Lincoln's Dilemma (2022): Season 1, Episode 1 - The Anti-Slavery Candidate - full transcript

USA! USA!

You can't have America.
You can't have it!

We're going in big. What we got?

They got ten people trying to stop us.

We've been in a crisis in this country.

We've witnessed unprecedented levels

of resistance to democracy.

Things are really polarized.
Things are really divided.

And it hearkens to the mid-19th century
when political division threatened

the future of this country.

The threat to democracy
that existed in America



when you had states leaving the Union,

I think, is relevant in this moment
when the country seems so divided.

I think a lot of us are
trying to understand

what's the kind of leadership
we need in America?

To bridge some of these divides.
To heal some of these wounds.

And so Lincoln becomes relevant.

Because no other American
president has spent their career

focused on preserving
democracy in this country

as much as Abraham Lincoln.

But it's also important to
reflect on the ways in which

his presidency in that era failed
to address these underlying issues,

which I think are pushing so
many of the issues of division

that we're seeing today.

If we only look at these
historical figures through one lens,



then we're kind of allowed to not ask
these often uncomfortable questions

about Lincoln's ideas about
slavery and how they evolve.

I think there's too much hyperbole
in the way we talk about Lincoln.

So we make him greater than he was

or a greater villain than he was.

Lincoln wanted to be
the great sort of unifier,

the person that brought the
country back together again.

He did not start his presidency

to be the Great Emancipator.

If you kind of go to the most
general depictions of Lincoln,

he "freed" the slaves.

It's not that the people who were
enslaved helped him save the Union.

There's been almost no
conversation about that.

When we see how emancipation happened,

as a set of practices
enacted by enslaved people

and by Union military officers

and by Congress,

what Lincoln did was
inaugurate that work

to create a kind of doorway to freedom.

To think of how the
combination of people converged

to end this institution
that had been so powerful,

so rationalized for so long...

this is an amazing story, actually,
when you start back and look at it.

Maybe the greatest
story in modern history.

"My friends, no one not in my situation

can appreciate my feeling
of sadness at this parting.

To this place and the kindness
of these people, I owe everything.

I now leave not knowing when
or whether ever I may return,

with a task before me greater than
that which rested upon Washington."

Abraham Lincoln boarded
a train in Springfield, Illinois,

bound for Washington, D.C.

to be sworn in as the 16th
president of the United States.

Convinced that he posed a
threat to the institution of slavery,

a majority of the slave states had
kept Lincoln's name off the ballot.

White Southerners were really terrified

about the prospect of
a Lincoln presidency.

Again and again, Lincoln said,

"I don't want to touch
slavery in the South."

One of the things he said
though, was that he hoped

that the nation could
put slavery on a path...

...to "ultimate extinction."

That's really the phrase

that was at the heart of the
movement towards secession.

Lincoln is elected in November 1860.

And by December 20th,

the state of South Carolina has
declared its secession from the Union.

Then a number of other
lower South states leave.

Mississippi, Florida,

Alabama, Georgia, Texas

all follow suit.

And suddenly you're
looking at a pretty ugly map

if you're Abraham Lincoln
trying to come in to Washington

to become the President of
the "so-called" United States.

Tensions over the future of slavery

had already been plaguing the country.

Kansas had erupted into
guerrilla warfare over the issue.

And an increasingly effective
abolitionist movement in the North

had begun to mobilize public opinion

in favor of antislavery candidates.

"I say now, however, as
I have all the while said,

that on the territorial
question I am inflexible.

I am for no compromise
which assists or permits

the extension of the institution
on soil owned by the nation."

Abraham Lincoln runs on a platform
of stopping the extension of slavery.

Keeping it within bounds.

In a four-way race,

Lincoln, the unpolished outsider
from the Western Frontier,

was surprisingly victorious.

The whole cultural scene
exploded with images of Honest Abe,

Uncle Abe and Abe
the Illinois Rail-Splitter...

...with his axe.

Not a lot was known about him.

But in a moment when Americans
were really sick of all politicians,

this guy coming from the
great prairies of the West

seems like a hopeful new figure.

Every few miles,

Americans are coming
out from all of the cracks

to look Lincoln in the
face and hear from him,

"What are your plans?

Where is this country going?

How are we going to
get out of this crisis?"

After the election,

secessionists moved quickly
to build a nation of their own

based on white supremacy.

The self-proclaimed
Confederate States of America

was created to ensure
the permanence of slavery.

And Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis

was the country's
newly elected president.

"We recognize the Negro as...

God's laws tell us to
recognize him... our inferior.

Fitted expressly for servitude.

The innate stamp of inferiority
is beyond the reach of change."

The secessionists are very active.

They're building their new country.

And they start attacking
Lincoln as a kind of tyrant

who's going to end slavery overnight.

Or maybe there's some
African blood inside of Lincoln.

The fears of White Southerners
were represented in a lot of ways

in the naming of Lincoln and
others as Black Republicans.

And this was a
consciously racist claim.

Some caricatures that were very
anti-Lincoln would liken him to an ape

or sort of the same
types of racist caricatures

that people used with
African Americans.

They said he was an
abolitionist. He was tyrannical.

He was unjustly elected
with 40% of the vote.

It didn't really matter who he was.

The white South was going to portray him
as a threat to the future of the country.

Fearing armed conflict,

Lincoln addressed the
assembled crowds at whistle-stops

on the 13-day train ride to Washington

trying to calm the nation's nerves.

"While some of us may
differ in political opinions,

still we are all united in
one feeling for the Union.

Upon the Union of the States, there
shall be between us no difference."

He's kind of convinced that
South Carolina's out in front

and it's leading some of these other
Deep South states out of the Union,

but cooler heads will prevail.

Things will settle down.

To Lincoln, the stakes
could not have been higher.

On the issue of slavery's
expansion, he would not compromise.

But if the secessionists could
not be coaxed back into the Union,

more than just the
country was at stake.

If the US can't put its house in order,

democracy might wither on
the vine all around the world.

It might just be a quaint,
failed idealistic experiment

that lasted from 1776 to 1860.

Sometimes I'll envision Abraham Lincoln

traveling to Washington, D.C.,

and think about what is
going through this man's mind.

He's being pulled in so
many different directions.

He has newspapers
from Richmond, Virginia,

calling him a fanatic
for Negro equality.

On the other hand, he
has Northern Democrats

seeing him as this radical disruptor

who is going to shake up this careful
balance we've had all of these years

between the slaveholding
and non-slaveholding states.

He's gonna ruin everything.

And then, abolitionist
presses who see him as weak

and not committed
to the end of slavery.

And so I imagine that that
had to be one fraught train ride.

"No man can be elected
president without some opponents.

And if, when elected,
he cannot be installed

till he first appeases his
enemies by breaking his pledges

and betraying his friends,

this government is already at an end."

"Southern men declare
that their slaves are better off

than hired laborers amongst us.

How little they know
whereof they speak.

Free labor has the inspiration of hope.

Pure slavery has no hope.

Once, I had a tedious slow-water trip

on a steamboat from
Louisville to St. Louis.

There were, on board, ten or a dozen
slaves shackled together with irons.

That sight was a
continued torment to me

and continually exercises the
power of making me miserable."

Well, I think we first have to remember

that Lincoln was a son of the South.

He may have moved to Indiana
and then on to Illinois, on the frontier,

but he was born in Kentucky

with the same kinds
of Southern sensibilities

as many other Southern
white men and women.

Because the attitude during that period
was that Black people are inferior.

But he believed that everybody
should have equality of opportunity.

Lincoln believed that
everybody had the right to rise.

And slavery could
not allow you to rise.

Ever since the first slave ship
arrived in the colonies in 1619,

enslaved people fought
to gain their freedom.

We really need to have a
very broad understanding

of what slave resistance was.

Otherwise, we have people
saying things like, you know, oh,

enslaved people just never resisted.

And that's simply not true.

They undermined the bonds of
slavery every day of their lives,

whether it was implicit or explicit.

They, of course, attempted to run away.

But they did kind of small
acts of resistance as well.

Hoe Emma Hoe

You turn around Dig
a hole in the ground

Hoe Emma Hoe

Enslaved people were doing things
to try to shape the terms of that labor.

There's an example of this that was a song
that enslaved people might sing at work

that was called "Hoe Emma Hoe."

And it was a sort of simple, rhythmic
kind of call and response song.

Emma works harder Than two grown men

Hoe Emma Hoe

You can envision it being
sung at a pretty slow tempo, like...

Hoe Emma Hoe

...to try to sort of
moderate the pace of work.

Hoe Emma Hoe

If everybody's working
at the same pace,

then it will be less
easy for a slave owner

to call out someone for
working particularly slowly.

And so it's a way to talk together
about how we want to work today.

By the early 1800s,

slavery had become
America's defining institution.

The slaveholders themselves
are disproportionately represented

among the richest Americans.

The value of slaves

is more than the value of
all that industry has produced

in the United States.

It is the largest, wealthiest
slave society on Earth.

It's quite possibly the largest,
wealthiest slave society

in the history of the world.

As the South becomes more of a
space for the production of cotton,

really what happens
is that slavery moves.

So what historians have come
to call the second middle passage,

it's estimated that about a
million people were transferred

into Deep South
cotton-producing territories.

And slave people would have
been bound together in a coffle,

which was essentially a group of
captive people chained or tied together

and made to walk.

They would have walked
dozens of miles a day

from the upper South
to the lower South.

In order to do this
incredible amount of violence,

you have to be able to justify that,
not just economically but morally,

this is God-mandated.

And I think if you can do these sort of
mental, emotional, political gymnastics,

I mean, you can do all kinds of damage.

And so you make up this ideology...

...that Black people are less
evolved than white people.

That Black people are less
human than white people.

And that ideology, that was
the true evil of American slavery.

By the middle of the 1800s,

there were over three million
enslaved people in the South.

And slaveholders used violence
to ensure Black people labored

from "can see" to "can't."

Every morning, you wake up,

knowing that you will have
to do your master's bidding.

Not only is your body not your own.

Your children are not your own.

Your sexuality is not your own.

Rape is not something that exists,
meaning you can be sexually violated

and have no recourse.

There was no part of your
life that was not in service

to white supremacy and to masters.

From the moment you're
born to the moment you die,

everything is put forth
for the benefit of slavery.

A full record of
slavery's brutality is lost,

but more than 100 personal
accounts of the enslaved survive,

documenting their inhumane treatment.

I think slave narratives
are extremely important.

And I think it's important
not to just see them

as productions of white abolitionists

but to see it also the ways in
which Black people, men and women,

talked about their
experiences in slavery.

One of these slave narratives
was written by Moses Roper,

who was sold South and then resold
again and again, until he arrived in 1829

at the South Carolina
plantation of John Gooch.

Enslavers used various methods to
exert brutal control over the enslaved.

Gooch adapted a tool of agricultural
production called the cotton screw.

The cotton screw created more
compacted bales of cotton for shipment,

while also serving to punish slaves.

Moses Roper has a part of his
narrative when he describes for readers

just the sheer violence of the machine.

"Mr. Gooch hung me up
by the hands at letter 'A.'

And at times, a man
moving around the screw, 'E, '

and carrying it up and down and pressing
the block, 'C, ' into a box, 'D, '

into which the cotton was put.

At this time, he hung me
up for a quarter of an hour.

I was carried up ten feet from the ground
when Mr. Gooch asked me if I was tired,

after which he let me down
and put me into the box

and shut me down in
it for about ten minutes.

After this torture, I stayed
with him several months

and did my work very well."

Slave owners liked to think that
they were pursuing really modern,

like, cutting-edge techniques.

And in the same ways that they would
write about manipulating the landscape

to extract maximum
productivity from a given crop,

they would write about
manipulating enslaved people

to extract maximum productivity
from those human beings.

The dissemination of this
knowledge was done in a way

that played into this vision slave
owners had of themselves as masters.

What most people were
reading was slaveholders

defending slavery as
a benevolent institution.

What you get is the
polar opposite picture,

of course, from African Americans.

It was not just the narratives,
but the first Black newspaper

was founded in 1827,Freedom's Journal.

You then have, also, the slaves
who would escape from slavery.

They actually went around
and gave important lectures,

Frederick Douglass
most famously of them.

Frederick Douglass would say, "People
want to know where I was schooled."

And he would say, "My
diploma is on my back."

Born in slavery in Maryland in 1818,

taught to read and write
by his slaveholder's wife,

Frederick Douglass
escaped at the age of 20,

using a disguise and a friend's papers.

He joined a growing abolitionist
movement in the North,

finding support from organizers
like William Lloyd Garrison,

whose goals were markedly
different from antislavery advocates.

Antislavery means
exactly what it sounds like.

Someone who is opposed to slavery.

So someone like Abraham Lincoln
was opposed to slavery morally.

He thought it was wrong.

He fit into this broader trend
across the Northern states

of people who didn't want
more territories in the West

to become slaveholding states.

But someone like
William Lloyd Garrison,

who publishes a newspaper called
The Liberator, was an abolitionist.

He believed not only
that slavery was wrong

but also that slavery
must end immediately.

And both Lincoln and Garrison
would have understood themselves

as tremendously
different from one another.

With the publication of his
firsthand accounts of life in bondage,

Frederick Douglass quickly became one
of the leading voices in the movement.

"In coldest winter, I
was kept almost naked.

No shoes, stockings. No jacket.

I had no bed.

I used to steal a bag which was
used for carrying corn to the mill.

I would crawl into this bag and then
sleep on the cold, damp, clay floor

with my head in and feet out.

My feet have been so
cracked with the frost

that the pen with which I am
writing might be laid in the gashes."

Not only Frederick Douglass,

but there were people who
had burns and scars on their legs

by trying to build a fire
in their little slave cabin,

where they had to
stay when it was cold.

And many people, even
when they were grown...

...they still had scars on their legs.

And they would recognize each other

and talk about it when
they saw each other.

A reader sees not only how
brutal slavery was in the moment,

but how its brutality
creates legacies that endure.

Frederick Douglass
published his own newspaper,

which he called The North Star.

He was soon one of the
most famous men in America.

Douglass is actually
famous long before Lincoln.

By the end of the 1850s,

when Lincoln emerges as
the Republican party candidate,

that's when Douglass takes note of him

and that's when he supports Lincoln,

even though he really wants a
true abolitionist to win the presidency.

Using his influence,

Frederick Douglass strategically attempted
to push Lincoln's Republican party

to act more radically to end slavery.

The trajectory of Frederick Douglass

from an abolitionist
who rejects politics

and gradually comes to accept politics

as the way in which
slavery needs to be attacked

represents the convergence of two
men who come from very different places.

Lincoln was a man
who had humble origins

who matriculated through the society.

By the time Lincoln
steps to the public podium,

he's had a chance
to engage and to learn

and to become as fine a
thinker as he ultimately was.

Frederick Douglass stole his literacy...

...under actively hostile circumstances.

For him to have mastered
the rudiments of literacy

would have been an
impressive accomplishment.

He didn't do that.

He became one of the
finest writers of his era,

and Douglass is every bit the equal

of the president of the United States,

with none of the benefits.

Abraham Lincoln acquired
the tools of learning

after little formal education

and taught himself the
law before taking up politics,

serving four terms in the
Illinois House of Representatives.

He won national election in 1846,

securing a highly
coveted Illinois house seat

as the slavery question
became more and more dominant.

As a congressman, one
of Lincoln's chief efforts

was to draft a bill for
gradual emancipation

in the District of Columbia.

Realizing that his bill lacked
the support it needed to pass,

Lincoln ultimately
declined to introduce it.

He was kind of like an extreme,
out-of-touch liberal in Congress.

The South had gamed the system,

and Washington,
D.C., is a Southern city.

It's well below the Mason-Dixon Line.

It's surrounded by slaveholding states.

And so I think Lincoln understood
what he was up against at that moment.

When his term ended in 1849,
Lincoln returned to his legal practice.

But he kept an eye on the
persistent problem of the slave power.

This was an idea that was
circulating among political leaders

who were antislavery in the
North from at least the 1840s.

But the theory was that
powerful people in the government

were acting together

to try to make the entirety of
the United States open to slavery.

Lincoln, by the 1850s,
comes to begin arguing

that that slave power is actively
encroaching on the Northern states.

In 1850, Congress expanded the
powers of the Fugitive Slave Act,

giving federal support to slave
catchers who could now hunt down,

kidnap and terrorize enslaved
and free Black people anywhere.

Congress says, "Okay now, slaveholders.

If your slave ran away from you,

you can go into the North
and you can retrieve them.

And it doesn't matter if they ran away,
you know, five days ago, five years ago.

And even on top of that,
Northerners, you have to be complicit

in bringing those fugitives
back to the South."

In some places in the North,
white citizens who were alarmed

by the growing presence of
slave catchers in their cities

and Blacks who risked life in bondage

began pushing against what they perceived
to be an overreach of federal power.

Among them were young
African-American tenant farmers

William Parker and his wife Eliza.

The Parkers gave refuge in their home
to two men who had escaped slavery

from a farm in Maryland
owned by Edward Gorsuch.

Gorsuch, accompanied by a
US marshal and an armed posse,

crept through the rising mist at dawn.

The Black community
was already on high alert,

and when the slave catchers
stormed Parker's house,

they were driven out
by armed offenders.

Take another step,
and I'll break your neck.

You have my property.

Before I give up, you'll see
my ashes scattered on the earth.

As tensions mounted, Eliza
Parker sounded the call for help.

Fifty African-American men and women,

armed with pistols, shotguns,
corn cutters and scythes,

arrived with several local
whites to assist the Parkers.

Within minutes, several of the would-be
kidnappers were severely wounded,

and Gorsuch was dead.

US Marines were sent
in to arrest the resistors.

At the end of this very violent event,

about 40 of the people involved
were put on trial for treason.

Ultimately, all 40 were not convicted.

And so it was seen by abolitionists
as being this kind of triumph

against the tyranny of the
pro-slavery interests in the US.

For Northerners who
opposed slavery on principle

but were unbothered
by it in their daily lives,

the courageous actions of those
at Christiana were a wake-up call.

The abolitionist movement ended
up forcing many white Americans,

who didn't really think about slavery

because they didn't
live in a slave society...

It pushed many of those people...

...to reimagine what the
country would look like,

which I think is a good lesson
that activists can have now.

The great changes that take
place in almost every society

are generated by people who
are out of positions of power,

but who are placing demands...

...that are increasingly formidable

on those who are in positions of power.

Lincoln's reaction was,

"This is a terrible thing. I
don't like the Fugitive Slave Act.

But it's constitutional.
It's not unconstitutional."

And it disappointed a
lot of antislavery people.

It's one of the reasons why
Wendell Phillips, the great abolitionist,

later on was to refer to Abraham
Lincoln as "the slave hound of Illinois."

Lincoln explained his feelings
about the Fugitive Slave Law

in a letter to his close friend, an
enslaver named Joshua Speed.

"I acknowledge your rights and
my obligations under the constitution

in regard to your slaves.

I confess I hate to see the
poor creatures hunted down

and caught, and carried back to
their stripes and unrewarded toils,

but I bite my lips, and keep quiet."

By the early 1850s,

it was clear that inner turmoil
alone wasn't going to end slavery.

In 1854, Illinois senator
Stephen A. Douglas

drafted the Kansas-Nebraska Act

which ended the restriction
on slavery's northward spread,

and let voters decide whether it
should exist in new federal territories.

It means now that all bets are off.

It means now that the slave
power is on the offensive.

It means now that the
last protections we had

about possibly stopping slavery's
expansion, that has been undone.

This is a pivotal moment.

Where this territory goes is going
to determine the fate of the nation.

"It is wrong.

Wrong in its direct effect, letting
slavery into Kansas and Nebraska.

And wrong in its prospective principle,

allowing it to spread to every
other part of the wide world

where men can be
found inclined to take it."

And it was really the enactment
of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill

that provoked Lincoln's
reentry into politics.

But it's not just a
reentry into politics.

It's a transformed
Lincoln that enters politics

because he is now, for the first time
in his life, an antislavery politician.

Provoked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act,

the Republican party became the
political champions of antislavery.

Let me remind however that
the Republican party of then

was not the Republican party of today.

And the Democratic party then
was not the Democratic party of today.

They have switched.

The Republicans chose Lincoln
to run for the US Senate in Illinois.

His opponent was pro-slavery
Democrat, Stephen Douglas.

Lincoln and Douglas
sparred in a series of debates,

verbal wars that captivated
the divided nation.

Stephen A. Douglas had been
in the senate for a long time.

I mean, Douglas is short.
He's called the Little Giant.

He barks as much as he
speaks. He's like a bulldog.

He uses racist terms all the
time. He's vindictive. He's nasty.

"Lincoln would not be a Republican

if his principles would apply
alike to every part of the country.

The party to which he belongs is bounded
and limited by geographical lines.

Lincoln himself cannot
visit the land of his fathers,

the scenes of his childhood, and
carry his abolition principles with him."

Lincoln was this
ex-congressman, one termer.

I mean, he was a "nobody."

Look, he's 6'4". He looks,
you know, kind of gawky.

But people describe him as
starting off kind of disheveled,

and then, suddenly, he
would warm to his subject

and a kind of glow would come upon him.

This ugly rube from Illinois
suddenly became charismatic.

Lincoln had a way of
dominating the debates,

especially once you got out of
the deep south part of the state.

Once you got up further north,

he had the ability to turn
Douglas's logic inside out.

"When Douglas says that whoever wants
slaves, they have a right to have them...

...he is perfectly logical, if there
is nothing wrong in the institution.

But if you admit that it is wrong,

he cannot logically say that
anybody has a right to do wrong."

The debates are the first
national venue in which Lincoln

very clearly expresses

his utter moral opposition to slavery.

Previous to that, just to gain
office in the middle of Illinois,

which was a largely conservative area,

he had to appear to be more
moderate actually than he was.

But this is the first time he does it,

and he does it to really crystallize
his moral hatred of slavery.

It was a form of both
moral ethics and emotion.

And emotion as well.

Douglas narrowly beat Lincoln
to win the Illinois senate seat.

But less than two years later,
Lincoln won the far bigger prize.

As Lincoln's inaugural train
barreled through northern towns,

he came under bipartisan
pressure in Congress

to agree to a constitutional
protection of slavery.

Allies in preserving slavery

were also found among the
North's many wealthy factory owners.

Economically, the North has a huge hand

within the institution of slavery.

All of the mill towns that were
partnered with cotton institutions,

they produced all of the textiles
that come out of the North.

There were several attempts
by members of Congress

to come up with a proposal

that the South might
accept concerning slavery.

And one of them said to the South,

"If no more of you leave
and the rest of you come back,

we will draw a line across the country

at 36 degrees and 30 minutes,

and you will have
slavery to the south of it,

and there'll be no
slavery to the north of it."

Well, the Southerners who
were involved in this discussion

didn't think that was sufficient.

So in March of 1861, before
Lincoln was inaugurated...

...a congressman from Ohio
introduced a constitutional amendment

passed by the Congress
of the United States.

Some states even ratified it,

and it said, "No congress,
no federal government

could ever abolish slavery
in the United States."

It would have been the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution.

As Lincoln's inauguration drew near,

the mood in the country darkened.

Amid the failure to reach a deal
over slavery's future in the South,

there was increasing talk of war.

This is a really profound crisis.

This is not a thing that is
going to be resolved easily.

People in the Deep South are
convinced that Lincoln is a threat,

and they're trying to make
sure that others across the South

share that view of him.

Eleven days into his journey,

Lincoln neared the Southern state of
Maryland on his way to Washington.

Rumors that the president had
been targeted for assassination

swirled around Lincoln's inner circle.

In the South the energy is with
the angry people, not the moderates.

And the threat was never far away.

There are little accidents
that are suspicious.

There was a real feeling of danger
to Lincoln throughout this 13-day trip.

As Lincoln addressed
large crowds in Philadelphia,

an intricate assassination plot
was uncovered in Baltimore,

the next city on the
president's itinerary.

That night, after a fireworks display,
Lincoln's security detail briefed him.

Detective Allan Pinkerton's company

was tasked with protecting
the president-elect.

One of his agents, Harry Davies,
infiltrated a secret meeting of plotters.

Davies had identified the leader

as a Corsican immigrant
named Cipriano Ferrandini,

a barber at a Baltimore hotel.

Davies carefully observed
as he and more than 20 men

gathered in a circle by
a flickering candlelight.

Pledging allegiance
to the Southern cause,

Davies raised his hand in solemn oath.

Ferrandini cried, "Gentlemen,

this hireling, Lincoln, shall
never, never be president."

The group plucked
ballots out of a wooden box.

"One ballot," Ferrandini explained,

"was discreetly marked
to designate the assassin."

"In this manner,"
he told his followers,

"the identity of the honored
patriot would be protected."

But upon leaving, Davies discovered

that the box had actually contained
not one but eight red ballots,

ensuring many were
positioned to strike the fatal blow.

Lincoln's security team moved quickly,

changing the route
and timing of the transit

through Baltimore to Washington

and disguising the
president's appearance.

"In New York, some friend
had given me a soft wool hat.

Having informed very few friends

of the secret of my new
movements and the cause,

I put on an old overcoat.

Then I put on the soft
hat and joined my friends

without being recognized by strangers,

for I was not the same man."

On the morning of February 23rd, 1861,

Lincoln arrived safely
in the capital city.

But for pro-Southern newspapers,

it was Lincoln's disguise
that was the top story.

"The whole thing was
a disgrace to the man

and a stigma upon the
character of our people.

We hope never to hear of such a miserable
and disgusting spectacle again."

Frederick Douglass could
not help but note the irony

of Lincoln having to
sneak into the capital

on his own version of
the underground railroad.

"He reached the capital as the poor,
hunted fugitive slave reaches the North...

...in disguise, seeking
concealment, evading pursuers.

He changed his program,
took another route,

started at another hour, and
arrived at another time in Washington.

He only did what braver men have done.

It was, doubtless,
galling to his very soul

to be compelled to avail himself
of the methods of a fugitive slave

with a nation howling on his track."

The day of Lincoln's inauguration

saw the streets of
Washington lined with soldiers.

Sharpshooters roosted on the roofs
of buildings along the parade route.

The president's carriage was
surrounded by so many armed guards

that he couldn't be seen by the crowds.

March 4th, 1861.

The day of the inauguration
is a very tense day,

and Lincoln has to get out there

on the steps of the
east front of the Capitol,

where, once again, he's very exposed.

Hoorah for the Union!

Lincoln climbed the steps to the
dais below the still unfinished dome.

In a high, clear voice,

he addressed a crowd of more than
25,000 people on pins and needles.

"Apprehension seems to exist
among the people of the Southern states

that by the accession of a
Republican administration,

their property and their peace and
personal security are to be endangered.

I have no purpose,
directly or indirectly,

to interfere with the institution of
slavery and the states where it exists.

I believe I have no
lawful right to do so,

and I have no inclination to do so."

You have these people
who have left the nation,

and he's protecting their institution.

I don't think he forgot that
slavery was a bad thing,

but I think he was more concerned
about what was right in front of him.

His number one agenda is unification.

It is not the abolition of slavery.

Lincoln did have a
warning for the South.

"In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow countrymen,

and not in mine, is the
momentous issue of civil war.

There needs to be no
bloodshed or violence,

and there shall be none,

unless it is forced upon
the national authority."

He says, "I am not
going to start a war."

"If you are going to push us into it,

you need to know that we
will defend the United States.

We will defend the Constitution."

Lincoln ended on a conciliatory note.

"The mystic chords of memory,

stretching from every
battlefield and patriot grave

to every living 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."

Lincoln is saying, our shared
history as a single people

is a kind of music
that we can still hear,

and it floats across the entire
country and into our hearts.

And when we calm down,
there is a better sound,

which is the noise that we will hear

when we listen to our better angels.

"Whatever may be the honeyed phrases

employed by Mr. Lincoln when
confronted by actual disunion,

he saw seven states in open
rebellion, the National flag insulted,

and his own life murderously
sought by slave-holding assassins.

Does he expose and rebuke
the enemies of his country?

Not a bit of it.

Aside from the inhuman
coldness of the sentiment,

it was a weak and
inappropriate utterance,

since it could neither appease

nor check the wild fury
of the rebel slave power."

The day after his inauguration,

Lincoln received a dispatch
from Major Robert Anderson,

commander of a small island post

off the coast of Charleston,
South Carolina, called Fort Sumter.

The Confederate government was
demanding that Lincoln relinquish control

of all federal military
installations in the seceded states.

With a battery of guns
trained on Sumter,

the garrison of Union soldiers
was running out of food.

Lincoln can give up the fort.

He could send an armed
vessel to reclaim the fort.

But instead, he takes
this middle pathway

and says, "I'm going
to send them provisions.

I'm not going to let them starve
to death. On the other hand,

I'm not trying to provoke a war."

So he's trying to find
a middle ground here.

At 4:30 a.m. on April 12th, 1861,

before the resupply ship
had even reached Charleston,

Confederate guns moved into
position against Fort Sumter.

And then came the barrage.

Each Southern round fired
reverberated an undeniable message.

The nation had been
shattered by civil war.

"The last ray of hope for
preserving the Union peaceably

expired at the assault
upon Fort Sumter.

I have no desire to invade the South,

but our country is now
afflicted with civil war,

and I shall, to the extent of
my ability, repel force by force."

The fall of Sumter shocked
Northerners and infuriated them.

It united the North with
a kind of rage militaire.

Rage against these arrogant secessionists
who had fired on the American flag,

had fired on American soldiers.

And when Lincoln, a day
after the surrender of the fort...

...issued a call for 75,000 militia,

the North responded
with great enthusiasm.

And more than those 75,000 troops
were raised almost immediately.

Confederate forces
had taken Fort Sumter,

but with nearly twice the population
and far more industrial resources,

Lincoln was confident
of a speedy Union victory.

Well, Lincoln's failure to
understand how long the war might be

was something that he shared
with almost everybody in the North,

that they didn't fully appreciate how
ferociously the South would resist.

That is, it wasn't a war just to protect
the property of the slaveholders...

...but it was a war to preserve the
whole superstructure of white supremacy.

"Lincoln may bring his
75,000 soldiers against us.

We fight for our homes,
our fathers and mothers,

our wives, brothers,
sisters, sons, and daughters.

We can call out a
million people if need be,

and when they are cut down, we
can call another and still another

until the last man of the
South finds a bloody grave."

After the fall of Sumter,

North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas
and Tennessee all seceded,

making the Confederacy
11 states strong.

Across the South, enslaved
people vigilantly followed the war.

There's a grapevine network
that says, "Okay, Lincoln.

We are going to watch
and hear every time...

...there is anything going on where
this guy's name is mentioned."

The metaphor of the grapevine
telegraph was used widely...

...to disseminate news from
one plantation to another.

Now, they had to be very, very careful
because their owners had the guns,

but it helps us understand how it
was that as soon as the Union army

moved in proximity to
where enslaved people lived,

that they would be
willing to take the risk

and, little by little,
head to Union lines

where they thought it was possible

that freedom might be
there, waiting for them.

With everything to lose,

Henry Jarvis fled toward
that rumored safe haven.

Jarvis found himself at a crossroads.

In the late spring of 1861, when
Jarvis was about 25, his enslaver,

whom he called the meanest
man on the eastern shore of Virginia,

shot at him.

Determined to escape, Jarvis
fled alone and laid out in the woods,

where he survived on food
brought to him by friends.

Jarvis used this nourishment,
along with the information he obtained,

to sustain him as he made plans
to journey toward Union lines.

Rigging a sail to a canoe,
Jarvis quietly paddled

more than ten miles across the
Chesapeake bay to Fort Monroe,

the outpost where the
Union army had a foothold.

"There was death behind me,
and I didn't know what ahead

so I just asked the
Lord to take care of me.

And by-and-by, the wind went
down to a good, steady breeze."

At the fort, Jarvis docked the canoe

and approached General Benjamin Butler.

"I went to Butler and
asked him to let me enlist,

but he said it wasn't
a Black man's war.

I told him it would be a Black
man's war before they got through."

And so this is just such a great case

of enslaved people being
way out ahead of anybody else

about the political
significance of what is going on.

It would take Abraham Lincoln more time

before openly committing
to a war to abolish slavery,

but the coming year would prove to be

a major turning point in
the president's evolution.

However methodical or
just outright slow Lincoln was

on the cause of Negro rights, as they
would have been called at that time,

it was too fast

for huge portions of the population,

as evidenced by what
happened in Ford's Theater

that night in April of 1865.