(train bell chiming)
- The door's locked from the inside?
- Yes, ma'am.
- Key, please.
My uncle is an invalid, he requires absolute privacy.
Do you understand?
See to it.
(suspenseful music)
- We'll take a special overnight train.
I've cleared the tracks and had the telegraph lanes cut
from here to Baltimore.
These men intend to kill you.
You can't risk being recognized.
(train whistle blowing)
(suspenseful music)
- Now
- This is not how I planned to get to Washington.
- [Man] Ladies and gentlemen,
some of you may have heard of him.
- [Woman] His story has been passed down
from one generation to the next.
- Four score and seven years ago.
- He felt that democracy in its purest form
is for all people.
- [Lincoln] All persons held as slaves
shall be thence forward and forever free.
- But there's something deeper than what he did.
It's about who he was.
- Lincoln grew up in poverty.
- Haven't done anything
to make anyone remember that I ever lived.
- He's living proof
that Americans can rise from obscurity to power.
- With that wit and that charm and that intellect.
- It's better to stay silent and be thought a fool
than to speak up and remove all doubt.
- He has this deep sense of empathy.
- [Christy] He takes the Declaration of Independence.
- All men are created equal.
- And turns it into a nation's moral compass.
(glass shattering)
(mob shouting)
- As the country is breaking apart, there's a turning point
where he's gonna have to take a stand.
- Charge! (guns banging)
- Blood will be on your hands!
- Blood is already on my hands!
- You have to learn how to be a Commander in Chief.
- I can't have a war on two fronts.
- He was willing to admit he was wrong and to change.
- We can attack immediately.
- [Doris] He was the right person at the right time.
- If we let this stand for one minute longer,
(gun bangs)
we might as well say goodbye to the whole thing.
Union, democracy,
all of it.
(dramatic music)
(hammer thudding)
- Abe, come here.
Hold it steady.
(hammer thudding)
- You think anyone will know mom is in there?
- God will know.
- We should put a marker, write her name on it.
- Leave it alone.
- When Lincoln's mother died, she had said to him,
Abraham, I'm going away from you now and I shall not return.
Death was a common traveler during that period of time.
- Lincoln's childhood was hard.
Lincoln's father was a carpenter some of the time,
farmer some of the time.
He wasn't good at making money.
- Abraham Lincoln had a hard scrabble,
poverty ridden existence.
- They lived on the frontier
in a one room cabin that had a dirt floor.
- [Doris] There were times when he fell into
an extreme sense of sadness and melancholy,
that would stay with him the rest of his life.
- [Harold] After the death of his mother,
his father traveled to civilization
looking for a replacement wife.
And he was left alone with his older sister
for months and months.
(somber music)
- [Doris] How the children survived
that time alone on the frontier is hard to imagine.
They were foraging for food.
They looked like wild animals.
- In the early 1800s Lincoln is at the edge of
what is the American frontier.
- It's just six years after the Louisiana Purchase.
The nation expands all the way over to the Mississippi River
and parts of the northwestern and plains areas.
- We can trace
the movement of the American population
across the continent.
And the Lincoln family is exemplifying that trend
and they moved steadily westward.
- Frontier life is dangerous,
and consists of a lot of hard labor.
Clearing the land, chopping down trees,
removing tree stumps.
Lincoln is a hard worker,
but he doesn't like physical labor.
He's not someone who enjoys farming.
(horse neighing)
- [Ted] After a few months,
Lincoln's father remarried a woman
named Sarah Bush Johnston.
- Hey, there you are.
Come on.
Go on.
- You can read, Abraham?
- Sorry, ma'am.
- It's all right.
- There's plenty of work out there.
Come on.
- We're used to reading about evil stepmothers,
Lincoln had a good stepmother.
She brought a little library of books.
She couldn't even read them herself, but she had them.
- And she forges an extraordinary bond with Abraham.
She understood him, she sympathized with him.
She would encourage him about reading
and education and ambition.
- He's basically self-taught.
He read some of the best writing in the English language.
The King James Bible, Shakespeare, and Greek classics,
and a few other adventure books thrown in
like Robinson Crusoe.
He was drawing from this incredibly rich fountain.
- He went to a primitive school for less than one full year
where he stood out.
One of his friends said,
his ambition soared beyond all the rest of us.
That while we were playing,
he was reading and rereading his books.
- [Harold] The most impressive thing
about Lincoln's ability to teach himself
is his mastery of Euclid, he loved geometry.
- [Doris] He's reading about George Washington.
He's reading about the founding fathers.
- He is reading that all men are created equal.
It's the most revolutionary statement
ever articulated by any founding country.
That is a mindblowing proposition.
- Where'd you get that?
- I borrowed it from Mr. Crawford.
- Put it away and get to bed.
I'm gonna need you to dig out them rocks
first thing tomorrow.
- His father didn't understand
why Abraham chose to read instead of to work on the farm.
He thought it was a sign of laziness.
But Abraham had a different set of ambitions.
Through everything he read, he began to imagine,
to envision another way of life.
(thunder booming)
- It rained last night.
- This is worth 75 cents.
- I'll work it up, I swear, Mr. Crawford.
- Three days working in my fields.
(Abe grunts)
- [Doris] This kid doesn't share the values
of physical labor with his father.
He yearns to fight his way out
of that daily struggle for survival.
- [Sue] Crawford ought to be ashamed.
- Ouch. - Stay still.
- Three days work, nothing to show for it.
- I get to keep the book.
It's mine now.
- But despite the tension between them,
Abe got his storytelling talent from his father,
who did have a great sense of humor.
- So this preacher starts his sermon
by saying to the congregation, today I represent the Christ.
Just then this little blue lizard runs up his pants
and he starts to kick them pants off. (laughs)
- A little blue lizard runs up the preachers leg.
Off come his pants.
The lizard runs under his shirt.
Well, that comes off too.
One little old lady from the congregation
can't take anymore.
She shouts to the preacher,
who's standing there, no pants, no shirt on.
If you represent the Christ I am done with the Bible!
- That yarn of a lie when your Pa told it,
and it's still a lie.
- It's a mighty good lie though.
- Gentlemen, names Dennis Offutt,
looking for Mr. John Hanks.
- That's me.
- Need some men to build me a flatboat,
take some barrels down to New Orleans.
I heard you're a river man.
- New Orleans?
- I can't be gone that long, got a family to tend to.
- I'll pay you a decent wage.
- Well, I could go for you, Mr. Offutt.
I made a trip to New Orleans
with cousin John here a couple years back.
- This ain't a job for a jokester.
Serious work.
I'll take the group of ya.
- Whaddya say?
John, this could be my chance.
- All right.
- Got a deal then, huh?
- Thank you, Mr. Offutt.
-Pleasure sir.
- He could read about other people's adventures,
but now this was an adventure of his own.
He begins to create that wider world
that he's dreamed of since he was a little kid.
- He took his flatboat journey down the Mississippi River
to New Orleans and there he saw the big city.
He saw what a new world might look like
beyond the remote farm.
- And during the course of that visit,
he saw more than he had ever seen.
New Orleans was the largest slave trading port
in the United States.
- He saw human beings with hearts and minds
being sold like chattel, like animals, like furniture.
And it left a lasting and haunting impression on him.
- When he comes back home,
there was a law in Illinois at the time
that you had to give your wages to your father
until you reached the age of majority, which was 21.
He's now 21, so he can strike out on his own.
Offutt offers him a job to be a clerk in his general store.
- You'll be back by winter.
- I'm gonna be a clerk now, in a new store.
- Stores go under every day.
- So do farmers.
I'm gonna keep studying, be ready.
- You'll do fine.
- Bye, Pa.
(somber music)
(fighters grunting)
- [Man] That your new man?
- Yeah, that's Lincoln.
- [Bystander] That's an illegal hold!
(fighters grunting)
- I've never seen Armstrong lose.
How long they been at it?
- About an hour. (laughs)
(fighters grunting)
- Armstrong, preventing this will fail.
- It ain't over til I win.
- Call it a draw.
Then we both win.
(crow murmuring)
- It's a draw.
- New Salem was a tough town.
There was a gang led by a tough guy named Jack Armstrong.
Newcomers had to prove themselves or be on the outs.
- New Salem itself is yet another one of these
just emerging frontier towns.
It's very small, just a few hundred people.
- But for Lincoln, it seems like a bustling metropolis.
There's a post office, there's three general stores,
there's a blacksmith's shop.
- It had an intellectual community,
it had a little debating society,
it had a teacher who loaned him books.
- He's demonstrated his physical prowess.
He's a hard worker.
He's also known for his intelligence.
- And he will have the funniest stories to tell.
He will have you and your friends in stitches.
- And Lincoln has to learn how to hustle.
He's a store owner, he's a land surveyor, a shopkeeper.
- Eventually Lincoln became a grocer and he sold whiskey.
He also becomes the village postmaster,
and that's where he first got news beyond Illinois.
Reading about issues far beyond his limited sphere.
- Everybody would come to the store,
they'd debate issues, they'd stay around and talk politics.
- He was always interested in politics.
He loved politics.
- In little towns like New Salem,
politicians running for office would come on Saturdays.
and gives speeches.
- Illinois needs railroads.
You got a railroad, you can get your goods to market.
Y'all elect me to state assembly
and I swear I'll bring the railroad right
here to New Salem.
(audience applauds)
- No, you won't. - I beg your pardon?
Who said that?
- I did.
See, the way I figure it,
if they do build that railroad it'll be near Springfield.
I saw as much in the paper.
And how far are we from Springfield?
About what, 20 miles?
That won't do us a lick of good.
See, this fella, he's right about us
needing to get to market,
but what we need in New Salem is to widen the river
so the steamships can get here.
Then this town will take off,
like a rabbit in front of a pack of wolves.
- Well, I could vote for both, waterway and the railroad.
- I don't think so, mister.
How much that railroad gonna cost?
A lot, right?
See, this fella, he might be able to talk
the hind leg off a donkey,
but if they build that railroad,
there won't be a dime left of tax money for our river.
Then we'll just be like the, like the runt of the litter,
left behind squinting for a meal when there's nothing left.
(audience cheers and applauds) - Tell 'em Abe.
- There was something about the way Lincoln spoke.
He was able to translate complex issues
into something simple,
terms of the daily life of the people.
Within eight months of his being in New Salem,
the residents wanted him to run for the state legislature.
- At the time we have a two party system
with the Democrats and the Whigs.
And the Whig Party was most interested in
infrastructure that would help the country grow.
- Lincoln very much defines himself initially as a Whig.
An ardent advocate for the federal government
taking a particularly active role
in promoting improved railroads or turnpike networks,
and navigable rivers.
- in Lincoln's day, if you wanted to run for office,
you simply put out a handbill
telling what your promises were and what you stood for.
So at 23 years old he writes this handbill
and it's an extraordinary document.
First of all, most politicians put out a short document.
His is 2,000 words long, and it's very personal.
It starts saying, every man has his peculiar ambition.
Mine is to be esteemed by my fellow man.
And what he means by that is to accomplish something worthy
so my story will be told.
- In that same time, he talks about how he grew up.
I was born, I've ever remained
in the most humble walks of life.
If you elect me, I'm still gonna be this humble guy.
I'm not gonna become somebody different.
- [Doris] And then he says, I promise you,
I will do everything I can to make my promises come true.
- He's a young man on the make, right?
And then he wasn't shy about it either.
Lincoln seems to emerge out of the roughness
and ambition and the hunger
of what was certainly a very young country.
He had pulled himself out of poverty.
There was no shame in saying, I want to be famous.
He's unembarrassed about forging alliances
with people who can help him.
He wants to make people like him.
He is a politician.
- I'm from New Salem, Abraham Lincoln.
I'm running for state assembly.
I'll tell you what, if I can toss this thing past yours,
you take a look at this?
It'll tell you where I stand.
- Hell, you toss this ball farther than me,
I'll vote for you.
- All right.
What about you boys? - You get all our votes.
(Abe grunts)
- In 1834 Abraham Lincoln is elected
to the Illinois state legislature as a Whig,
a new political party established
by United States Senator, Henry Clay,
to promote infrastructure, a national bank, and tariffs.
And he becomes one of the Long Nine of Sangamon County,
- The Long Nine were a group of Whig legislators,
including Lincoln, who got their name
because they were all over six feet tall.
They advocated for internal improvements
for the state of Illinois,
that they wanted to move the state Capitol
from the sleepy little town of Vandalia
to Springfield, Illinois.
- We gotta move the capital from Vandalia to Springfield.
- But the Democrats will do whatever they can to stop us.
They're already trying to redraw Sangamon County lines.
That means two less seats for us.
- We want the capital in Springfield,
in Sangamon, in our county.
Why?
- Because there's value to having the power
in our own backyard.
- So, if it's valuable, shouldn't there
be a cost for it?
There's a spending bill coming up, right?
- Right.
- What if we tack on an amendment
that says whatever city gets the capital
will have to pay the state of fee for that privilege.
A large fee, $50,000.
Vandalia could never afford that.
But Sangamon could.
That's what I'm thinking.
- Lincoln was immediately perceived as different, unique,
wily and smart.
Taller than everyone else, funnier than everyone else,
stronger than everyone else.
He was a magnetic person.
He was always making friends and they gravitated to him.
And he meets John T. Stewart who advises him
that he should study the law.
- He had to study it all on his own, however.
He would have to borrow books from John Stewart,
who was 20 miles away.
He'd have to walk those 20 miles, borrow the book,
come back, read the book, return the book,
and then get another one.
But he passed the bar.
- He's now on his way, he's taken another step.
He's gonna be around people who make things happen.
- He would in fact, serve four terms
in the Illinois state legislature.
And with each term, his profile and his prestige would grow.
He promotes roads, he promotes canals.
- The American economy is transforming
in the early decades of the 19th century.
The transportation revolution is so crucial
to moving goods and people,
factories which are using new steam technology
makes cotton profitable in a way that it hadn't been.
Makes it the boom crop.
Changes the Southern economy,
where slave based agriculture becomes enormously profitable.
- The entire United States benefits from slavery,
even if they want to argue that they don't.
Northern cotton mills are reliant upon
the cotton produced by enslaved laborers in the south.
The insurance industry in New York City
is where slave holders bought policies
to protect the bodies of their enslaved men and women.
Merchants, bankers, the brokers,
the people who extended loans,
they are all tied up in the institution of slavery.
- It's this global enterprise.
In key areas of the deep south,
you're talking about communities
that are 60 to 70% enslaved.
So the use of terror and violence
have been the method of control.
- [Caroline] But there certainly were white northerners
who believed that slavery is morally wrong.
They are abolitionist.
- And at the heart of all of these things
is the story of Abraham Lincoln himself
and his own transformation.
- At the time, Lincoln was an anti-slavery man.
He didn't like slavery,
but that didn't mean that he was an abolitionist.
- He thought that eventually slavery would die away
and rot on the vine.
But as a politician, he had to be very, very cautious
in expressing his anti-slavery views.
- Once the capital gets moved to Springfield,
he arrives in Springfield on a horse
and two saddlebags with all of his possessions, that's it.
And he gets an offer to have a junior partnership
in a law practice with John Stewart, his fellow legislator.
- He moved to Springfield, Illinois on April 15th, 1837.
I always find that to be bizarrely coincidental.
He was 28 years old when he moved
and he had 28 years more to live to the very day.
(patrons laughing)
- [Shopkeep] You can try it on if you like.
- Oh no, thank you, I'm only looking.
- Can I help you?
- How much would a bed cost?
Well, I can sell you one for $17.
- 17.
I see.
Thank you.
Here's the thing, mister.
- Joshua, Joshua Speed. - Oh, Abraham Lincoln.
I'm newly arrived and I'm a freshly minted lawyer
and it's not certain I will succeed.
- Jury's still out, is it?
- (chuckles) Jury hadn't even been chosen yet.
The thing of it is is I don't have money for the bed,
not yet.
- Do you have any prospects?
- Yes, I'm partnering with John Stewart.
He's well-established.
- I've got a room upstairs with a bed in it, you know,
if you're looking for a share.
Come on, take a look and see if you like it.
- Yeah.
- [Joshua] These are the boys, by the way.
- Hi, gentlemen. - Abe Lincoln.
- The man managing the store is a young man
named Joshua Speed.
Speed and Lincoln take an almost
instant liking to each other.
The two are about as close as anyone really gets
to Abraham Lincoln,
who was otherwise a very, very private person.
- For the next four years, they lived in the same room,
they slept in the same bed.
There were more people than beds in those days.
- When business was over with the store for the day,
in the back room
all the young political, ambitious types would gather.
- [Doris] It's there that he meets Stephen Douglas,
the Little Giant as he's called
because he's short of stature, but huge in personality.
And as a Democrat, he's opposed to government support
for infrastructure projects.
- [Harold] And Douglas becomes Lincoln's
lifelong political rival.
- And then in 1837, a sustained recession
hit the state of Illinois.
Up til that point,
Lincoln had been the champion of infrastructure projects.
- The economy is a disaster
and funding for those damn improvement bills,
it's as dead as that bear under your feet, Lincoln.
And if you keep going,
your career will soon enjoy the same fate.
- A bad economy doesn't mean that improvements
to roads and waterway should stop, Douglas.
If anything, they should be built faster.
- Faster?
Now you've lost me.
- If it's raining, do you stop building a roof
and stand there getting wet, or do you build a double quick?
Building faster will bring back business and trade.
- It doesn't make sense.
- No, it's delusional.
- I made a promise to look out for the people of Sangamon.
- Well, you wouldn't be the first politician
to break a promise.
- Or the last. (laughs)
- I'm telling my Whigs to vote for more funding.
You should tell your Democrats to do the same.
It takes a little courage to do what's right.
- Was it a courageous man who digs his own grave?
Or just a fool.
- You know, I heard a fella say once,
it's better to stay silent and be thought a fool
than to speak up and remove all doubt.
- Spin all the country wisdom you like, Lincoln.
It won't make you right.
(suspenseful music)
(guests chattering)
- You planning on pouring that?
- Thank you.
- I didn't expect to see you here, Lincoln.
- Oh.
- Mr. Douglas, you haven't introduced your friend.
- Ms. Mary Todd, this is Mr. Abraham Lincoln.
- Ms. Todd, I am honored.
- Mr. Lincoln's a stubborn Whig,
determined to drop his carriage over a cliff
when everyone else has reigned in their horses.
- Perhaps Mr. Lincoln sees a road
where you don't, Mr. Douglas.
- Ms. Todd, I would like to dance with you in the worst way.
(classical music)
- [Allen] Lincoln had a great passion for women.
He was very bashful, he was very shy,
but that didn't mean
that he was not always thinking about women.
- Mary Todd was the Belle of the town.
She was beautiful, she was witty.
She attracted many suitors.
She was actually courted by Stephen Douglas, among others.
She was educated, she came from a long line of diplomats,
ambassadors, governors.
She was very interested in politics.
- She was from a prominent Whig political family.
Her father was a slave holder,
but he was also a Whig who knew Henry Clay,
who was Lincoln's political hero.
- I myself am a great admirer of Henry Clay.
- Really?
Wow, I didn't think that a lady like yourself would be-
- Interested in politics?
I hope you'll find I'm not like other ladies, Mr. Lincoln.
(Chuckling)
Now tell me,
what is this cliff you're determined to drive over?
- Lincoln felt an instant connection to
her and she, to him.
She saw something in him right away.
- Well, Mr. Lincoln,
you said you wanted to dance with me in the worst way
and you certainly did.
- Oh, well. - Don't look so wounded.
It's not your dancing skills I'm interested in.
- Finally, it seems like all those pieces of his life
came together to allow him to rise
beyond the adverse circumstances
of his childhood on the frontier.
- At the time, like Lincoln, there's another young man
who was trying to rise up
through education and literacy to escape.
Frederick Douglass had been born into slavery,
he was separated from his mother
when he was about a year old.
He was chosen when he was about eight or nine years old
to go to Baltimore
to be the house servant for his master's family.
His mistress had never had a slave before
and didn't know that it was illegal to teach him
to read and write.
And so out of the goodness of her heart
she began to teach young Frederick his ABCs.
- And the more he reads, it's a fire in his belly.
This is why they don't want to educate the Negro,
because when we become aware, when we understand,
we can no longer be enslaved.
- [Kenneth] And Frederick knew that he would one day
make his attempt to escape.
(horse neighing)
- Fred?
Fred!
- You got the ticket?
- Had to show em my papers before they'd sell it to me.
Straight through to Newark, then a ferry.
Listen, that's where you have to be extra careful.
They slave catches on the lookout there.
- Anna, I'll be all right.
- You don't know that.
Let me see your sailor's pass again.
They catch you this time they gonna sell you south.
- I have to go.
- Douglass was helped by my great, great, great grandmother,
Anna Murray, who was the first in her family
to be born free.
She sold a feather bed to help finance his escape.
She sold the sailors disguise that he would wear,
and he carried with him seaman's protection papers
that he had borrowed from a friend.
- [Christy] It's dangerous because there's slave patrols
looking for runaways.
- There were lots of consequences
for people that attempted to run away
and that were recaptured.
People would have their feet cut off, other limbs cut off.
They would have to wear
these grotesque contraptions around their necks.
- Severe whipping with a bullwhip,
cutting your Achilles tendon.
You can still work, can't run.
And the ultimate punishment is death.
(suspenseful music)
- He successfully escaped on that train and then by boat.
And he would taste freedom for the first time
in New York City.
Anna would join him two weeks later and become his wife.
- In Springfield, Abraham and Mary courted for two years.
But they had kind of a stormy courtship.
Opposites attract
and they were definitely opposite in temperament.
He was laconic and laid back,
she was mercurial, she was temperamental.
But they decided to get married.
- Meanwhile, because of the sustained recession in Illinois,
the state legislature can't finish these projects
that Lincoln has promised his constituents he will deliver.
And he shouldered the blame and he actually said then
that and that he would not run
for the legislature the next time.
So it seemed like it was the end of his political career.
- Abraham and Mary were supposed to be married
on January 1st, 1841, but Lincoln got cold feet.
They broke up, he called it the fatal 1st of January.
- And now he'd broken two promises.
He broke the promise to his constituents
and he'd broken his promise to Mary.
And he said at the time that the chief gem of his character
was his ability to keep his word,
and now that he was no longer confident he could do that,
he wasn't sure he could do anything.
That's what led him into this most profound depression
that he had ever suffered.
His friends worried that he might take his life.
- Joshua's Speed, his roommate,
actually hides all of Lincoln's knives and razorblades.
- Meanwhile, Joshua Speed announces
that he's closing up shop in Springfield
and moving back to Kentucky.
Lincoln loses his closest friend.
- You're off then?
- What will you do?
- I'll be better or I'll be dead. (chuckles)
Don't worry, Speed, I won't die.
Haven't done anything
to make anyone remember that I ever lived.
(Abe and Joshua chuckle)
(soft music)
- [Greg] Lincoln isn't in such a state of depression,
he can barely drag himself out of bed.
- He had been going on such a high, in a sense,
going from the fields to political office, a lawyer,
to about to marry a woman from a very elite family.
And it all comes apart.
- But that drive that he'd had
ever since he was a little kid, ever since his mother died,
to create something that would allow his story to be told,
saved him.
He finished his term in the state legislature.
He went back to his practice of law.
He and Mary had stayed apart for an entire year.
And then finally in 1842 friends brought them back together
and they renewed their engagement, they got married.
- His ambition provided the fuel of energy for him
and his aim will next be for the United States Congress.
He is elected to Congress as a Whig
and the Whigs were bitterly critical of the Mexican War.
(horses neighing)
Mexican War broke out in 1846
and was widely viewed as the pet project
of democratic president James Knox Polk.
War with Mexico could open new territory
for the extension of slavery.
- Going through with that speech today?
- I am.
- What speech?
- Lincoln wants to put our president in his place
over the Mexican War.
(chains clattering)
- I wouldn't do that, the president's popular.
Don't poke the bear.
- But what if the bear is wrong.
President Polk provoked this war
'cause he wants California and the whole west
and he wants them as slave states.
(horses neighing)
Slave power's got to be reigned in.
That's the end of it.
- We agree.
But if you make a speech against the president
before the fighting's even over, you'll be crucified.
And for what?
- Lincoln makes a speech in Congress
denouncing President Polk
for a triggering the Mexican War on false pretenses.
- The war was incredibly popular.
The United States won a huge amount of land,
including future states of California
and New Mexico and Arizona.
So the Democrats use that against Lincoln
to basically try and paint him as not being patriotic.
- [Allen] The speech backfired on Lincoln
and he suffered for it.
(soft music)
- Can't have been so bad.
- I won't talk about it.
(Abe sighs)
- It might not have been wise to have made that speech,
but it needed to be said.
Presidents can just go to war because they want to,
it's outrageous.
- Well
- I'm afraid this might be my one and only term.
- You'll make other speeches.
(Abe sighs)
I know you will.
(soft music)
- At the end of 1849, he's a lame duck,
he comes back to Springfield, Illinois,
very dispirited, he's out of politics.
- He felt like a failure, he wasn't popular.
He embarrassed himself.
- [Harold] So he turns back to the law,
traveling the big eighth judicial circuit in Illinois.
- He was quite happy early in his marriage.
They had a nice home on Jackson Street in Springfield.
He had two children at that time, Robert and Edward.
- And as Lincoln is practicing law
and making a reputation for himself,
the country is increasingly having to deal with slavery.
- [Christy] The issue is dividing the nation.
- The slave holding south
wants to to not only maintain slavery,
but also be able to expand it west
into those territories that have been acquired
through the war with Mexico.
- And then the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
says northern states have an obligation
to return slaves that have fled
from the south into the north.
And the north is up in arms, they are absolutely livid.
- People are being kidnapped,
bounty hunters are going into the north
and capturing free people,
whether they've been free for generations or not,
it just is if you got a random black person
and I can get to 'em, I can capture them and take them away.
Lincoln is aware of all this.
- At the same time,
the abolitionists they're agitating against slavery
through the formation of societies,
publication of newspapers,
the lecturers that are going about the country,
whipping folks up against slavery.
- The most important abolitionists
are formerly enslaved men and women.
What better way to describe slavery
than someone like a Frederick Douglass.
- After escaping from slavery,
Frederick Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
It became a bestseller, made him a household name.
It made him an instant celebrity,
and he joined the anti-slavery lecture circuit.
- What to the American slave is your 4th of July?
I answer, a day that reveals to him
more than all other days in the year,
the gross injustice and cruelty
to which he is the constant victim.
To him, your celebration is a sham.
Your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.
Your sermons and Thanksgivings
with all their religious parade and solemnity
are to him mere, bombast, fraud, deception,
impiety and hypocrisy.
A thin veil to cover up crimes
which would disgrace a nation of savages.
There's not a nation on this earth
guilty of practices more shocking and bloody
than are the people of these United States
at this very hour.
(dramatic music)
(audience applauds)
- If it's all right by you,
I'll just remind you of a few of the facts of this case.
Poor Mr. Fleming,
he almost got burnt in a fire,
and his legs, they were broken, getting away.
Now, Mr. Fleming, he begged the doctor to fix him up
and well, my client obliged.
But now Fleming is complaining
that one of his legs didn't straight
and that it's the doctor's fault.
And I do, I reckon that's his right, to complain, I mean.
- Lincoln was an extraordinarily good lawyer.
When he was in front of a jury,
he sort of was just having a conversation with them.
- Usually judge David Davis was the presiding judge.
He became a good friend of Lincoln's.
- Your honor, may I perform a demonstration?
This is the bone of a young chicken.
Pretty flexible.
Probably heal pretty good if injured.
Now this is the bone of one that's done some living.
(audience murmurs)
Your honor, may I ask the plaintiff to stand?
- [Judge] Stand up.
- Gentlemen of the jury,
I think you'll all agree that Mr. Fleming here is,
well, he's no spring chicken.
(audience laughs)
- I ain't none kinda chicken.
- But you are complaining that you now have a limp
and you want some money for it.
Now, if it were me,
I'd get down on my knees and thank my heavenly father.
And also this doctor for legs to stand on at all.
(crowd murmurs)
Thank you, judge, nothing further.
- Lincoln is so good at persuading a jury,
he's almost imagining that he's really had
his political game for his life.
It's about as far as he's likely to get.
- He was very well-respected.
He established the most successful law practice
in central Illinois.
- Lincoln's able to make a good living, ride circuit,
and tell tall tales and tell funny stories.
He's got this self-deprecating humor and folksy charm
combined with a high intellect.
That's a pretty potent combination.
- He's reading philosophy,
he's reading history and literature.
He's growing his mind.
- And then Stephen A. Douglas,
Lincoln's long time rival,
United States, Senator from Illinois,
introduced a law in 1854
that he thought would end slavery agitation forever.
And it was called the Kansas Nebraska Act.
- The Kansas Nebraska Act
says the new territories of Kansas Nebraska,
when they come into the union
can choose themselves by popular sovereignty
whether they want to come in
as a free state or a slave state.
- With this act,
the balance between free states and enslave states
is going to be thrown into jeopardy.
Since the Missouri Compromise of 1820,
northerners thought slavery will never
be north of the southern border of Missouri.
Now, potentially there could be even more slave states
and they will have even more power.
- And that's just unacceptable, to Lincoln.
Rather than reduce and ultimately eliminate
the existence of slavery in this country over time,
which is how Lincoln imagined it,
this might allow slavery's power to grow.
- [Harold] But he's out of politics.
He's still on the road throughout his judicial circuit,
making friends and telling jokes.
- So we stayed with this old lady.
Now, this fella',
he loved anything to do with our revolution
and he venerated any artifacts he found.
So when he had heard that this old woman
still had a dress that she'd worn during that time,
oh, he begged her to bring it out.
Well, the lady, she takes out this dusty dress from a trunk
and this fella is so excited
that he oh so tenderly kisses it.
Well, he old woman watches this and she says,
mister, if you want to kiss something old,
why don't you kiss my ass?
It's 16 years older than that dress.
(friends laughing)
- Evening edition, the Kansas Nebraska Act,
they passed it.
- There goes the compromise. - Good riddance.
- No, Douglas is a fool!
- Let the people decide.
- You're talking rubbish! - This is a democracy!
(friends arguing)
- [Harold] Lincoln was outraged by this.
- There comes a point for him
when morality and the idea of the expansion of human dignity
takes the fore.
- Abe?
- Judge, you say that A is white and B is black.
So, it's color that dictates that hierarchy?
- Abe, it's five in the morning.
You've been up all night?
- I've got to start at the beginning
in order to see this through to the end.
That's what this is all about, isn't it?
A lighter man having the right to enslave the darker?
By that rule, you oughta be slave to the first man you meet
with a fairer skin than your own.
- That's not all there is to it, and you know it.
- So it's not just color that justifies
one man owning another?
- There are other ways a man might be superior to another.
- You're saying that whites are intellectually superior?
And so they have a right to enslave blacks?
Follow that rule and you're bound to be slave
to the first man you meet that's smarter than you.
- Well, then I'm your slave, Abe. (chuckles)
- No.
- Unless you are fool enough
to think you can figure it all out in one night.
- But it has got to be figured out.
Can't you see?
This, this Kansas Act,
just opened the door to slavery in every single state.
Gonna be a big argument in this country, judge.
I intend to be ready for it.
(crowd shouting)
(dramatic music)
(crowd shouting)
(glass shattering)
(blows thudding)
(crowd shouting) (blows thudding)
Get him!
- Call it Bleeding Kansas.
That Kansas Nebraska Act kicks open
the door to slavery existing anywhere
and that leads to serious bloodshed.
- Most settlers want Kansas to be a free state,
but border ruffians from Missouri,
which was a slave state, invade Kansas and steal elections
to try to make it a slave state.
There's a full fledged war going on.
- For Lincoln, the young lawyer,
there's this series of events from 1850 through 1860
that are going to sharply shape
his thinking about what's happening to his country.
- There's the fugitive slave law,
there's the Kansas Nebraska Act,
there's the Dred Scott decision.
- Dred Scott is an enslaved man in Missouri
who was taken to a free state, so he sues for his freedom
on the basis of having been in a free state.
And this case goes all the way
to the United States Supreme Court.
- The Dred Scott decision essentially says that,
black Americans, if they're enslaved their property, period,
and therefore they don't have a right to suit.
- The Supreme Court ruled that black people
had never been and could not be
citizens of the United States.
So blacks have no rights,
which white men are bound to respect.
- Which leads us to John Brown.
John Brown is an abolitionist zealot.
He settled in Kansas and he believes through his faith
that it is his calling and his purpose in this life
to end the atrocity of slavery in the United States,
because it's an antithesis to God.
- John Brown was either a maniac or a saint.
He was a white man who cared enough about black freedom
to try to start a revolution.
And in Kansas, John Brown hacked to death
five pro slavery men.
- Lincoln saw that all these series of events
divided the country.
It divided every party.
The Whig Party divides between the anti-slavery Whigs
and the pro-slavery Whigs.
The Democratic Party divides
between the anti-slavery Democrats
and the pro-slavery Democrats.
The Whig Party eventually is gonna collapse
as a result of this.
And out of this comes the New Republican Party.
- This new party, this Republican Party,
begins in earnest in the early 1850s
and its platform isn't anti-slavery,
it's no extension of slavery into the western territories.
- But there are radical Republicans who say,
slavery is vile, evil, we need to get rid of slavery.
- In the late 1850s, the rhetoric within Congress
was becoming increasingly hot.
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
was one of the radical wing of the Republican Party.
He had made a speech called "The Crime against Kansas"
on the floor of Congress,
where he used very salacious language
about a US Senator from South Carolina named Andrew Butler.
- Senator Sumner,
you have impugn the honor of my cousin, Senator Butler.
- All I've done is told the world the truth,
that your cousin backs the hideous Kansas Act
and he has a mistress who he obeys without question.
An ugly mistress, whose name is slavery.
(blows thudding)
- Sumner's carried out unconscious,
unable to return to the Senate for three years.
After the caning of Sumner,
in the north there is a visceral reaction
to an attack right in the Capitol.
Rallies are formed,
mass numbers of people begin to join the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, in the south, however,
Preston Brooks has become a hero.
People start carrying canes around
as if they're gonna attack somebody.
The split between the north and the south
goes deeper and deeper and deeper.
- Lincoln's so unsettled by what's happening
that he decides, I need to be a part of this.
This is an ambition he had since he was young
to be a part of something that was bigger than himself.
- He may have been somewhat content being a lawyer,
but he obviously still had the political bug.
He still had the itch.
- Lincoln helped form the Republican Party in Illinois.
And he becomes the leading candidate in 1858
for the next Senate run,
running against Stephen Douglas,
who was not only now already a Senator,
but he's the presumptive presidential candidate in 1860
for the Democratic Party.
- Lincoln gives an acceptance speech
and it's the most radical thing he's ever said.
And his friends, hearing him rehearse it,
had begged him not to deliver that speech.
They thought it would end his career.
- Lincoln's speech uses a biblical phrase
from the book of Mark, calling America a house divided.
- He declares, a house divided shall not stand.
We can't have a nation that's half slave and half free.
It does mark a turning point in his mind.
He recognizes that in his political life,
he's gonna have to object to slavery
in a way that is tougher and more controversial.
- Lincoln begins to campaign through the state
and invites Douglas to a series of joint debates.
Douglas writes back and says,
I'm under no obligation to meet jointly with you.
I'm the incumbent Senator,
I'm the most famous politician in America at this moment.
Why am I going to give you space on a platform with me?
But Douglas can't resist.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- How you doing, everyone?
Thank you so much for coming out.
I Appreciate you.
- [Doris] Douglas comes in as the champion.
He comes in to train with a special car decorated.
He comes with servants and his secretaries.
- Mayor, good to see you.
- [Doris] And Lincoln has to walk
from one debate to another.
The reputation of Lincoln and Douglas
were both on the line here.
- [Christy] They literally are setting up
the conflict in the nation.
(bright music)
- Now I've known Lincoln from when we were both young men,
and no one can compete with him in wrestling,
or a foot race or on whiskey in his grocery store.
(audience laughs)
We served on the state legislature together.
And then Mr. Lincoln submerged for a time,
until he reappeared in the hallowed halls of Congress,
where he distinguished himself
by his opposition to the war with Mexico.
Taking the side of the common enemy against his own country.
(audience boos)
And he, again, submerged.
He came up again in 1854,
this time in cahoots with Fred Douglass
and his abolitionist friends,
just in time to create this black Republican platform.
(audience boos)
- That's right, Douglas, hit him again.
- Lincoln you're two faced!
(audience laughs)
- If I had two faces you think I'd be wearing this one?
(audience laughs and applauds)
- [Doris] This old rivalry has come to roost.
- Very good, very good.
- Lincoln felt that his life had been a flat failure
compared to Douglas's.
Douglas had gotten further than he had,
and now they're running against each other for the Senate.
- Now, I am no giant like judge Douglas.
(audience laughs)
I'm a mere mortal.
No, his ambition, it far exceeds my own.
His party, they all expect him to be president one day.
(Crowd agreeing)
And then they will all reap the benefits of his greatness.
(Crowd agreeing)
But nobody has ever looked at my lean, lank face
and expected me to be president.
(audience laughs)
- People come to these debates
with all the fervent love and attention
that they would bring to a giant sporting event today.
But these were more important
than any sporting event could have been.
- I am here to talk about basic principles.
(Crowd agreeing)
Now, if the Negro is a man,
while then my ancient faith teaches me
that all men are created equal,
(Crowd agreeing)
and that there can be no moral right
in connection with one man making a slave of another.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- Now let's talk about principle.
I care more for the great principle of self government,
the right of the people to rule,
than I do for all the Negros in Christiandom.
(Audience applauding)
- When a white man governs himself, that is self-governed.
But when he governed himself
and he also governs another man,
that is more than self government, there is despotism.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- Mr. Lincoln and his ilk want Negro equality in all things.
(audience boos)
If they get their way,
Negroes and whites will be permitted to marry.
(audience boos)
Negroes will serve on juries.
(audience boos)
Negroes will vote.
(audience boos)
- During these debates,
Lincoln's not an abolitionist by any stretch,
but he's inadvertently making their arguments
as he's looking for logic
in the constitutionality of all this.
- And he goes way back to Euclid.
Euclid is very much about how you prove something
beyond any shadow of a doubt.
And he's working toward crushing the fallacious arguments
on behalf of slavery.
- But like most people of the day,
he absolutely fervently believes
that black people are inferior,
and whether they're enslaved or freed.
- Just because I believe the Negro should be free,
does not mean that I want to marry one.
(audience laughs)
As a nation, we began by declaring
that all men are created equal.
We now practically read it all men are created equal,
except Negroes.
Soon it will read, all men are created equal
except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.
(Crowd agreeing)
Negroes, like many other men,
may not be equal in all things.
but if they are men,
they are entitled to their right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
(audience cheers and applauds)
The real issue, which will last long after
the tongues of judge Douglas and I are silent,
is the eternal struggle between these two principles,
between right and wrong.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- What Lincoln does so brilliantly
is he takes that core language
of the Declaration of Independence
and turns it into a nation's moral compass.
And he couples that with constitutionality.
And he couples that with scripture,
he has a really powerful argument.
- This is where Lincoln makes his name.
One debate after another.
Everything had prepared him for the repertoire of talents
that he was able to show in these debates.
He's telling stories, he's funny.
He can talk philosophically, he can talk politically.
- The Lincoln Douglas debates helped Lincoln,
it raised his profile, lifted him up a lot.
But he loses the election.
- One of the things about Lincoln that's amazing
is that he loses a lot, but the great ones in life
take a loss and they come back.
- Even though he loses this election,
once again the loss becomes a platform for him to grow.
Underlying it all is there's a passion that he has,
a passion for that cause of antislavery,
which is coming to a head.
(dramatic music)
- In 1859, John Brown, who left Kansas.
He and his small band of people, blacks and whites,
many of them his own children,
went into what was then Western Virginia
to a town called Harper's Ferry,
which was a federal armory, to attack the arsenal.
He's trying to organize an army of interracial folks
to go into the south, arm the slaves,
and destroy the slave system.
- Those who would not join him, like Frederick Douglass,
gave him moral support and gave him funds.
- [Richard] The attack was a disaster.
- [Edna] John Brown was captured and executed
and he sacrificed two of his sons.
- In the south there is an absolute fear
that there are more John Browns out there lurking.
The thought of a massive slave rebellion
unhinged white southerners.
And so we start to see more talks about secession.
Meanwhile, many people in the north celebrated Brown.
Church bells are tolling.
People thought that what he had done
was the right thing to do.
Using violence to end slavery
in a way that most Republican politicians,
including Lincoln,
were not willing to even consider at this point.
And the reaction to Brown is so important
in setting up the election of 1860.
- In 1860, the Republican Party
was only running a second presidential candidate.
Many Republicans assumed that the famous New Yorker,
William Henry Seward, would be the Republican nominee.
- Seward had carried the banner
of the anti-slavery movement for a decade,
he was a great orator,
and beloved in large sections of the north.
- But Dred Scott, Kansas Nebraska Act, John Brown,
all these things have been ripping the country apart.
Seward was not a candidate
who people saw as could bring that together.
- So Republican leaders in the east
began looking around for other possible alternatives.
- [Harold] The Young Men's Republican Union
decides to organize a series of lectures in New York.
- Lincoln accepted the invitation immediately.
He was relatively unknown in the east.
If he can make an impression there,
then he can leave an impression nationwide.
The day of the speech he had his photograph taken
by Matthew Brady.
That's an awareness
that he's making himself a national figure.
- I'd like to start by expressing
my sincere gratitude to the
Young Men's Central Republican Union
for all the work they've done to publicize-
- [Doris] By the time he got to Cooper Union,
even though he's gotten a new suit, it's badly wrinkled,
his hair was disheveled.
He does look awkward.
- That's Lincoln?
Looks like he slept in a barn.
- Mr. Lincoln, is there anything you need?
- No, Mr. McCormick.
I reckon if I needed anything, it's too late now.
- [Announcer] Eminent citizen of the west,
ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- Mister chairman and citizens of New York.
the facts I will deal with,
the facts I will deal with tonight are nothing new to you.
If there shall be any novelty,
it may be in the mode
of presenting the facts and observations.
- Sounds like an out of tune fiddle.
- Give him a chance.
- Lincoln comes out
with his Indiana hick accent filling the air.
A man taking notes writes,
this is New York, this will never do.
- And now if they would listen, as I suppose they will not,
I would address a few words to the southern people.
You have a specific and well understood illusion
to an assumed constitutional right
to take slaves into federal territories
and hold them there as property.
But no such right
is specifically written in the Constitution.
Your purpose then, plainly stated,
is that you will destroy the government
unless you be allowed to construe
and enforce the Constitution as pleased.
You will rule or ruin in all events.
- Something happens around 10 minutes in.
His voice relaxes, its high pitch tininess melts
into something more endurable, more bearable.
His eyes begin to flash.
- Wrong as we think slavery is,
we can yet afford to let it alone where it is.
But can we allow it to spread into the national territories
and overrun us here in the free states?
If our sense of duty forbids this,
then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively.
Let us have faith that right makes might.
And in that faith, let us to the end,
dare to do our duty as we understand it.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- Here here!
What do you think of Lincoln now?
- I appreciate that very much.
I appreciate that very much.
- [Harold] He mesmerized this crowd.
- After the Cooper Union speech, he was all over the media.
If it had been on the internet today,
it would have gone viral.
- The next morning, every newspaper in New York City
carried an account of this speech.
And it's reprinted in Detroit, in Washington, in Chicago,
even a German language version of this speech.
- Invitations poured into him
to go on further speeches all throughout New England.
- You have the 1860 election coming up.
There are some Republicans who see
this guy in Lincoln that is fresh,
he's folksy, he's moderate.
- He does seem to not be as radical as William Seward,
the absolute front runner or Salmon Chase,
the governor of Ohio.
He's not as conservative as Edward Bates,
a judge, former Congressman, from Missouri.
Those are the three main contenders for the nomination.
So step-by-step, he's accepting the fact that,
I'm really running for the president of the United States.
And then he had this extraordinary team
headed by judge Davis going to be his representative
at the Republican National Convention.
And they loved him.
They wanted to do everything they could for him.
- Now judge, you've got to make sure that everyone knows
which delegation they're supposed
to make friends with in Chicago.
- I've drawn up a list for our people to look after.
- Tell them not to press too hard or fuss too much.
- We have to make some fuss.
There'll be a lot of New York men there
pushing hard for Seward.
If he takes it on the first ballot we're licked.
- He won't. - He might.
I understand that I'm not anybody's first love,
but I could be people's second.
If I'm the second biggest frog in that puddle,
I got a fighting chance to jump over the biggest one.
- What we've got to do
is get the delegates from Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio
to go Lincoln.
- Isn't Ohio just gonna go to Chase?
- Yeah, and Pennsylvania'll be solid Cameron.
- That's just the first ballot.
They're gonna have to switch to somebody.
But we're gonna have to promise them something,
to make it worth their while.
- No.
No, judge.
Don't make any pledges that will tie me up.
Okay?
I can't be there so you've got to do as I would do.
- [Allen] The Republican National Committee
meets in May, 1860 in Chicago.
- [Doris] It's a very exciting thing,
the Republican Party is feeling its oats.
- The presidential nominee for the Republican Party,
needs 233 votes to win.
- [Allen] So while Lincoln is in Springfield,
he has his friends on the ground in Chicago,
headed by Judge Davis, organizing as busily as beavers.
(gavel thuds)
- Order!
Fellow Republicans, please join your delegations.
- [Doris] His team knows that the importance is
to win the battleground states,
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana.
- We're about to begin the first ballot.
- I know you're gonna vote Cameron in the first ballot.
What about Lincoln in the second?
Can you swing Pennsylvania our way?
- That's a big ask.
- What's it gonna take?
- What've you got?
- [Greg] As the first round of voting goes,
Seward, as expected, gets the most votes.
- [Doris] The extraordinary thing is
that Lincoln comes in second.
- Seward might have some problems.
He's too radical.
The backdrop of all of this
is we've just dealt with an execution of John Brown
and the fever around John Brown.
You've got this relatively new party
talking about holding slavery where it is,
but you also know that people who have aligned themselves
with Republicans are saying, end it now.
- And so the Republican Party has to make a determination,
principle
electability.
- We're about to begin the second ballot.
- So, what did Pennsylvania say?
- They want treasury for Cameron.
- Abe said, make no pledges, remember?
- Abe's not here.
- So what did you tell them?
- [Doris] Lincoln is in Springfield the entire time.
- Mr. Lincoln, good luck for today.
- I appreciate that, Mr. Hay.
- Don't you have anything for us?
- All I have is this message from Judge Davis,
I'm very hopeful, don't be excited.
Any idea what that means?
- After the second ballot, Seward gains a few more votes,
Lincoln gains many more
as delegations now switch to Lincoln.
They call for a third ballot.
- That idea that I would like to be your second love
if I can't get your first love
means that people who might've gone for Chase or Bates
now are going for Lincoln.
- That concludes the third ballot.
And as yet, no candidate has the majority.
So we will now reconvene.
- So on the final round of voting,
Lincoln has 231 and a half votes.
All he needs is another one and a half votes.
(gavel thuds)
- Order.
Order!
The state of Ohio wishes to change its vote.
Ohio, what is your final vote?
Ohio, give me a vote now, what is your final vote?
(dramatic music)
The state of Ohio wishes to change its vote.
It wishes to switch four votes from Mr. Chase
to Mr. Lincoln.
(audience cheers and applauds) - We've won.
- Send a telegram to Springfield, straight away!
Yes!
(audience cheers and applauds)
Yes, yes, yes, Lincoln, Lincoln!
- The gentlemen walks into the theater,
and sets his stovetop hat down beside him.
Well, he gets so wrapped up in the drama
that he didn't realize that old stout woman
come and sit down right next to him.
Yes?
It's from Chicago.
(advisors clapping)
- Congratulations, sir.
- Mr. Hay, thank you.
Thank you, gentlemen. - Congratulations.
- Thank you, gentlemen.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Wow.
Well, thank you. gentlemen.
If you'll excuse me,
there's a little woman on Eighth Street
who will be glad to hear the news.
- Yes she will.
(advisors clapping)
- Lincoln's nomination shocked people.
They had expected Seward to win,
but this new guy had won.
And there's an excitement and they rally around him.
- When Lincoln gets the nomination in May of 1860
in the north, he's the surprise nominee.
He doesn't have that much experience running anything.
He's not that well known.
- Frederick Douglass and other African-Americans
were not too sure of Lincoln.
Just because he was a Republican
doesn't mean that this man is an abolitionists
or that he's going to do us any good.
- At the same time, he's hated in the south,
and it was pretty clearly a racist hatred.
There were accusations that he had African blood
or his wife did.
Southern newspapers call him terrible names,
he's a baboon, he's a gorilla.
He's illiterate, he's a tyrant.
- But going into the general election,
there's a great possibility that the Republicans will win,
because the Democratic Party has split apart.
- There are four candidates in the election of 1860.
Of course, Lincoln for the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has split itself
into two factions.
You have John Breckenridge,
who's representing the white slaveholding south.
You have Stephen Douglas representing white northerners.
And then you have the Union Party led by John Bell.
- This is one of the most exciting elections
in American history to that point.
- The future of the nation,
the future of the democracy really seemed at stake.
In Europe during this time, some experiments in democracy
in France and Germany had failed
and had gone back to being monarchies and dictatorships.
This great American experiment in democracy
was so new and so fragile.
- Meanwhile, Lincoln's at home in Springfield.
It was not considered proper for a candidate
to really campaign for himself in those days.
- But during the election,
Matthew Brady's photograph of Lincoln
was so widely reproduced, that picture was everywhere.
It was in illustrated newspapers,
engravings for display,
pins you could wear on your lapel.
- A few weeks before the election,
Lincoln's receiving letters from people and reading them.
And he receives a letter from an 11 year old girl.
She asked him to grow a beard.
She said that she thought he would look better
and Lincoln does grow a beard and it looks good on him.
He's listening to his constituency.
- The day of the general election,
he's restless all day long.
He's been so familiar with disappointment
that he just fears something bad will happen.
About nine o'clock he and Judge Davis and the friends
go to the Telegraph office to hear the returns coming in.
Finally at midnight,
the word comes in
that New York has gone Republican.
Then the church bells ring, people gather in the streets.
This new guy had won.
And then he runs home, as he says,
to tell Mary and famously says, Mary Mary, we are elected.
Mary always believed that he had a destiny.
She surely believed in him
at the lowest moments of his life.
And now his great moment has arrived.
- But Lincoln, our most beloved president,
won with the second worst popular vote.
he only got 39.8% of the vote, which is very small.
We now get worried if someone has less than 50%,
he had less than 40%.
In the electoral college he
got more than half, got 180,
but still it was not
a resounding victory.
- Southern states have been saying, if this man is elected,
we will have no choice but to secede.
And as soon as he is elected,
South Carolina decided to have a secession convention
and by December of 1860, they decide to leave the Union.
- In February of 1861, seven US states seceded.
The Confederate government formed
and puts Jefferson Davis in place as president.
- They're seceding, for one thing and one thing only,
and that is the preservation of slavery and its expansion.
Anybody who says its' states' rights, it's tariffs,
this is nonsense.
You have not read the articles of secession
that every single state laid out.
And in every single one of them they've made very clear
why they are seceding.
And it is to preserve the institution of slavery
to control that financial interest forever.
- Lincoln believed over optimistically,
that there was a way
to get these southern slave holding states
back in the Union once he actually got to Washington.
But before he left Illinois,
Lincoln decided to visit his stepmother one more time.
He had refused to visit his father on his death bed,
so his father died without Lincoln seeing him again.
- If it were up to me,
you'd have no part in being a president.
The way folks talk, I can't help but worry about you.
- Oh, stop your worrying, I'll be fine.
Gotta get him a proper stone.
- He'd be proud of you.
- You always see the best in folks, momma.
We'll see each other again, I promise.
- On February 11th, 1861,
Lincoln begins the train journey to Washington D.C.
It would have been nice to take the shortest route,
but he couldn't go through Kentucky, the state he was born,
or Virginia, because it was too dangerous.
He wrote a letter to a friend
that he was worried he might be lynched.
So he has to go in this very winding roundabout route
over 1900 miles.
Whenever Lincoln comes in anywhere,
everybody comes out to see him.
- There's hope, but there's also this fear.
People would have known
that the southern states have seceded.
These are difficult times
and there are credible assassination threats
against Lincoln.
- [Harold] There was intelligence of a
massive conspiracy
to try to assassinate him as he came through Baltimore.
The leader of the plot had a system of drawing lots,
pieces of paper with a red dot on them.
And those who got a red dot would try to kill Lincoln
with guns and knives and grenades.
But Allen Pinkerton, who was a railroad detective,
penetrated the conspiracy with operatives.
- Davis? - Mr. Pinkerton.
It's all true.
Anyone who picked one with a red dot is an assassin.
- How many have red dots?
- Eight.
- It's worse than I thought.
(dramatic music)
(train bell ringing)
- The door's locked from the inside?
- Yes, ma'am.
- Key, please.
My uncle is an invalid, he requires absolute privacy.
Do you understand?
(suspenseful music)
- We'll take a special overnight train.
I've cleared the tracks
and had the telegraph lanes cut from here to Baltimore.
These men intend to create a diversion with the police
and stab you to death.
- That's all?
Like Julius Caesar.
- You need to take this seriously, Abe.
You have fierce enemies.
- If I sneak into the Capitol with fear,
I'm showing good people there's reason to fear.
- Sir, the worst thing that could happen
is you don't make it to Washington at all.
You can't risk being recognized.
- Take care of it.
(suspenseful music)
(train whistle blowing)
- This is my associate, Mrs. Kate Warne.
- Mr. Lincoln, it's an honor.
- Mrs. Warne, I am far to plain to pass for your uncle.
- [Kate] Not at all, sir.
- I take comfort in the idea
that common folk are the best lookin'.
That's why the lord made us so many.
(train whistle blowing)
(Lincoln sighs)
Well
this is not how I planned to get to Washington.
(suspenseful music)
(train whistle blowing)
- Lincoln goes from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
to Philadelphia, to Baltimore, to Washington
at night in secret wearing a disguise.
He arrives in Washington, six A.M., unannounced,
and he was attacked in the press,
depicted in these crazy disguises, including kilts,
doing the McLincoln Highland Fling,
and just ridiculed.
Not a good thing for a president
who was coming to Washington to exhibit courage.
Frederick Douglass says,
at least now Mr. Lincoln knows what it's like
to travel on the Underground Railroad.
- When Lincoln ascends to the presidency
and he issues his first inaugural address,
African-Americans are waiting in anticipation
to see what he's going to say.
Because by this time
seven states have seceded from the Union
and African-Americans are thinking,
this is our opportunity.
You know, this is the time to end slavery.
You got this Republican who has won,
he's not an abolitionist,
but you've got enough Republicans
who are ready to move
on these people who are seen as traitors to the country.
- His first inaugural address
is a moment fraught with tension.
- [Harold] There were still
very serious fears of assassination.
- Fellow citizens of the United States,
in your hands my dissatisfied fellow countrymen,
and not in mine, is the momentous issue of Civil War.
- Lincoln wanted the speech to be strong
without being threatening,
to try to stem the tide of secession.
- The government will not assail you.
You can have no conflict
without yourselves being the aggressors.
- He says federal forts and armories would be protected.
And at the same time, he says, I'm not a threat.
And he promised to enforce the hated fugitive slave law.
- We are not enemies, but friends.
We must not be enemies.
Though passion may have strained,
it must not break our bonds of affection.
- Lincoln had shown this speech to William Seward
and Seward made corrections.
And then Seward looked at the ending of the draft
and it says, it's your choice, my friends in the south,
will it be peace or a sword?
And Seward says, you can end it like this.
So Seward writes out a really good idea.
Lincoln looks at the suggestion
and displaying as much brilliance as an editor
as he showed as a writer,
he recast Seward's proposal into poetry.
- The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave
to every heart and hearthstone all over this broad land
will yet swell the chorus of the Union
when again touched, as surely they will be,
by the better angels of our nature.
(audience cheers and applauds)
- This beautifully crafted final paragraph
steps away from threats and just says, remember,
we are all part of the same country
with equally valid memories of the revolution
that not only gave us our independence,
but created a new kind of country.
- But Lincoln was totally disappointing
to Frederick Douglass and other black men and women.
Because in that first inaugural address,
Lincoln talked about the fact that he had no inclination,
no right, to actually do anything about slavery,
where it already existed.
- But he's also telling the south,
he will not permit an illegal rebellion
to happen without a response.
- Lincoln has an immediate military problem on his plate.
- When those states in the south secede,
they take over many of the federal arsenals and forts.
That leaves the United States
with just a few federal ports that it keeps,
including Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
- The first day after his inauguration,
he receives a message from Major Anderson at Fort Sumter,
telling him that they are running out of supplies
and unless an expedition can bring them relief,
they will have to evacuate.
- Lincoln and the federal government maintained
that all federal property still belongs to the Union.
- So he meets with his cabinet.
The night Lincoln won the election
he had made a decision that will define his presidency
to put each of his chief three rivals,
Seward and Chase and Bates,
into the top positions of the cabinet.
William Seward as Secretary of State.
Salmon Chase, Secretary of the Treasury,
Edward Bates, Attorney General.
Each one of those three rivals thought
he should have been president instead of Abraham Lincoln.
And they think that Lincoln's rather unremarkable,
but Lincoln realized the country is in peril.
These are the most able men in the country.
They each represented a different point of view,
the moderate, conservative, and radical.
I need them by my side.
President Lyndon Johnson might've talked about that issue
in less noble terms.
He liked to say, it's better to have your enemies
inside the tent pissing out
than outside the tent pissing in.
- General Scott says we have no hope
but to surrender Fort Sumter.
- Yes.
And I think he's right.
- But Mr. Seward, only yesterday,
I gave my solemn vow to hold, occupy, and possess our forts.
I believe you helped me craft that passage.
- The situation has changed, sir.
Fort Sumter can't hold out, not without supplies.
And the South Carolinians
have made their intentions more than clear.
I advise withdrawal.
It'll make it seem like our idea,
not that this a secessionists have forced us out.
- It seems the most reasonable course.
- No.
I'd be encouraging their rebellion.
The country would crumble.
- It's already crumbling.
We need time to shore it back up.
Wait for cooler hands.
- We must send more ships.
A fleet carrying reinforcements and long guns.
I'll bet a bombardment will force them to back off.
- Since when were you a Navy man, Blair?
I say, we withdraw.
- Mr. President, look where compromise has gotten us.
We have to crush them now before they grow stronger.
- I will not be the first to fire on my country men.
I told them that my speech too.
- That leaves no alternative.
- How long can Sumter, hold out for?
- General Scott thinks 26 days.
- How many of you say give up the fort?
- You have to give up the fort,
or we'll bring this country to war.
(dramatic music)
- [Doris] Those weeks of anticipation before Fort Sumter,
where the hardest weeks for him.
He's still hoping that maybe there'd be some way
to prevent a war.
- Look.
All the papers want to know
what you're gonna do about that fort.
- Well, so do I.
- Huh.
You have done a fine job with this scrapbook, Willie.
- He's thinking, if I provision Fort Sumter,
it might bring about a war.
If I don't do that,
then maybe we're gonna look like
we're so emboldening the south
that it will make the secession even more permanent.
There's division in the cabinet as to what he should do.
- Seward is talking to South Carolina.
He's having discussions with the secessionist leaders.
Basically suggesting that this can be negotiated,
things can be worked out.
And he's doing so without Lincoln's knowledge or approval.
- If we send troops down south
we'll lose Virginia, Arkansas, all the border states.
Time is running out.
Abandoning the fort is inevitable.
We can't let the rebels humiliate us by overrunning it.
The sooner we leave on our own, the better.
Now we have a clear cut majority in agreement,
so it's decided.
- No, it's not decided, Secretary Seward.
It's not decided until I decide it.
(Clears throat)
- Mr. President.
- Now, I reckon that everything
Secretary Seward says is true.
But there are also other things that are true.
One of them bein' that I'm not willing to go back on my word
and I'm also not ready to give up.
The way I see it,
is that surrender would be ruinous to the Union
by discouraging the folks at home
and encouraging our adversaries.
And it might get this illegal confederacy
recognized by foreign powers.
I have talked to a Navy man
who's got a plan to send supplies by sea
backed by a warship.
And I have decided to do it.
- Lincoln's response was brief and firm.
That puts Seward pretty firmly in his place
and it is something of a tribute to Seward
that he understood that Lincoln was the boss
and that there was more to Abraham Lincoln
than he had originally thought.
- Lincoln doesn't want to create war.
So he tries to, again, thread the needle on this.
And he says to the governor of South Carolina,
look, I will just send food and water.
I won't send one more man, not one more grain of powder,
not one more bullet to Fort Sumter.
You couldn't be against someone
getting food or water, could you?
He puts the Confederacy in a vine.
If they allow the ship to come in, the stalemate continues.
If they fire, well then the Confederacy has fired
the first shot of the war.
- The Confederates decide to ask Major Anderson
to surrender the fort.
Anderson says, no.
- Fire!
(cannons booming)
- [Caroline] The Confederates fire for 36 hours
until finally the United States flag
is lowered within Fort Sumter.
(dramatic music)
- Is there any word on the Powhatan?
I need to know the minute Fort Sumter's resupplied.
- This is for you.
(suspenseful music)
- We're at war.
- [Soldier] Charge!
(soldiers shouting)
- I hope you boys all reenlist.
- [Soldiers] Yeah.
- 'Cause I need every single one of you.
- What can I do for you?
- It's about that army of yours.
Came by to find out when you were intending to use it again?
- Why don't you leave military matters to military men?
- This war has nothing to do with generals.
- The rebels fight on their own land.
- There's something else too.
- Make this a war for abolition
and we'll drive Kentucky to the rebels.
It'll lead to insurrection in the north,
massacre in the streets.
And the rebels will only fight harder.
Blood will be on your hands.
- Blood is already on my hands!