Lincoln's Dilemma (2022): Season 1, Episode 3 - A New Birth of Freedom - full transcript

- Power to...
- ...the People!

- Power to...
- ...the People!

- Power to...
- ...the People!

- Power to...
- ...the People!

This statue represents the
oppression of Black people.

There's this myth of Lincoln
as the Great Emancipator.

The idea is that Lincoln
was the driving force

behind the eradication of
slavery in the Civil War era.

This is the beneficent father

who bestows upon the benighted slave

his long mislaid freedom.



...anything memorial to the white
saviorism that was Abraham Lincoln.

That's your opinion.

Abraham Lincoln
was not an abolitionist.

Get that through your thick skulls!

He does not deserve this platform.

He did not start his presidency
to be the Great Emancipator.

He wanted to be the great unifier,

the person that brought the
country back together again.

The phrase "the Great Emancipator"

is not a phrase Lincoln
asked to be applied to himself.

And we can do better,
beginning with the recognition

that emancipation began
with the emancipated.

Lincoln, like most white
Americans at the time,

was forced to reckon with
slavery and its consequences



due to Black people themselves.

You can't trust this country

to tell the truth when it comes
to what happens to our people,

to Black people.

And, of course, a country that does
that creates these types of symbols.

Of course it does.

Somebody said about Abraham Lincoln,

he was inwardly truly radical.

However, to get ahead he had to muffle

and restrain that inner radicalism.

He wasn't being conservative,
he was being political.

Now, you can say that being
political's a terribly immoral thing.

Well, that may be true
unless you're a politician.

Unless you're a president.

As a federal taxpayer,
we do own that statue.

- We all own it, okay?
- So you don't get to tear it down.

- This is Chocolate City, bitch!
- You don't get to decide for everybody.

What we're seeing today
is really dramatic evidence

of what happens when you fail
to talk honestly about your history.

We have to tell the truth

about who we are and
about how we get here.

That is why we are
tearing this statue down.

We can't know or understand Lincoln

at the same time that we
have an emotional investment

in preserving him as a savior.

But it is in understanding
the trial and error,

and the failures,

and the shortcomings
and the contradictions,

that he becomes most useful to us.

And really only by understanding
the things he got wrong,

can we really grasp the
magnitude and importance

of the things that he got right.

To overcome these challenges,

to restore the soul and
secure the future of America,

requires so much more than words.

It requires the most elusive of
all things in a democracy... unity.

Unity.

In another January,

on New Year's Day in 1863,

Abraham Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation.

When he put pen to paper,
the president said, and I quote,

"If my name ever goes down
into history it will be for this act,

and my whole soul is in it."

My whole soul is in it.

Once Lincoln commits himself
through the Emancipation Proclamation

to universal emancipation,

all the slaves in all of the
seceded states will be emancipated.

This is the moment at which
war becomes revolution.

The Emancipation Proclamation
was radical because it was a statement

that the federal government was
going to be taking steps to end slavery.

It was radical because
it said that freedom...

that emancipation was a war aim.

And so it's saying that
the Civil War can't be won

unless enslaved people
in the South are freed.

But it was also conservative, or
moderate, or limited in profound ways

because it didn't touch
slavery in the border states

because it required enslaved people
to find their ways to the Union lines

in order to actually gain the
freedom that was being held out.

African Americans were
leaving the plantations and farms

long before Lincoln
issued the proclamation.

But the proclamation is important
because it tells those people

that the president
of the United States,

the most powerful man in the country,

is telling you, you are free to go.

And so, even if they
were not in the vicinity

of a Union force at the time,

they knew the proclamation existed.

When news of the proclamation reached
the Sea Islands in South Carolina,

hundreds of once-enslaved
people gathered to celebrate

on an abandoned plantation.

"New Years Day, Emancipation
Day, was a glorious one to us.

Our hearts were filled with
an exceeding great gladness

for although the government
had left much undone,

we knew that freedom was
surely born in our land that day."

Among those celebrating
on the Sea Islands

were members of one of the first
Black regiments in the Union Army,

the South Carolina Volunteers,

who for months had been quietly
readying themselves for war.

Now with this
Emancipation Proclamation,

Lincoln officially welcomed
them as full combatants.

Lincoln sees through military necessity

how much Black troops can
change the tide of the war.

And he realizes if we
are going to win the war,

the only way we can do it
is by letting Black men fight

and freeing the enslaved wholesale.

"The Colored population is the
great available and yet unavailed force

for restoring the Union."

The bare sight of 50,000
armed and drilled Black soldiers

on the banks of the Mississippi
would end the rebellion at once."

The Confederate government
threatened to enslave or execute

any Black soldier it captured.

Still, Black Northerners
rushed to enlist.

The idea that there
were these Black soldiers,

many of them former slaves,

who were willing to fight and kill

on behalf of the cause of freedom
for themselves and their people,

is just... it continues to
be an astounding concept.

They wanted emancipation.

They wanted, in that sense, democracy,

in a country that held
itself as a democracy.

They wanted freedom in a country

that was allegedly founded
upon the principal of freedom.

On May 28th, in a sight
unimaginable a year earlier,

more than 1,000 troops
of the 54th Massachusetts,

some of them as young as 16,

marched proudly through Boston.

Rally, boys, rally Let
us never mind the past

We had a hard road to travel
But our day is coming fast

For God is for the right
And we have no need to fear

The Union must be saved
By the colored volunteer

Many new soldiers had answered
the call of Frederick Douglass

who had traveled the North
recruiting free Black men for the cause.

He'd give speeches

actively encouraging Northern
Blacks to enlist in the Union Army.

Notwithstanding the fact that
they are discriminated against,

but he says nevertheless, we
have a lot of skin in this game

and it is very important for us to
be active participants in this war.

"Once, let the Black man get
upon his person the brass letters US.

Let him get an eagle on his button

and a musket on his shoulder
and bullets in his pocket,

there is no power on earth which can deny
he has earned the right of citizenship."

Black Union soldiers were very, very
clear about what they were fighting for.

They were fighting to free
themselves and their family,

and fighting to destroy
the institution of slavery.

Frederick Douglass had his
two sons join the Union Army.

Even though the casualties
and the fatalities were quite high,

he was prepared to encourage
his sons to engage in that battle

because he believes you
have to fight for freedom.

Douglass's oldest son, Lewis,

signed up for the elite
54th Massachusetts.

Days before shipping out
to face an unknown fate

on bloody Southern battlefields,
he wrote to his fianc?e.

"My dear girl, while I am away
do not fret yourself to death.

Oh, I beg of you, do not.

Remember that if I fall, that
it is in the cause of humanity.

That I am striking a
blow for the welfare

of the most abused and despised
race on the face of the earth.

That in the solution of
this strife rests the question

of our elevation or our degradation.

Our happiness or our misery."

Six weeks after the parade in Boston,

Douglass and the 54th saw
their first combat in South Carolina.

Destroying the enemy was
only half of their mission.

The other half was to
liberate enslaved people,

transport them to safety and
get them into Union blue uniforms.

This is a real revolutionary
transformation.

This is taking slaves
off the plantations,

arming them, putting
them in Union uniforms

and then turning around and
shooting at their former masters.

Using emancipation to overthrow
the system of slavery itself.

There's an insignia that William
Bowser, an African American, designed.

It featured the image
of a Black soldier

holding a rifle with the bayonet point

directed at a cowering white
Confederate soldier who is on the ground.

Every time I see that image,

I get chills at what it
meant for someone

who had been abjectly
debased and abused

to now be in a position to fight

against the people who had
held them in these conditions.

In July 1863,

Harper's Magazine published the
story of a runaway they called Gordon,

who fled a plantation for a Union
Army camp near Baton Rouge.

A web of scars were a map of the
brutality he'd suffered in bondage.

We rarely see the second image,

which is the image
of Gordon in uniform.

And it is the most powerful
depiction of what was at stake.

On the one hand, you had this man

whose back is a literal
testament to the horrors of slavery.

And on the other hand, you had this man

who is in an army fighting to end it.

That summarizes the emotional import

of what it meant for people to be
able to put on the uniform after 1863.

On the very same page,

Harper's recorded a breathless
account of African American soldiers

in a daring action
against the Confederacy.

On the night of June 1st,

two federal gunboats
moved in near silence

along the Combahee
River in South Carolina.

Onboard were members of a Black
regiment and an unlikely figure...

Harriet Tubman.

Tubman, who had once led
escapes on the underground railroad

had a network of informants

who had learned the
location of Confederate troops.

As the boats crept upriver,

pockets of volunteers went ashore

driving out the rebel soldiers and
burning plantations to the ground.

As signals were sounded,

hundreds of enslaved men, women and
children who had been sheltering nearby

sprinted toward the shoreline and
scrambled aboard waiting rowboats.

There were about 700 people

who were brought out of there
as a consequence of that action.

This is a Black woman who's doing this.

She is... I can't let... I'm going to...

She's a badass,
okay? It's simple as that.

Many of the escapees from
Tubman's Combahee raid

were recruited to fight in the war.

By the spring of 1863,

tens of thousands of Black
soldiers had joined them.

By this time,

Black men were serving
in significant numbers

in the Union Army and Navy.

And Lincoln was hearing
from his generals in the field

that they were really
making a difference.

At battles like Port Hudson, Louisiana,

and Milliken's Bend, Mississippi

Black soldiers held
up under intense fire

proving they were as fit to
fight as any white soldiers.

Many white Americans were
skeptical about Black men's ability

to be significant
contributors to the Civil War.

And part of what Black
folks were always trying to do

was not only fight against
the rebel Southerners,

but to fight against these perceptions.

"The bravery of the Blacks

completely revolutionized
the sentiment of the army

with regard to the
employment of Negro troops.

I heard prominent officers,

who formally in private had sneered
at the idea of Negroes fighting,

as heartily in favor of it."

They fought with a great ferocity.

They fought in ways that
enabled the Union Army,

that was facing a
manpower problem in 1863,

to keep its forces in the field,

and to keep the enormous
pressure on the Confederate rebels.

But even with the
reinforcement of Black troops,

the Union Army was
suffering defeat after defeat.

The Confederacy was doing
way better than anyone expected.

Against all odds, with
far fewer resources,

and people were really afraid.

1862 had ended with
a string of Union losses,

especially at the
Battle of Fredericksburg,

where over 12,000 soldiers fell.

In the wake of some
of these horrific defeats,

Lincoln was deeply depressed

because these deaths weighed
heavily on his own conscience.

It's hard to imagine how much
suffering Lincoln experienced

by the letters that
he received everyday.

You read them now, even at this
distance, they're heartbreaking.

He knows how much people are losing.

He knows, having lost a
son himself, what that means.

"Dear sir, I am a widow,
left with only these two sons

who have both left me to
fight for the good cause.

And I am proud to send them forth,

although they leave me
desolate and heartbroken

as they were all I had for my support

and were my only hope in this world.

But I have given them up.

But trust in God's mercy to
return them to me someday."

Lincoln knew that many young
boys would not come home.

In the spring of 1863, in
Chancellorsville, Virginia,

the Confederates
inflicted 17,000 casualties.

Lincoln was at the brink of despair.

"Never, as long as I knew Lincoln,
did he seem to be so broken,

so dispirited and so ghostlike.

Clasping his hands behind his back,

he walked up and down the room saying,

'My God! My God, what
will the country say?'"

Morale in the loyal
North is incredibly low.

It looks like this war, that they
had started fighting for union

has now been turned into something

that many of them had never
gone to war for in the first place.

A war for emancipation.

And there's a real sense that
men aren't going to fight anymore.

With the prospect of running
out of soldiers to fight the war,

Lincoln pushed through Congress

the first military draft
in American history.

There were large numbers
of people in the North

who were opposed to making
the war about ending slavery.

They got very upset when he
issued the Emancipation Proclamation

and the Draft Act.

As a matter of fact, there were people
they called Copperheads in the North

who were opposed to making
the war a war to free the slaves.

So here's how their argument goes.

"So you're telling me, Mr. Lincoln,

that you've drafted my
sons to go down there

in Virginia or Tennessee to fight.

And you're going to prolong the war

by expanding its
purpose to end slavery.

I believe this has been
your purpose all along.

I believe you're listening too much
to people like Frederick Douglass

and the people whispering in your ears
that this is a chance to ennoble yourself.

And here's what I want,
I want this war to end."

Lincoln tried to stifle dissent,

declaring that during the war,

the Constitution gave him the
power to close unfriendly newspapers

and charge critics of his
war effort with sedition.

"He who dissuades one
man from volunteering

or induces one soldier to desert,

weakens the Union cause

as much as he who kills
a Union soldier in battle."

Opposition newspapers
called Lincoln a tyrant

who was selling out the
American people for Negro rights.

It's fundamentally wrong
to argue that Lincoln...

As the kind of Confederate
apologists tend to...

that Lincoln was
this tyrannical figure.

It's certainly not in comparison

with a cause that was willing
to fight virtually to their last man

for the right to buy, sell,

rape, abuse, traffic and
breed human beings.

As public support for the war eroded,

Lincoln finally caught a break.

His enemy made a mistake.

Lee is keenly aware
that sentiment in the North

is pushing against Lincoln.

He knows that there is a
strong anti-war position.

He knows that there are
many Northern democrats

calling for some sort
of peace negotiation.

And he believes that if
he can take the war north,

that he can convince the United States

to give up their quest
to subdue the rebellion.

"If we can baffle the Yankees
in their various designs this year,

and our people are true to our
cause, our success will be certain.

Next fall, there'll be a great
change in public opinion in the North.

The republicans will be destroyed."

Lee planned to invade Pennsylvania

and deliver a crushing
blow on Union territory.

If he invaded Pennsylvania

and won yet another smashing
victory on the scale of Chancellorsville

that surely this would force the
Lincoln administration to sue for peace.

"When Lee crossed the Potomac
and entered Pennsylvania,

followed by our army,

I felt that the crisis had come.

I knew that defeat in a
great battle on northern soil

would mean the loss of Washington,

to be followed, perhaps, by the
intervention of England and France

in favor of the Confederacy.

The burden was more than I could bear.

I went to my room and got
down on my knees in prayer

Never before had I prayed
with so much earnestness."

Beginning on July 1st,

the Union and
Confederate armies clashed

in what would be the
pivotal battle of the war.

It would take place in Gettysburg.

Gettysburg is a small hamlet

that has several roads coming
in from different directions.

The Union Army is there in force.

Lee's entire army is there in force.

And if you can imagine,
it's shaped like a fishhook.

The right end of the
line is on Culp's Hill.

And the left line will extend
down along Cemetery Ridge,

down to two smaller ridges

that will later become known
as Little and Big Round Top.

Lee's forces are spread
out along Seminary Ridge.

He is in a long arc of battle there.

For two days,

soldiers fought close enough
to see into each other's eyes.

"At 2:00 p.m. they opened on us.

We lay flat on our faces for two hours.

The air was filled with shell
bursting in every direction.

Our regiment lost 100
men in ten minutes.

I went over the field.

Such a sight I never wish to see again.

There were so many wounded

that it was impossible
to attend to all of them."

On the left of the Union line,

a sergeant noticed
something surprising.

"An American citizen of African
descent had taken position.

And with a gun and cartridge box,
which he took from one of our dead men,

was more than piling hot
lead into the graybacks."

"His coolness and bravery was
commented upon by all who saw him.

If the Negro regiments
fight like he did,

I don't wonder that
the rebs hate them so."

On the third day of battle,

Lee believed he'd weakened
the center of the Union lines

and ordered a desperate
charge right at their heart.

But Lee was wrong.

His counterpart General Meade
had reinforced the very spot

the Confederates were rushing.

And the Union repelled the charge
with a withering counterattack.

It was the greatest Confederate
tactical disaster of the war.

At least 50% of all the Confederate
soldiers who went forward

were killed, wounded or captured.

And of course, that night, Lee
made the decision to retreat.

As the Confederate army fled,

the people of Gettysburg emerged
from hiding and returned home.

Fifteen-year-old Tillie Pierce found
her lodgings had become a hospital,

and she was needed
immediately as a nurse.

"The approaches were crowded
with wounded, dying and dead.

The air was filled with
moanings and groanings.

As we passed on toward the house,
we were compelled to pick our steps

in order that we might not
tread on the prostrate bodies.

When we entered the house, we found it
also completely filled with the wounded.

Amputating benches had
been placed about the house.

I saw them lifting the
poor men upon them,

then surgeons sawing and
cutting off arms and legs.

I saw the wounded throwing themselves
wildly about and shrieking with pain

while the operation was going on.

I could have no other feeling

than that the whole scene
was one of cruel butchery."

More than 50,000 men were killed,
wounded or missing at Gettysburg.

Lee's army was staggering.

But worried about the
exhaustion of his own troops,

General Meade failed
to deliver the final blow.

He allowed Lee a safe retreat.

Lincoln was furious.

"I do not believe you
appreciate the magnitude

of the misfortune
involved in Lee's escape.

He was within your easy grasp,

and to have closed upon
him would have ended the war.

As it is, the war will be
prolonged indefinitely.

Your golden opportunity is gone,

and I am distressed
immeasurably because of it."

Recognizing the need for a far
more aggressive style of warfare,

Lincoln turned to a general
who had proved his bellicosity

in several victories in the West.

Grant says, "We can't win the war
the way we have been fighting, which is

with respect for the
property of the slave owners."

You know? "We now have to unleash"...
go to what they called "the hard war."

The army will be able to just seize crops
and, uh, food and all sorts of things.

It's going to be a
different kind of war.

By the time we get to 1863,

with Grant, who is trying
to capture Vicksburg,

that last stronghold
on the Mississippi River,

we see Grant instituting
his strategy of exhaustion.

"Let's attack their infrastructure.
Let's tear up their railroads.

Let's destroy their mills. Let's
destroy Confederate morale.

And if we can destroy Confederate
morale, then we can end this war."

Grant's punishing siege worked.

On July 4, the day after
the victory at Gettysburg,

Union soldiers raised the
American flag over Vicksburg.

"My dear General,

I write this now as a
grateful acknowledgment

for the almost inestimable
service you have done the country.

When you first reached
the vicinity of Vicksburg,

I never had any faith
that you could succeed.

I now wish to make the personal
acknowledgment that you were right,

and I was wrong."

The news of Vicksburg would not
reach Washington for several days.

Gettysburg fueled a joyous
July 4 celebration in the capital.

But to many Northerners,

Lincoln's war had turned
into a fight for emancipation,

a cause they would
not risk their lives for.

Called up by the first military
draft in American history,

thousands of new conscripts
simply refused to join.

The draft, which had been
enacted not long before,

is being implemented in New York,

which meant that people's
names are being pulled out of a box.

And many people in New York,

particularly Irish immigrants,
who were democrats,

did not want to be
drafted into the army.

The draft riot begins as an
assault on the draft offices,

but it very quickly metastasized
into something much bigger

and much more dangerous.

It becomes a kind of racial pogrom,

with Black people lynched
on the streets of New York City

or driven from the city

having to take refuge
across the river in New Jersey.

It was an assault on Black people

who were blamed for
the Civil War taking place.

"A ferocious mob poured
out its fiercest wrath

upon the colored
people and their friends.

It spared neither age nor sex.

It hanged Negroes simply
because they were Negroes.

It murdered women in their homes
and burned their homes over their heads.

It dashed out the brains of
young children against lampposts.

It burned the colored-orphan
asylum and scarce allowing time

for the helpless 200 children
to make good their escape."

More than a hundred people
were killed in the draft riots

before soldiers returning from
Gettysburg were sent in to restore order.

The racism that fueled the
violence in New York was also felt

by Black soldiers in the Union army.

They have to deal with
such horrific circumstances.

They are given broken-down
equipment and broken-down horses.

They are put on fatigue duty.

They are punished as
if they are still enslaved.

They don't get equal pay.

So, these Black men
who are risking their lives

are not being treated as soldiers.

But when they go into battle,

they respond to the threat in a
way that no one can challenge.

And so, an example of that
is the 54th at Fort Wagner.

Members of the Massachusetts 54th

refused to accept
payments of $10 per month

while white soldiers were earning $13.

But they fought anyway.

More than 600 members of the 54th
gathered on a sandy beach on July 18,

preparing to lead the charge

against the Confederate stronghold
of Fort Wagner, South Carolina.

Among them, Frederick
Douglass's eldest son, Lewis.

"The troops went
forward in deep silence.

until the 54th Massachusetts
was within 200 yards of the work."

"When the men gave a fierce
yell and rushed up the bank,

the enemy opened upon them furiously

with grape, canister, and a
continuous fusillade of small arms.

The gallant Negroes, however, plunged on
regardless of this murderous reception,

leaving more than one half of
their number dead upon the field."

The 54th flag-bearer
was mortally wounded.

But before the flag
could hit the ground,

Private William Carney
snatched it and held it aloft.

Despite being shot himself, Carney
crawled to the walls of Fort Wagner

where he defiantly
planted the flag in the sand.

"My dear Amelia,
men fell all around me.

A shell would explode
and clear a space of 20 feet.

Our men would close up
again, but it was no use.

We had to retreat, which was
a very hazardous undertaking.

How I got out of that fight
alive I cannot tell, but I am here.

I must bid you farewell
should I be killed.

Remember, if I die, I
die in a good cause."

Lewis Douglass, William Carney and
scores of other wounded Black soldiers

were cared for in field
hospitals by Black nurses.

Susie King Taylor had learned to
read and write while enslaved in Georgia.

She wrote of her experiences.

"Outside of the fort were
many skulls lying about.

They were a gruesome sight, those
fleshless heads and grinning jaws.

It seems strange how our aversion
to seeing suffering is overcome in war.

How we are able to see
the most sickening sights,

such as men with their limbs blown
off and mangled by the deadly shells

without a shudder.

And instead of turning away,

how we hurry to assist in alleviating
their pain, bind up their wounds

and press the cool
water to their parched lips

with feelings only of
sympathy and pity."

Shaken by the near-death
of his son at Fort Wagner,

Frederick Douglass decided the
moment had arrived to do something brash:

Introduce himself to Abraham Lincoln.

For years, Douglass had been one
of Lincoln's most persistent critics.

Frederick Douglass is
constantly in Lincoln's ear.

And he's constantly
keeping his feet to the fire

and pushing him on Black humanity

and Black people's
ability to fight in the war

and not just serve in the war, but
also be treated equally in that war.

Douglass lets him have it.

And he's scathingly critical
of Lincoln in 1861 and 1862.

As Lincoln moves, first slowly and
then swiftly, toward emancipation,

Douglass is impressed,
and he begins to say that.

And then, they finally meet in person.

It's not like he has an
appointment or anything.

He shows up, Lincoln
finds out that he's there,

and Lincoln takes him
over all of these white men

who are enraged that this
Black man is allowed to come in

to see Lincoln ahead of them.

Face-to-face with the president,

Douglass raised the
mistreatment of Black soldiers,

especially those captured
by the Confederacy.

The Confederacy insisted that
Black soldiers were not to be treated

as prisoners of war.

They didn't see them as prisoners of
war. They said, "These are slave rebels.

They are runaway slaves.
They are slaves in rebellion."

And according to Southern law,

a slave who's in rebellion
is punished by death.

For white Southerners,
for the Confederate military,

it was a source of rage to go to war

and to see that they were
fighting against Black men.

Anyone could die in war.

Only certain people could die
or potentially be enslaved in war.

And that was the threat, the
danger that Black men faced...

that Black soldiers faced.

Douglass said, "You've
got to have retribution.

In other words, if they kill
captured American soldiers,

you've got to execute
captured Confederate soldiers."

"If the president is ever to
demand justice and humanity

for Black soldiers,

is not this the time for him to do it?

How many 54ths must be cut to pieces,

its mutilated prisoners killed
and its living sold into slavery

to be tortured to death by inches

before Mr. Lincoln shall
say, 'Hold. Enough'?"

Douglass's argument was
already on Lincoln's mind.

Only days before the meeting,

the president had received
an extraordinary letter

from the mother of a Black soldier.

"Dear sir, my son
fought at Fort Wagner,

but thank God he was not
taken prisoner, as many were.

I thought of this thing
before I let my boy go.

But then they said,

'Mr. Lincoln will never let them
sell our colored soldiers for slaves.

If they do, he will get them back
quick. He will retaliate and stop it.'

Now, Mr. Lincoln,

will you see that the colored
men fighting now are fairly treated?

You ought to do this and do it at once.

We poor oppressed ones
appeal to you and ask fair play.

Yours for Christ's
sake, Hannah Johnson."

Lincoln had already issued
a retaliation order stating that

if the South executed or
enslaved a Black prisoner of war,

the North would do
the same to one of theirs

with slavery replaced by hard labor.

But Lincoln had not
carried out the order

against a single captured
Confederate prisoner.

Lincoln said, "You know...

It's a hard thing to do to
execute captured soldiers.

Of course, what's
happening to Black soldiers

in the South is reprehensible.

But I don't know that I can make it
the official policy of the Union army

to have retribution."

Torn between his outrage and
his conscience, Lincoln demurred.

"If I could get hold of the
men that murdered your troops,

murdered our prisoners of
war, I would execute them.

But I cannot take men that may
not have had anything to do with

this murdering of our
soldiers and execute them."

Still, Lincoln was personally moved

by the courage of Black soldiers in
facing down the Confederate threat.

Seeing Black folks in action,
in motion, that helped to change

the ways a lot of white Northerners
felt about African Americans.

And so, I suspect that Lincoln
would have felt the same.

Seeing the dedication
of Black men in battle,

that that might have
influenced the ways

he thought about African Americans
as people and as American people.

In late August,

Lincoln wrote a letter to be
published in newspapers nationwide.

"Peace does not appear
so distant as it did.

I hope it will come
soon and come to stay.

And then, there will be some
Black men who can remember

that with silent tongue
and clenched teeth

and steady eye and well-poised bayonet,

they have helped mankind
onto this great consummation.

While I fear there will be some
white ones unable to forget that,

with malignant hearts
and deceitful speech,

they strove to hinder it."

For Lincoln, the sacrifices of
Black soldiers sealed a compact.

Once Blacks begin
serving in the Union army,

Lincoln says, "They are guaranteeing

that emancipation is going
to be an outcome of this war.

They're fighting for
their own freedom."

He recognizes that.
They're fighting for the nation,

but they're also fighting for
the freedom of their people.

What he really comes to
do is to unite these projects

of saving the Union
and freeing the slaves.

The war cannot be won,
the Union cannot be reunited,

the States cannot be fully
understood as united once again

unless emancipation takes place.

In November, Lincoln
traveled to Pennsylvania

to speak at a new cemetery for
Union soldiers killed at Gettysburg.

For months, Lincoln had wondered
why God had allowed so much suffering

and how that suffering
could be redeemed.

He's thinking about repentance
from a spiritual perspective.

How, as a country, do we
repent of the sins of slavery?

How do we make sense of this?

How do we right ourselves again?

How do we become righteous again?

The ground shifted

and Lincoln began to
realize this is actually a war

to end something that
has always threatened

the sanctity of our ideals as a people.

And either we will live
up to what we promised

in the moment of our creation,
the Declaration of Independence.

That we would stand for
a code of human rights,

treat people decently, or
we'd be a nation of hypocrites.

On the morning of November 19th,

Lincoln mounted a horse and rode
to the new cemetery at Gettysburg.

The crowd parted to let him through.

George Gitt, a 15-year-old local boy,

hid among the large boxes
underneath the speaker's dais.

He waited for two hours

while Edward Everett,
the featured speaker,

labored through his oration.

"When Everett finished speaking,

Lincoln slowly took his hand
from his chin, bent slightly forward,

and very deliberately drew
from an inner pocket of his coat

a few flimsy pieces of paper.

Tucking away the papers, he arose

and very slowly stepped
to the front of the platform."

"Fourscore and seven years ago,

our fathers brought
forth on this continent

a new nation conceived in liberty

and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged
in a great civil war,

testing whether that nation,

or any nation so conceived and
so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a great
battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate
a portion of that field

as a final resting place for
those who here gave their lives

that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense,

we cannot dedicate,

we cannot consecrate,

we cannot hallow this ground.

The brave men, living and
dead, who struggled here

have consecrated it far above
our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note nor
long remember what we say here,

but it can never forget
what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather,

to be dedicated here
to the unfinished work

which they who fought here
have thus so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated
to the great task remaining before us,

that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion

to that cause for which they here
gave the last full measure of devotion.

That we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain.

That this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom.

And that government of the
people, by the people, for the people,

shall not perish from the Earth."

The key phrase... I think
it's only four words long.

It's the "new birth of freedom."

The early idea of America,
the constitution and the...

all those millions of compromises
with the South, that's over now.

And we're going to win this war.

And we're gonna build a
better country than we ever had.

What he's saying is that,

"I have started to care in a new
way about African Americans."

That the Union is insufficient.

That the Union is
perhaps even meaningless,

without actually making real this
idea that all men are created equal.

Lincoln's speech was 272 words,

but Edward Everett understood
the magnitude of what he'd just heard.

"I should be glad," he said,

"if I came as near to the central
idea of the occasion in two hours

as you did in two minutes."

On the train ride home,
Lincoln fell ill with a high fever.

It was smallpox.

Beside him was a Black
man, his valet, William Johnson,

who had come with him to
Washington from Springfield.

For the next two weeks, he
tended to the ailing president.

Lincoln recovered,
but Johnson would not.

In January 1864, he died of smallpox,

likely contracted from Lincoln himself.

Though a free man who had died
in the course of serving a president,

Johnson never enjoyed his
full rights as an American citizen.

"Men talk about saving the Union
and restoring the Union as it was.

What business have we
to fight for the old Union?

We are fighting for something
incomparably better than the old Union.

We are fighting for unity.

Unity of idea, unity of sentiment
in which there shall be no North,

no South, no East, no
West, no Black, no white,

but a solidarity of the nation,

making every slave free
and every free man a voter."

I think that it's really
important that we recognize

that there's a difference
between freedom and equality.

And, fundamentally, freed
people were not enslaved.

They had that fundamental right of...
of, you know, like, liberty of person.

But that was not the end. That
was not all that Black folks wanted.

There was an understanding that freedom
and equality were different things

and that both of them were desirable,
that freedom itself was not enough.

Fivescore years ago...

a great American in whose
symbolic shadow we stand today

signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

But 100 years later...

the Negro still is not free.

Emancipation is really
about beginnings, not ends.

You can abolish slavery,

but if you don't reckon
with the spirit of slavery,

we will always have it with us.

You can't have equality
without emancipation.

You can't have
emancipation without equality.

And that's what
Lincoln is dealing with.

Trying to get not just himself

but the entire country to grapple with,

"Who are we as Americans?"