of his train to clear obstacles. and they found a few were few devices left the tracks to throw the train off. but because of the pilot train they they caught them. also there was an explosive device taken off the train. and since nattie moments before he boarded it. so there were problems as to and seward was helping seward and thurlow we'd in new york were important in in shaping the journey seward's in washington in springfield and their letters and telegrams back and forth are about as close as we get to any kind of national planning of this journey how it's i don't

think we'll ever know how many stops there were but there were dozens per day and however many were planned there were actually more because he'd be on the train. you just see these farm families gathered and it's incredibly moving. and i felt a little bit of this in the breckinridge talk that these are cinematic. these guys in a boat thinking you know this might be their last night and it at often in this book i should say that i felt, i was seeing the action in a way had never felt in writing history books. i just was computing a lot of factual information in previous books. but in this one i felt like i could see it happening, which was a nice feeling. i hope you all have that feeling in your own books, but so moving these accounts of the farm families coming from dozens of miles just to stand by the track and wait for the train to go by. and lincoln lincoln would go out

and either wave at them or ask the train to stop for a 32nd stop for him to say thank you. i'm going to do the best i can. this one story i loved where he started to tell a joke and he didn't get to the punchline and the train started pulling away. the people are running and he starts talking louder and louder to try get to the end of the joke. but are meaningful encounters between the american people and their their president. over and over it. get to a town of 5000 people and 20,000 people would be there. the crowd. so they're coming from all around to hear him. and it was, i think, the only time most of them ever saw him. so was their body count. that's a small of, say, 2000 people. absolutely yeah, that's what i was just curious about. yeah. no, those were really meaningful encounters and a tale of 2000 people. good chance it had a newspaper

because this was such a literate society and that's where i mentioned chronicling america. what a valuable resource that was. so i could go into that i. remember one town, xenia, ohio xy nia which i looked up i believe it's the town in america with the letter x at beginning of its of its name. and he pulled into that small town and that small that small. i have not been i still want go to a lot of these places, but there was a huge buffet laid out for him in traveling party. you know, they were hungry and they got in and the the thousands people would come in, cleared out the buffet before the presidential party could get through. so if any, you need to leave my talk early to get to the buffet before before i'm done. but yeah, a town of 2000, i would imagine they would have stopped. and one of the great things about railroad maps as will

know, they have dots along the lines. so you see every every town and i would look up every town for its newspaper. well i'm afraid we are out of time. and so people will be, i'm sure, ready to rush out and their coffee and other refreshments outside for the next 30 minutes or so by. i really want to thank you, ted, for a wonderful book. lincoln on the verge again is title and for a wonderful, fascinating conversation. thank you very much. thank you, paul thank you all.