Jon Meacham on the Complexities and Conscience of Lincoln

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now, we’re going to take a look back at one of the country’s most consequential presidents, Abraham Lincoln. Pulitzer prize-winning biographer and best-selling author Jon Meacham has charted Lincoln’s life in his new book, “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle”. And he speaks to Walter Isaacson about the reasoning behind some of Lincoln’s most difficult decisions and the lessons his political era can offer modern-day America.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane. And Jon Meacham, welcome back to the show.

JON MEACHAM, AUTHOR, “AND THERE WAS LIGHT”: Thanks, Walter.

ISAACSON: You have this wonderful new biography of Lincoln that just came out. And as I was reading it, I notice that the thread through the book is a focus on his conscience. You know, how did that conscience develop?

MEACHAM: One of the things I wanted to do in the book was answer the question, not only of how Lincoln did what he did but why. And in our own time, of course, we have a great deal of skepticism, much of it justified about the motives of the American past. How progressive were the progressives actually. And I wanted to try to figure out what was it about anti-slavery politics? For Lincoln, it was consistently anti-slavery. He was not an abolitionist, in the sense that we would want him to be. But he was for limiting the spread of slavery to create, as you know, what they used to call the scorpion state. You know, they wanted — there’d be a cordon of fire where slavery would be trapped and then ultimately die. That was a radical position in that time. And it wasn’t particularly politically potent one actually. Lincoln lost two Senate races in the 1850s. He only got 39 percent when of the popular vote when he ran for president. And — so, what was it about this principle that he maintained to his own detriment throughout his career? My sense is that it goes back to a theological ethos that his parents were part of. In the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, they were part of what was called emancipation churches. They were — it was a Baptist denomination in Kentucky. And so, I think Lincoln, when he said, as he did in 1864, I am naturally anti-slavery. I cannot remember when I did not so think and so feel. I think he was telling the truth. And at some point, when we look at the past, we shouldn’t just take that you have done this forever. You can’t just take what people said and believe that it’s totally representative of their beliefs. But at a certain point, if they say the same thing year after year and they act on it, then you have to take it seriously. And Lincoln believed that slavery was wrong, that liberty was right, that democracy was in peril, and that democracy could not, as he put, it long- endure if we refuse to embrace the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

ISAACSON: Well, not surprisingly, this conscience you talk about was really connected to faith. Not just the Kentucky Baptist faith you just mentioned, but a deep faith from reading the bible a lot. And I’d love a — there’s a wonderful sentence near the beginning of your book I’d like to quote and for your to expand on, which is, to Lincoln, God whispered His will through conscience, calling humankind to live in accord with the laws of love.

MEACHAM: He believed there was a transcendent moral order. He was not a conventional Christian. I am not re-baptizing Abraham Lincoln. Let’s be very clear there. He was not someone who confessed conventional Christian creeds. He did not follow a conventional Christian view. What he did have was this ambient sense that there was a right and a truth. And that right and that truth were manifested to the extent to which human beings could actually make the golden rule operative. And that may sound a little co-melodic (ph) or a little ceremony, but it’s not. It’s what he did. And he connected the two. He connected this idea of love of neighbor, not just to theology but to politics. He said, my ancient faith teaches me that all man are created equal. He said, as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. That expresses my idea of democracy. And so, if I respect you and your equality and your dignity, I am therefore more likely to have you respect mine. And if I extend a hand to you when you need it in the morning, you are more likely to extend one to me in the afternoon when I need it. And that is the motive moral force of democracy.

ISAACSON: And yet you call Lincoln a big inconsistent man, why?

MEACHAM: Well, W. E. B. Du Bois did it first. Du Bois said he was a big brave inconsistent man. He was a poor, illiterate, illegitimate white. This was a 1922 essay. And he was inconsistent because he did not see that there was a practical way, practical way to create the kind of egalitarian democracy that you and I are blessed to be able to kind of take for granted as an actionable idea. He did not see the integrated 13th and 14th and 15th amendment country all his career. He got there through the crisis of war. He got there, understanding that the verdict of the war meant that slavery had to die, that it couldn’t be gradual emancipation, that it couldn’t be compensated from the slave owner’s emancipation. They had to be immediate, unconditional. It came through the — what he called the fiery trial. And in doing that, he had to put aside his own views that we would see as racist. And that was a very common — tragically, are very common dichotomy of views. There were many abolitionists in the United States of America in the 19th century who wear terrible racists. They believed in the political equality of black Americans but not the social or civil equality. And so, to me, one of the reasons to tackle Lincoln was to try to figure out if someone could be so wrong about the social and civil equality of black Americans. So, wrong about that. And saying horrible things that were in fight fact white supremacists. If you could be that person and yet be the person who decided to wager everything on a civil war, who fought for, ran for election on the 13th amendment, what manner of man is it who can be so wrong about something so big and yet also get big things right. And the biographical answer, the historical answer is, what manner of man is that is he’s a man. Fallen, frail, and fallible.

ISAACSON: One of the great themes we wrestled with in history, J. Blinken (ph), Ben Franklin, all of our founders, or anything else is, when is it a good idea to compromise? I was surprised in your book there were so many times that Lincoln refused to compromise.

MEACHAM: So, there are three great moments. I think we’ve met as his Churchillian moments. Like Churchill in May of 1940. He looked and said, I am not — I will not give in on this principle. He wins the presidency, barely. There is a perfectly rational compromise on the table. It was a deal that would have restored the Missouri Compromise line, which I know your viewers will now — their eyes will blaze but it’s important. It was to take that line back across the country to the eastern border of California and allow slavery to go into New Mexico and Arizona. The one view was, well, it’s not arable — it’s not hugely arable land so it won’t be that bad. You know, when you get into saying some about slavery that it won’t be that bad, you’re probably in the wrong place to be making an argument. He wouldn’t do it because he believed that if you gave an inch on slavery, that the south — the white south would come back again and again and again.

ISAACSON: What would’ve happened had he made that compromise?

MEACHAM: The war would have been avoided but slavery — we would have smashed the one controlling principle. The one controlling anti-slavery principle in the American experience which was that the Congress had the power. This is very important. It’s dorky but important. The Congress had the power to regulate the institutions of territories that would become states. They did not have the power, as they saw it under the constitution to do anything directly about slavery in the existing states. And because of the 13th amendment and the drama of that, we sort of put that to the side in our — in the popular imagination. But Lincoln did not believe that he had the constitutional authority in 1860 and ’61 to abolish slavery where it existed. What he firmly believed was that he had the power — the federal government had the power, to prevent its spread. I believe, this is just me talking. I think it’s unclear to me that slavery would have been abolished in the 19th century. Because it would have meant that the federal government had basically said, well, it’s not that bad. We will let it go that far. And this question suffused and defined our politics in a way that’s — it’s almost hard to recover now. The Douglas-Lincoln debates in the 1850s and the Senate races were about the spread of slavery because that’s what the federal government had authority over. And if the federal government, under Lincoln had declared themselves pro-slavery, then it’s very hard for me to see how abolition would have unfolded.

ISAACSON: But then, in 1864, he decides to go hole hawk for emancipation, even though, as you said, before that he thought the federal government only had the power to deal with the expansion of slavery and to other territories. Even the Republican leaders, whose party leaders at the time, tell him to compromise and not go full bore on emancipation. Why does he do it?

MEACHAM: Third week of August — I think this is one of the most important moments in American history. Third week of August, 1864, it looks as if he’s going to lose. The chairman of the Republican National Committee who was the editor of “The New York Times” — that tells you how long ago this was, comes down to Washington. And Lincoln had just met with Frederick Douglass a couple days before. Henry Raymond was this name. He comes in and he says, if you keep emancipation as a precondition for any settlement of the war — this is before the fall of Atlanta, this is before Sherman’s March to the Sea, you will lose re-election. And Lincoln worked this out. He left some documents where he tried to talk himself into it. How would he present it if he were to compromise on this. But fundamentally, he decided, no. One practical reason was that black men under arms who were a vital part of the war effort at that hour. And he said man do not fight, say for incentive. How could you ask a black man to fight for a union that would not emancipate them. So, that was a very practical thing. But it was this moral sensibility that in the trial of the war, slavery had been defeated. And he was not going to then compromise. And this is what a compromise would have looked like in the same way we were just talking about what 1860, ’61 would have looked like, and this is all in the record. If Lincoln had said, all right, we will do peace talks with Richmond. And we’ll — I will lift or limit the force of the emancipation proclamation. And then the new union, the reconstituted union can settle all the issues in a convention of the states. God only knows what they would have done. And I think it’s pretty safe to say that it would not have been immediate uncompensated emancipation.

ISAACSON: What changes and his own minds between 1862 in 1864, because it’s not so much the war going that well.

MEACHAM: It’s the extraordinary contribution of black Americans under fire. It is understanding that people who were not free we’re willing to fight for a union on the implied promise that emancipation would come. And I think that we understandably focus on the great people of history. But undoubtedly, the unimaginable courage of black men and black women under arms mattered enormously to him. And Frederick Douglass, to his everlasting credit, understood this from the very beginning when he pushed for the enlistments and recruitment of black Americans in the union army. He said — I’ll get it slightly wrong, but once you get a brass U.S. and an eagle on a man’s shoulder and you get a gun in his hand, it will be impossible to keep them in chains.

ISAACSON: Your history books are actually always so timely. And I didn’t really remember this incident but it really struck me, of course, of how timely it is which is after the 1860 election, there is a plot to decertify and a plot of Lincoln’s foes to go to the Capitol and overturn the election results. And a patriotic vice president, I think it was John C. Breckinridge, says no, no, no. I’m not going to go along with this. I’m not going to decertify the electoral college vote. Tell me how that resonates for you today?

MEACHAM: It’s — it was February 13, 1861, Lincoln saw it, interestingly. He was getting letters. He was in Springfield. He’d won. He was getting a lot of reports of attempted assassination, death threats, rumors of war, of people might try to kill him at the inauguration. And he wrote early on that, I think our point of greatest danger is the electoral college vote. Because he’s a lawyer, right? So, he knew that that was a critical step in the legal certification. And the votes were held in wooden boxes in the Capital. John Breckenridge who had run against Lincoln and who would become a confederate general and confederate official decided that he had sworn an oath to a constitution. He might not follow that constitution and the fullness of time but his oath at the moment was to that. It’s very much like Mike Pence. And Breckenridge — Henry Dawes of Massachusetts said, he did it like a Roman of old. He did his duty in that moment. They packed the — the police were in the capital from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. Winfield Scott came down from New York, the commanding general of the army. He said, if anyone tries to interfere with the count, I will blow them through the windows. We were on tenterhooks. And you look — one of the remarkable things that — there are sort of two political — remarkable political things in that era. One is, as we are falling apart, South Carolina seceded, I think on December 20th of 1860. So, in the — people are following them out, different states. The fact that the transition happened. The fact that the inauguration happened on March 4, 1861. And then the fact that we had an election — well, three elections, really. We had an 1862 midterm, some auricular (ph) elections in 1863, and then the 1864 election. Even amid the civil war, people were not claiming that elections had been stolen or that there was a big lie that was defining American politics. And that, I think, for our own time, should show us that this is — our concerns about the future of democracy are not hyperbolic. They’re not a notional. Even in the civil war, we had fairly orderly elections. And I think it was an innate obedience to the rule of law that John Breckenridge had, Mike Pence had. And I think that it — we’re all being called on it at this point to accept results if they’re full, free and fair even if we don’t like them.

ISAACSON: Jon Meacham, thank you for joining us again.

MEACHAM: Thanks, Walter.