Lincoln's Dilemma (2022): Season 1, Episode 2 - So You See, The Man Moves - full transcript

Nine months after the
first shots of the Civil War

were fired at Fort Sumter,

the conflict was proving to be one
of the bloodiest in American history.

Hopes for a swift Union
victory were fading.

And even Lincoln's allies
blamed him for the carnage.

"The president is an excellent
man and, in the main, wise.

But he lacks will and purpose,

and I greatly fear he has
not the power to command."

These deaths weighed
heavily on his own conscience.

As time went by and
the casualties mounted,

he became more and more
reflective of "what was all this about?"



He came to think that
out of this would come

something truly
monumental and important.

It wasn't just the
preservation of the Union.

It also had to do with
the abolition of slavery.

War changes him.

Death changes him, compels
him to see things differently.

And I think that's really powerful

and in some ways unprecedented
for an American president,

that he could evolve to
a place of deep humanity,

be gripped by that humanity, and
want it for every single American.

On February 5, 1862, Abraham
and Mary Lincoln threw a party

to boost White House morale
after months of grinding war.

Few attendees knew just how little
the Lincolns felt like celebrating.

Upstairs in their private quarters,
their son, Willie, was sick with typhoid.



Mary's dressmaker and friend, Elizabeth
Keckley, helped care for the boy.

"He was very sick

and I was summoned to his bedside.

Always delicate, he could not
resist the strong inroads of disease.

The days dragged wearily by, and he
grew weaker and more shadow-like."

After two weeks of suffering, Willie
Lincoln died. He was 11 years old.

"I assisted in washing him

and laid him on the bed
when Mr. Lincoln came in.

I never saw a man so
bowed down with grief.

He came to the bed, lifted the
cover from the face of his child,

gazed at it long and
earnestly, murmuring,

'My poor boy. He was
too good for this earth.'"

The death of Willie Lincoln
was a terrific blow to Lincoln.

This is a deeply empathetic man who
has overcome suffering in his own life

...in order to become who he is.

He's deeply sympathetic
to the plight of the soldiers.

He's racked with a sense
of overbearing responsibility

for everybody and everything.

But he had to go on,
regardless of his mourning,

and it required a great deal from him.

I think we all think about... When
we lose someone close to us,

we want to know that it meant something

or that there was some
greater good accomplished.

And if we can't ascertain that...

...then it makes it very difficult for
us to understand how we go forward.

Because why? For what?

And I think that's what Lincoln is
dealing with. The morality of it all.

When he took office,

Lincoln believed that restoring the Union
was more important than ending slavery.

But after months of suffering,

he had begun to think that
emancipation might be the key to reunion.

I think that for Lincoln, all these
deaths lead him to care in new ways

about a broader population
of American people.

Lincoln, I think, was sincere in saying
that he thought slavery was morally wrong

and that he hoped that
people could be free.

I think Lincoln was also
very sincere in saying

that he wanted to do what he felt
was within his power as president.

And early in his presidency, he
was very explicit about recognizing

that he did not have the power to
touch slavery where it already existed.

He was so thoroughly
wedded to the Constitution,

and he didn't see any way out.

If you're going to
follow the Constitution,

you have to be aware that
enslaved people are property,

and you cannot mess
with people's property.

Lincoln may have believed
he did not have the authority

to take direct aim at slavery.

But he couldn't resist a
chance to show his disgust for it.

A few years before,

a slave ship called the Erie was
captured off the coast of West Africa.

Its captain, Nathaniel Gordon,
was charged with illegal slave trading.

"Onboard were 897 Negroes.

They were half children, one-fourth
men and one-fourth women.

And so crowded when on the main deck,

that one could scarcely put his
foot down without stepping on them.

During the passage of 15 days,

29 of the sufferers died
and were thrown overboard.

For this crime, Gordon was tried,
convicted, and sentenced to death."

As Willie Lincoln lay dying,

Gordon's lawyer rushed
to the White House

to plead his case for
clemency to the president.

What sense did it make to hang his
client for trafficking slaves in Africa,

when slavery was perfectly
legal in the Southern states?

But to Lincoln, the decision was clear.

The laws of God and man

forbade the kidnapping of African
people for the profit of enslavers.

This is early 1862.

Slave traders have been arrested,
then let off with a slap on the wrist.

But I think Lincoln
wanted to send a message

that he was no longer going to tolerate

the sort of blatant violation of
the laws banning the slave trade.

"It becomes my painful duty
to admonish the prisoner that,

relinquishing all expectation
of pardon by human authority,

he refer himself alone to the mercy of
the Common God and Father of all men."

On February 21st, the
day after Willie's death,

Gordon became the first American
slave trader to be executed.

"For 40 years the slave trade

has been pronounced piracy by law.

But the sympathy of the government has
been so often on the side of the criminal,

Mr. Lincoln has turned over a new leaf.

Henceforth, the slave trade
will be abandoned to the British.

The hanging of Gordon is an
event in the history of our country."

To abolitionists, however,

the hanging of a single slave
trader was not nearly enough.

Early in the war, Frederick
Douglass took the position

that many radicals took, which is that

Lincoln should immediately take a
very aggressive stand against slavery.

"The friends of freedom, the
Union, and the Constitution

have been most basely betrayed.

While we would still hope

that slavery is to receive its
death-wound from the present rebellion,

we see nothing in the temper or
disposition of our rulers in Washington

to justify this hope."

Lincoln was caught between
two poles of the Republican party.

Those who demanded
immediate emancipation

and those who insisted
on reunification first,

even at the cost of preserving slavery.

Some compared him to a famous
aerialist named Charles Blondin.

Charles Blondin was a visiting...

A touring tightrope walker from France.

He went back and forth across
Niagara Falls, 1200 feet, no net.

And a lot of cartoonists
suddenly realized this is Lincoln.

On one side, Lincoln was
being called a dangerous radical

who was gonna cause a
racial reversal in America.

On the other side, he was being
called too cautious, too slow on slavery.

Lincoln really had to walk a tightrope
between these various factions.

Oh, the sun done quit shinin'

Oh, Lord, ain't gonna bring me down

Conditions on the ground

were increasingly rocking
Lincoln's careful balancing act.

In 1862, nearly four million
Black people remained in bondage.

Their sweat had fueled
the Southern economy.

Now it was powering
the Confederate army.

And Lincoln knew he must do
something about it, and soon.

The Confederate government
was impressing enslaved men

into their armies, not as
soldiers, but as laborers.

Throwing up breastworks,
serving as orderlies,

doing things that made it
possible for white soldiers to fight.

Over time it became clear

that unless the federal
government moved against slavery,

their prospects of winning the war
were becoming less and less promising.

Enslaved people were
doing their part to resist,

through sabotage, revolt,
and especially escape.

Enslaved people are unwilling
to stay on their plantations.

They're unwilling to wait
for the North to liberate them.

They're going to liberate themselves.

Enslaved people have to make
their way through treacherous territory,

through a literal war zone,
to try to secure their freedom.

And so it's a profound danger that
thousands took upon themselves

in the effort to-to try to
get away from bondage.

For some, these dangers seemed to
summon not only courage but audacity.

Robert Smalls, an
enslaved Charleston sailor,

hatched a plan to steal a Confederate
ship, the Planter, out of the harbor

and navigate it to freedom.

"For three days, he kept the provisions
of the party secreted in the hold,

awaiting an opportunity to slip away.

At length, on Monday evening,

the white officers of the vessel
went on shore to spend the night.

At about three o'clock, the
fires were lit under the boilers,

and the vessel steamed
away down the harbor."

The Planter rendezvoused
with another boat,

and the families of the
enslaved men climbed aboard.

But to reach the Union fleet,

Smalls would have to navigate past
a series of Confederate checkpoints,

including the
heavily-armed Fort Sumter.

The stowaways made a pact.

If stopped or fired upon,
they would jump overboard.

Better to die in the sea
than to be recaptured.

The first ship they passed was a gunboat
at anchor. Smalls saluted with a whistle.

"The tide was against her,

and Fort Sumter was
not reached till daylight.

However, the boat passed
directly under its walls.

Once out of range of the rebel
guns, the white flag was raised,

and the Planter steamed directly
for the blockading Union steamer."

Safely aboard, Smalls
shared valuable knowledge

about Confederate defenses, enabling a
long-awaited Union attack on Charleston.

This is a person who
was not only enslaved

but had been required to use his labor

to aid, essentially, the rebel cause.

And so the significance of this
was not only the freedom of Smalls

and his family, it was a military act.

It was a deprivation of valuable
property from the Confederate army

and a contribution of
that property to the Union.

And so I think that there's a lot of
ways to think about how big it was

that Robert Smalls did what he did.

Smalls' escape made national headlines.

He met with Lincoln at the White House,

hoping that the president
would change his position

and let Blacks fight for the Union.

Lincoln sees how American
people feel about slavery,

about emancipation, about
Black enlistment and Black rights.

And as those feelings change, as the
voices that have access to Lincoln change,

Lincoln himself changes
in response to them.

Lincoln is always evolving,

in the sense that he's a
very open-minded person.

He is not stuck in his ways.

He's aware that in a crisis like this,
old ideas may no longer be relevant.

Lincoln clung to his tightrope.

He would try to coax
the still-loyal border states

to give up slavery voluntarily.

But if he pushed too
hard, they might defect.

Lose them, he believed,
and he would lose the war.

He knows that the Confederacy,
those states are lost.

Those 11 are gone out of the Union.

But he doesn't want to do anything

to upset the four that
are still in the Union.

"I think to lose Kentucky is nearly
the same as to lose the whole game.

Kentucky gone, we cannot hold
Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland.

We would as well consent
to separation at once,

including the surrender
of this Capitol."

He started pressuring...
Perhaps that's too strong a word...

Encouraging the border states,

that if they started to
end slavery on their own,

then the Confederacy would understand
that it would never get any larger,

and they might come to their
senses and return to the Union.

In March of 1862, he puts
forward this proposal. He says

"Let's have Congress appropriate
money to be given to any state

whose government abolishes slavery.

And let's adopt gradual emancipation."

"And let's also make part
of the package, colonization.

That is, any Blacks who want to
leave shall have government support,

and we will try to
find a haven, a refuge,

for those people who
voluntarily want to leave."

For years, many Northern politicians

had linked their anti-slavery
support with the idea of colonization.

Freed American slaves would be convinced
to return to Africa or the Caribbean.

The message was, "You
should be free. Just not here."

This was always the question when
you talked about abolishing slavery.

Well, what is gonna happen
to these emancipated slaves?

Are they gonna remain in the United
States? Are they gonna be citizens?

What kind of rights are
they gonna have, if any?

The fact that Lincoln promoted this
idea of colonization for about ten years

doesn't fit with a lot of people's image
of Lincoln, let's just put it that way.

The "Great Emancipator."

But I think you have to
take Lincoln at his word.

Lincoln did believe in this plan. It is
part of a plan for getting rid of slavery.

"If all earthly power were given
me, I should not know what to do

as to the existing institution.

My first impulse would be to free all
the slaves and send them to Liberia,

to their own native land.

But a moment's reflection
would convince me

that whatever of high hope there may be in
this, its sudden execution is impossible.

What then? Free them and make
them politically and socially our equals?

My own feelings will not
admit of this. And if mine would,

we well know that those of the
great mass of white people will not."

Lincoln does not want slavery.

But that does not necessarily mean
that he wants Black people to be free

or that he wants Black
people to be enfranchised

or that he wants Black
people to be seen as equal.

Lincoln understood his people

and understood the challenges they would
have in accepting Black people as free.

The problem was, though, his
solution was remove Black people.

Not try to talk your
people into understanding

that Black people had a
right to be in this country

because Black people built the country.

"There is no sentiment
more universally entertained,

nor more firmly held by the free
colored people of the United States,

than that this is their
native land and that here,

their destiny is to be wrought out."

Frederick Douglass said,
"I was born in this country.

I've toiled in this country. I've
been fighting for equality and justice

for this country.

And you shouldn't be able to just dismiss
me and send me away because of my color."

I think Lincoln respected Douglass,

but he didn't fully
embrace the aspirations

of many emancipated Black
people who wanted to be fully free.

Lincoln's persuasion campaign

to get border states to
emancipate voluntarily was failing.

Lincoln begs these
congressmen and senators

from Kentucky and Maryland
and Delaware and Missouri,

"Please go back to your home states, and
urge the legislators to abolish slavery."

And he starts saying to them,
"Look, this is gonna happen.

And you can either
do it this way, legally,

or you can succumb to the
friction and abrasion of war."

Which means that the slaves
will eventually be emancipated

by some other mechanism.

Lincoln comes to the conclusion

that he's never gonna be able to convince
the border states to end slavery.

And so he's gonna
have to do it himself.

If we're thinking about where
Lincoln can and can't exercise power,

the Constitution gives
Congress jurisdiction

over pretty much everything
in the District of Columbia.

So abolitionists, for a long
time, had been pushing to say,

"One step Congress
really can take right away

is abolish slavery in Washington, DC."

Washington, DC was
the capital of the Union,

but geographically a Southern city.

Until the late 1840s, it had
been a hub of the slave trade.

And thousands of enslaved Black people

were arrested and
imprisoned inside its borders.

Half a mile from the Capitol
stood the notorious Yellow House

where fugitive slaves and
even captured free Black people

were kept under lock and key.

"The building to which the yard
was attached was two stories high,

fronting on one of the
public streets of Washington.

Looking down from its commanding
height upon it was the Capitol.

The voices of patriotic representatives
boasting of freedom and equality,

and the rattling of poor slaves'
chains, almost commingled."

In April 1862, Lincoln signed a law

emancipating all enslaved
people in Washington.

Enslavers received $300 for each person
they freed. The enslaved received nothing.

"It was a fitting celebration of
the anniversary of Fort Sumter,

that Congress should pass a bill

to emancipate the capital
from the thrall of slavery forever."

Washington was a start.

But only by achieving his
primary goal, reunifying the country,

could Lincoln bring about
slavery's ultimate extinction.

If slavery was to die,
the Union had to survive.

That meant winning the war.

And from Fort Sumter
to the Battle of Bull Run,

that outcome was anything but certain.

Lincoln is frustrated because
the war is going badly.

It's looking, in all sorts of ways,
that the North is not going to win.

When you've got France and England

considering throwing their
support behind the Confederacy,

the war starts off
really on shaky ground.

The winter brought incredible
hardship to the Union army.

Raw recruits shivered in their camps.

Some deserted rather than
fight a determined enemy.

After the First Battle of Bull
Run, which was a chaotic fiasco,

Lincoln realizes that he
actually does not have

a disciplined, organized army.

And he has to have one.

And he also realizes he
doesn't have a general.

And he has to find a general.

Lincoln summoned

a 34-year-old West Point
graduate named George McClellan.

He was dashing,
charismatic, and trouble.

McClellan took this
battered, whipped army

that retreated from Manassas
with its tail between its legs

and he turned what had been a
very demoralized, defeated army

into a potentially
very fine fighting force.

McClellan could train
troops. He could inspire them.

But what he couldn't do
was fight. He was afraid to fail.

And if you're afraid to
fail you won't risk failure.

If McClellan was reluctant
to take on the Confederacy,

he especially did not want to do
so in the name of ending slavery.

McClellan is completely hostile
to any acts towards emancipation.

And is very intent on telling Lincoln of
his political objections to emancipation.

"It should not be a war looking to the
subjugation of the people of any state.

Neither confiscation of property,
nor forcible abolition of slavery

should be contemplated for a moment."

Finally, after eight months of delays,

McClellan grudgingly
began to move his army south

toward the enemy capital of Richmond.

What he's decided to do is to
send his now 120,000-man army

on approximately 400 ships

down the Chesapeake Bay
to the peninsula of Virginia.

And then they will march up
the peninsula to Richmond.

It's an incredibly wet spring.

And if you can imagine 120,000
men plus all of the wagons and cannon,

horses and mules moving
up water-clogged roads,

it's a tremendous mud bath to
try to move this army through.

It took until June for
McClellan's troops to arrive

at the outskirts of Richmond.

And then they stopped.

He's right outside of Richmond.

They can see the
spires of the churches.

And yet he won't move his guns.

Lincoln continued to
send orders to McClellan

to not delay any longer, to attack.

But McClellan delayed.

Said that defenses of the
Confederacy were too strong.

He always overestimated the size
and strength of the enemy army.

On June 25th, Robert E.
Lee will wage an attack.

And he's going to begin what will
become known as the Seven Days Battles.

Lee will push McClellan's army all the
way back to the banks of the James River.

Northern morale, which had
been so strong in the spring,

is plunged into despair as a result of
McClellan's failure to capture Richmond.

Hearing reports of tens
of thousands of casualties,

Frederick Douglass felt
the war slipping away.

And with it, any real
chance at emancipation.

To Douglass, it was obvious.

If McClellan wouldn't
fight, then Black men must.

"We are recruiting our troops in
the towns and villages of the North

when we ought to be recruiting
them on the plantations of the South.

We are striking the guilty
rebels with our soft, white hand

when we should be striking with
the iron hand of the Black man."

Frederick Douglass wanted
Lincoln, at the very outset

to allow Black people to
fight during the Civil War.

And he wanted it because
he very much wanted

the narrative to be that
we fought for our freedom.

Lincoln didn't want Black
people to fight for the Union.

He knew it would be provocative to
Southern enslavers and to the Confederacy

and he also doubted

that white Union soldiers wanted to
empower Black people in that way.

So he said, "No, not gonna do it."

Two Union generals
wanting to weaken the enemy

took matters into their own hands.

Without consulting Lincoln, they declared
emancipation in parts of the South,

hoping more enslaved people would
escape and join the Union cause.

He had Fremont in Missouri try
to emancipate and Lincoln said no.

He had Hunter, in the Department of
the South, trying to do the same thing

and he said no to him.

Lincoln is in the odd position

of having to turn away potential
soldiers in the course of a war,

in which they desperately
need additional soldiers.

Lincoln wouldn't allow fugitive
slaves to enlist in the Union army,

but a trio of enslaved men began
to force his hand on emancipation.

The question of what to do with
fugitive slaves who came to Union lines

was raised very early in the war.

In the spring of 1861 when three
slaves come to Fortress Monroe,

at the confluence of the
York and James Rivers.

A huge Union fortification.

Frank Baker, James
Townsend and Shepard Mallory

are building fortifications
near Fort Monroe.

They know that they are going to be
moved South and the Union is right there.

They get in a boat
under cover of darkness,

and they row to Fort Monroe
and they take their chances.

The commander at Fort
Monroe, General Benjamin Butler,

had no official policy to guide
him on what to do with escapees.

Benjamin Butler says, "Come on in."

Well, the next day,
this slave owner says,

"There's this statute called
the Fugitive Slave Law

that says you're obliged to
return the fugitive slaves to me."

And Benjamin Butler, very
clever as a lawyer, says,

"Ahem, uh, the Fugitive Slave
Act applies to the United States.

You claim that you're no longer
members of the United States,

and therefore, we're not going
to return these slaves to you."

Butler's order placed
the matter of fugitives

squarely in Lincoln's lap.

Rather than force the
escapees back into bondage,

Lincoln supported his major general.

"Contraband" comes to be the term

under which enslaved
African Americans were named.

It was what they were called
throughout the Civil War.

In some ways, contraband
is a horrible word,

but it's almost an appropriate word
because they were not seen as human.

They were really seen as property
to fulfill the needs of the country.

Word spread, and within weeks,

hundreds of escapees
streamed into Fort Monroe,

setting up a large contraband
camp just outside its gates.

Soon, contraband camps
popped up all over the upper South.

There were literally hundreds of
contraband camps around the country.

As the self-emancipated came to cities

that were now under
the control of the Union,

people didn't know what to do with
them and they put them in these camps.

What you have is a place that is
both ripe with hope and optimism,

but also ripe with disease,
death, and frustration.

"I found men, women, and
children all huddled together,

without any regard to age or sex.

Some of them were in
the most pitiable condition.

Amid all of this sadness, we
sometimes would hear a shout of joy.

Some mother had come in
and found her long-lost child.

Some husband, his wife."

I have no doubt Lincoln is very
much influenced by the contraband

that he sees in
Washington on a daily basis,

when he's coming from the
soldiers' hub to the White House.

He's passing down 7th Street

and he's passing one of
those contraband camps

and they are greeting
him as he goes by.

And there are many stories
of Lincoln stopping to talk,

learning about what it was like to
be a Black woman who was enslaved.

So, in some ways, this
notion of Lincoln having a thirst

to understand something
he didn't experience,

but having the kind of compassion
to talk to people who were enslaved

I think that also began to shape him,

because what it does
is it makes slavery real.

The humanity of the escapees moved
Lincoln and, as their numbers grew,

so did his resolve to use emancipation
as a means of ending the war.

Part of what Lincoln sees is
that we have these powerful allies

in the enslaved population,
who can be spies,

who can tell us exactly which
road to follow when we're mobilizing,

who can help our own troops and,
by aiding us, you're hurting the enemy.

So Lincoln sees this, you know, these
words, these reports come up to Washington

and he begins to realize that perhaps
the way to do what he took office to do,

which is to save the United States,

goes through ending slavery,
not around ending slavery.

So, in order to bring the country together
again, he has to have emancipation.

And this is how emancipation
becomes not just a military necessity,

but a political necessity.

If Lincoln was to move more
aggressively against slavery,

he'd need legal cover.

The war provided that.

There were certain things that they could
do to slavery, in the context of a war,

that they would not have been
able to do in the context of peace.

They begin to argue
that under the laws of war,

the War Powers Clause of the Constitution
does in fact give the federal government

the power to free slaves as a
means of suppressing an insurrection.

In July 1862, Lincoln signed
the Second Confiscation Act,

declaring all enslaved people held in
Union-occupied areas of the South free.

The same day, he signed another bill

allowing Black men to enlist in
the Union army as noncombatants.

Secretly, he had a
plan to go much further.

Lincoln is going to go to his cabinet and
say, "I'm going to emancipate the slaves.

I'm going to issue a proclamation,
an executive order, freeing the slaves."

Such a proclamation would
not apply to border states.

It would not apply to
any Confederate states

that decided to come
back into the Union.

It would only apply to the states
that were at war with the United States.

"The slavery question perplexes
the president almost as much as ever.

And yet I think he's about to emerge from
the obscurities where he has been groping

into somewhat clearer light.

So you see, the man moves."

The cabinet is kind of stunned.

William Seward, the Secretary
of State, said to Lincoln,

"We can't issue such an order now or
it will seem like an act of desperation.

It'll seem like we're losing
and this is our final card.

Wait until a significant
victory on the battlefield

and then you can
issue this proclamation."

And so all throughout
the summer of 1862,

Lincoln waits until they
have a large enough victory

to make it seem like an
Emancipation Proclamation

is not simply a last minute kind
of Hail Mary to save the Union.

At the same time that he is
contemplating the policy of emancipation,

he invites a group of Black men who
were understood as community leaders

to the White House.

And essentially tries to persuade them

to persuade other Black
people to leave the United States.

Lincoln said, among other things,

"But for your race among
us, we would not have a war."

Essentially what he says is
that the problems of the nation

are problems of the presence
of Black people in that nation.

"Your race are
suffering, in my judgment,

the greatest wrong
inflicted on any people.

But even when you cease to be
slaves, you are yet far removed

from being placed on an
equality with the white race.

On this broad continent,

not a single man of your race is
made the equal of a single man of ours.

I cannot alter it if I would.

It is better for us both,
therefore, to be separated."

This is one of the
complexities of the man.

While he's writing a document that's going
to promise freedom to African Americans,

he's also talking about
sending them out of the country.

"The argument of Mr. Lincoln
is that the difference

between the white and Black
races renders it impossible

for them to live together in the same
country without detriment to both.

Colonization, therefore,
he holds to be the duty

and the interest of the colored people.

No, Mr. President, it is not the innocent
horse that makes the horse thief.

And it is not the presence of the Negro
that causes this foul and unnatural war."

It is possible that,
with the left hand,

Lincoln is letting out this
message of conservatism,

saying "I don't think our
races can live together,"

so that the body of centrist whites

in the North will relax.

While, with the right hand,

he's pushing very aggressively
for extreme emancipation.

Unless you understand what is
going on around what he is saying,

you can never really
understand Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln has outwitted just
about as many American historians

as he has politicians of his own day,

precisely because people don't necessarily
understand him as a politician,

as a political leader.

The most famous example is the
1862 response to Horace Greeley.

Greeley is an eccentric

and very influential editor
of The New York Tribune.

He writes a letter urging Lincoln

to issue some sort of
proclamation of emancipation.

And Lincoln responds
with a very careful response,

which makes him
sound very conservative.

"My paramount object in this
struggle is to save the Union,

and is not either to save
or to destroy slavery.

If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave I would do it,

and if I could save it by freeing
all the slaves I would do it.

And if I could save it by freeing
some and leaving others alone,

I would also do that."

Lincoln is, in some ways,
the quintessential politician.

He is trying to walk this line of
how much do I give to each faction

and how do I please each faction.

And in that sense, you know,
he has to be extremely diplomatic.

He was trying to navigate the
currents of really irreconcilable ideas.

And if you add into that equation
the fact that he's a politician,

who may or may not believe 100%

of what he's saying in
public at any given time,

what you have is the
makings of an enigma.

Throughout the summer of 1862,
Lincoln waited for a battlefield victory

to announce his
Emancipation Proclamation.

And throughout the summer,
his generals failed to provide one.

Sensing his counterpart's weakness,

Robert E. Lee led the
Confederate army into Maryland,

intent on forcing
Lincoln to sue for peace.

On September 17th, at a creek called
Antietam, North and South collided.

McClellan telegraphed Washington.

"We are in the midst of the
most terrible battle of the war,

perhaps of history.

Hurry up all the troops possible."

That night, a 29-year-old war
correspondent named George Smalley

rode half-asleep to the telegraph
office in Frederick, Maryland.

Posing as a military attach?,

he had just witnessed a bloodbath.

He feverishly wrote his dispatch, handing
it to the operator as he finished.

What Smalley didn't know is that

the telegraph had been rerouted
directly to the war department,

which immediately
passed it on to Lincoln.

The next day, Smalley's
paper, The New York Tribune,

published his account in full detail.

"The battle began with the dawn.

Morning found both armies almost close
enough to look into each other's eyes.

On this field, in the corn beyond,

were the hardest and
deadliest struggles of the day.

'Forward!' was the word."

"And on went the Union
line with a cheer and a rush.

Back across the cornfield, leaving
dead and wounded behind them,

over the fence and across the road,

and then into the dark woods which closed
around them, went the retreating Rebels."

Back and forth, the chaos
raged across the cornfield,

along a dirt road,

over a bridge.

Eventually, the Union's superior
numbers overwhelmed the Confederates,

who were driven back to Virginia,
leaving behind a grotesque scene.

"The dead are strewn so thickly

that as you ride over them, you cannot
guide your horse's steps too carefully.

Pale and bloody faces
are everywhere upturned.

They are sad and terrible."

Nearly 4,000 soldiers were killed.

Americans had never
experienced death on such a scale.

And for the first time in history, they
didn't just read about it, they saw it.

A few weeks after the battle,

photographer Mathew Brady exhibited
more than 100 images of the carnage.

Lincoln saw what happened
on these battlefields.

Not just read reports, not just heard
eyewitnesses and not just saw drawings,

but saw these photographs.

And the horrors of war were brought to
him and to the people of the United States

in their full reality.

Lincoln wondered a
lot why it had happened.

He talked to God in
his own private way.

He didn't go to church very often.

He was not a Bible thumper.

But something really important
inside of him was opening up.

"I am almost ready to say
that God wills this contest

and wills that it shall not end yet.

He could have either saved or destroyed
the Union without a human contest.

Yet the contest began.

And having begun, he could give
the final victory to either side any day.

Yet the contest proceeds."

I think that Lincoln is trying to find a
way to understand all of that death.

The mothers who've lost
their sons, all their sons.

How do we reconcile that?

How do we find meaning in that?

For enslaved people, who, for the first
time, will be able to experience freedom,

what should their future hold?

These are really big, sort
of existential questions

about who we are, and who do we want
to be, and who do we want to become,

that Lincoln is trying
to get not just himself,

but the entire country to grapple with.

"Who are we as Americans?"

The loss of life at
Antietam was devastating,

but Lincoln wouldn't squander the
battlefield win he'd been waiting for.

On September 22nd, the president issued
a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

If the Confederacy didn't lay
down its arms by the new year,

the proclamation would be made final.

It's a turning point in the war because
it now says that, as of January 1st,

the end of slavery is gonna become
officially an aim of the Union war effort.

It's no longer gonna be just about
bringing the nation back together.

The war will not end
unless slavery is destroyed.

Lincoln's announcement only
fueled pro-slavery forces in the North.

General McClellan contemplated taking
a public stand against emancipation.

In the meantime, he refused to move
his army against the Confederates.

Washington was rife with
rumors of a possible coup.

"The army is dissatisfied,

and the air is thick with revolution.

God knows what will be the consequence,
but at present, matters look dark indeed."

By the first days of October,
Lincoln had had enough

and confronted McClellan
near the battlefield at Antietam.

There is a photograph of
Lincoln in McClellan's tent.

We don't know what
they're saying in that tent,

but we are aware of what was unsaid.

The undercurrents of mistrust and
resentment between these two men.

"I began to fear that
he was playing false,

that he did not want to hurt the enemy.

I saw how he could intercept the
enemy on the way to Richmond.

I determined to make that the test.

If he let them get away,
I would remove him.

He did and so I relieved him."

When Lincoln fired McClellan, he
created a formidable political rival.

McClellan instantly became
the leading Democratic candidate

to oppose Lincoln for
president in two years.

If he won, it would almost certainly
mean the end of emancipation.

On December 1st, with no signs that
the Confederacy intended to surrender,

Lincoln sent his annual
message to Congress.

The speech left little doubt

that he now saw the Union war effort
and emancipation as permanently linked.

"Fellow citizens, we
cannot escape history.

We of this Congress
and this administration,

will be remembered
in spite of ourselves.

The fiery trial through which
we pass will light us down,

in honor or dishonor,
to the latest generation.

We, even we here, hold the
power and bear the responsibility.

In giving freedom to the slave,
we assure freedom to the free.

We shall nobly save or meanly
lose the last best hope of Earth."

He says, "In giving
freedom to the slave,

we assure freedom to the free."

And talks about the
importance of thinking anew

and disenthralling ourselves.

Meaning, if we can think in new
ways, we can save our country.

So he's laying the groundwork
for a big new thought coming.

And that thought is emancipation.

"Whoever lives to see the
first day of next January,

may confidently look
in the morning papers

for the final proclamation granting
freedom and freedom forever

to all slaves within the Rebel states.

In this, we trust the last struggle
with the monster, slavery."

On December 13th, in
Fredericksburg, Virginia,

the Confederacy gave their on-the-ground
reply to Lincoln's soaring rhetoric.

In one of the most
lopsided battles of the war,

the Union army was routed,
suffering almost 13,000 casualties.

"If there's a hell," Lincoln was
overheard saying, "I am in it."

The real hell was being lived

by more than three and a half million
enslaved Black people in America,

with little hope or support for escape.

But all that was about to change.