All this week, we’re looking at significant days in American history with Douglas Brinkley, history professor at Rice University, CNN presidential historian, and contributor to the new National Geographic book “1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation.”
We look back at Nov. 6, 1860, the day Abraham Lincoln was elected president.
Lets talk about Nov, 1860. Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Why did you pick this date?
“I don’t think there was a more important presidential election ever. And it wasn’t just Abraham Lincoln. Hannibal Hamlin, a forgotten figure, became the [vice president].
“I chose this date for many reasons, but [this year], we’re celebrating our founding documents like the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers … Lincoln gave us other foundational documents, like his first inaugural, his second inaugural, and most importantly, the Emancipation Proclamation and The Gettysburg Address.”
One month after Lincoln’s election, South Carolina secedes, convinced that Lincoln will end slavery, and then, 10 more Southern states will follow suit. By the next spring, the Civil War begins. But on this day, Nov. 6, 1860, how do you imagine people are talking about the country?
“Their country was just about to disintegrate. Disunion was in the air on Lincoln’s ride to Washington, D.C. There [was] fear of assassinations. He had a body double that had to stand in for him.
“He gets there to the executive mansion — it’s always worth remembering it’s not the White House until [former President] Theodore Roosevelt names it that in the 20th century. In the 19th century, it’s still the executive mansion.
“Lincoln is now there. It’s just a lawn without much security, some goats munching on grass, and people can walk in back doors, through windows. And imagine you’re Lincoln. You weren’t elected by a majority. You weren’t on the ballot in states. …Virginia becomes part of the Confederacy. And Maryland claims a kind of neutrality, but it’s really sympathetic to the South. So he is just stuck there.
“It’s worth noting that whole first year of his presidency, the Confederacy having win after win under Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, and it gets to the point where Lincoln has to fire Gen. George McClellan and makes the extraordinary choice of Ulysses Grant, a very undersung military figure out there on the Mississippi River. And he now is the head of the Union Army, and that’s when things change.
“I picked 1860, but you could have picked 1864, because I’m always amazed that we ran a presidential election in the middle of the Civil War. And who ran against Lincoln, the Republican, in 1864? George McClellan. And then, of course, in 1944, we ran a presidential election that [former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] won in the middle of World War II. So what is sacred as we celebrate America 250 is no matter what, come thick or thin, we hold presidential elections every four years.”
Is there any other way you want to connect Nov. 6, 1860, to today?
“I think you really want to think about our Electoral College. Lincoln in 1860 did win the majority Electoral College, he prevailed in 18 states and he won his 180 electoral votes. But when you only receive 39.7% of the popular vote, that’s a large amount of people that were opposed to your agenda.
“You see in the 21st century the way that [former President] George W. Bush in 2000 was able to beat Al Gore, who won the popular vote but didn’t win the Electoral College. And ditto for when Hillary Clinton ran against [President] Donald Trump. She won by over a million popular votes, but Trump won the Electoral College. So in this case, we got Lincoln because of the Electoral College.”
We are in a moment when race is being highly debated in this country. The administration is rolling back diversity initiatives in the government and the military. Is there something about this moment that brings you back to Lincoln?
“We can study the founders all we want. But [former presidents] Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and James Madison and others, the Virginia dynasty, they were slave owners. And that always makes them not a fully sustainable hero.
“With Lincoln, who came up in a hardscrabble way in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois…we start the new America. It’s like a rebirth. And we had to go through the pangs of the Civil War.
“I do presidential history for a living. We’re asked to rank presidents. And it’s always Lincoln first. Abraham Lincoln is the quintessential figure in American history, not Washington and Jefferson. It is Lincoln.
“Lincoln’s able to use executive authority to do the Emancipation Proclamation. That gave future presidents like Theodore Roosevelt the belief that he could use executive power in innovative ways and tasks like saving the Grand Canyon. And since then, it’s been a march of the executive branch having more authority than Congress. And that’s where we’re at right now. People are once again debating how much power should a president have. And the Constitution is quite vague about that.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Julia Corcoran produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt and Emiko Tamagawa. Tamagawa also produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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