S1: You're listening to Kpbs Midday Edition , I'm Jade Hindman. Many books have been written about the life of Abraham Lincoln. He is a seminal figure in American history. While a new book looks into the nuances of his ability to negotiate in a divided America and how his political strategy could actually be useful today , the book's author is a voice many of you might recognize. Steve Inskeep is the longtime co-host of National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new book is called Differ We Must How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America , and he joins us now. Steve , welcome to Midday Edition. Steve , welcome to Midday Edition.
S2: Honored to be here. Thank you.
S1: Glad to have you. So you begin your book making the point that Lincoln was a politician more than anything else.
S2: It's almost like a pejorative , a swear word. But politics is what you have to do in a democracy. Democracy only works if a majority of people can gather in a coalition to do things that are better than doing nothing , or at least keep the system together for another day. And that was Lincoln's skill. That was his ability , which was extraordinarily difficult in divided times. Just as we face some challenges in ours.
S1: And tell us about the title of of the book differ. We must I.
S2: Think that gets to the to the heart of Lincoln's challenge. It's a phrase that Lincoln himself wrote in a letter to his best friend. His best friend was a slave owner named Joshua Speed , or rather , I should say to be precise , from a slaveholding family. He had grown up on a farm where his father owned more than 50 human beings , and their forced labor produced hemp to support the family. Abraham Lincoln , of course , had grown up poor in a free or in a family that did not support slavery. He did not support slavery. And in the 1850s , when Lincoln was a rising politician and slavery was the central issue in the country , they had something of an argument. And Lincoln wrote him a letter and he said , Joshua , I understand that in the abstract , you're against slavery , which is true. Joshua admitted that slavery was wrong , but then he said , you're not actually serious about doing anything about it. Your political course is all wrong. And slave owners often talk about the way that slavery is evil in the abstract , but they never vote that way. So he was telling off his friend , but then he said , if for this we must differ. Differ we must. He effectively was saying philosophically , we're not going to agree on this , but I'm not going to abandon you either. I'm not going to cast you aside. He even signed the letter your friend forever. I think it's kind of a challenge to us today , because we tend to be almost horrified at this point , at talking with or dealing with or associating with somebody who has a wildly different point of view. It almost seems dirty , it almost seems immoral. But Lincoln held on to people and tried to see what he could get out of the situation. And in the case of Joshua Speed , a few years later , Lincoln was president , the country was at war over slavery , and Joshua Speed remained loyal to the Union and even did an important service in keeping his state of Kentucky in the Union.
S1: And , you know , we were at war. And once that Emancipation Proclamation was signed , Lincoln , though he was against slavery , he did not agree with integration. Correct.
S2: Well , this is really complicated , but the short answer is yes. Lincoln failed to speak up against what were called the black laws in his home state of Illinois , and there were similar laws in a great number of states where slavery was nominally or really banned. And yet black people lived in a separate legal world where they weren't allowed to vote , weren't allowed to testify on juries , weren't allowed to testify in court , weren't allowed to serve on juries in Illinois. They had to file evidence of their free status that they weren't slaves with the county clerk. There were all sorts of disadvantages that black people faced , even though they were the neighbors , and in some cases , the friends of the white people right next to them , right down the street. Lincoln had a close friend , William Floresville , who was from Haiti , who was his barber , and they knew each other's kids. Lincoln did legal work for him , but he was in a separate world , and Lincoln did not speak out. Now , was he in favor of segregation ? In some ways , you'd again have to say yes. For much of his career , he seemed to be politically ducking the idea of what happens after slavery. There were a lot of white people who could be persuaded that slavery was a bad idea , but they were afraid of living next to several million free. Black people and moving them somewhere else was a way to remove that fear. And Lincoln , on a number of occasions , spoke in favor of colonization , sending freed people somewhere else. In the end , of course , he gave up on that concept and accepted what has happened instead , which is that black Americans were freed from slavery. Many of them fought for the country in the Civil War , and they gained full citizenship. Although , as we know , that has been a struggle for many generations as well.
S1:
S2: It's kind of an amazing thing to think about. This is the great anti-slavery president , and a lot of abolitionists of his time considered him backward and too conservative. We think about the eloquent speeches that Lincoln made in favor of equality. If we look at the Gettysburg Address or the second inaugural address , they're among the most beautiful things that anyone has written. And they do speak up for an equal society , and they speak up for equality. And I think the logic of Lincoln's speeches always pointed toward equality. I can find you speeches where he said , it's absolutely a crime and despotism if a black man cannot govern himself , which is essentially saying everyone needs to be politically equal , even though we can also find quotes where he says other things. And so it's clear that he knew the way things should go. But in his political situation , he was often aiming for something less than that because he was trying to build a majority of political support , and a lot of more progressive voices were impatient with him , the most famous one being Frederick Douglass , who denounced him in public again and again and again. Although this is a book about people who disagreed with one another and had a meeting anyway , and in the end Douglass went and met Abraham Lincoln , and he still didn't agree with Lincoln about everything , but they ended up being allies.
S1:
S2: He could be a crafty person. And I don't think that he you couldn't find very many occasions where he ever lied , but he would leave things out. He's famous for his words. But I noticed the more that I followed him and studied him , his silences , the things that he did not say , and the most shrewd people around him would also understand that he could talk and talk and talk in a meeting and be very entertaining. It even seemed very informative. But leave out the most important fact. If he did not feel it was to his advantage to be disclosing it to that person , he was sometimes curating slightly different versions of himself for different people. That was one of his many techniques that he used to try to get people with very different views , at least a little bit on the same page.
S1: And you wrote this book through the 2020 election and you cite the January 6th insurrection. Yeah. At the Capitol at the end of your book saying the history I was writing was the news.
S2: But studying the past does lengthen your view , lengthen your perspective , and you understand simple things like we've survived terrible situations before. That doesn't mean we'll survive this one , but it does suggest that we have a system that has a lot of resiliency , that has a lot of redundancy built in. There's a lot of talent and strength in the American people and our diversity , our differences can be a strength. And as a matter of fact , our differences and disagreements. The thing that upset us on some level , that is what democracy is , is facing your fellow citizen who is free and can think freely and will end up in a different place than you are. But still , how can a majority of us , not everybody , but at least a majority of us , end up on the same page enough to keep the democracy going , to keep the system going for another generation. And it does give you a little bit of confidence to know how much has gone before , and even if not enough confidence. You get information about how your fellow human beings wrestled with similar situations in the past.
S1: Yeah , and one last question. Sure. You know , your book , it focuses on Lincoln's social intelligence.
S2: I hadn't thought of it , but I think that's exactly right. Ultimately , Lincoln was about relating to people , and he would do that sometimes through the written word. He , as we said , was could be a brilliant writer , but often it was in face to face interactions. And that was true from his time as a very young boy. And this is a time of less technology and less literacy. So it's all about the face and face encounter , that's what. Politics ultimately was about. That's what democracy ultimately was about. And I realized as I began focusing on that , I saw more and more quotes from people who had known him , who noted how carefully he observed grown ups even as a boy , and that if a grown up came to his parents house , he would listen to the whole conversation. And then when the grown up left , he would have a million questions for his parents about what had been said and why he was filing away all this information about people. And then I think that came out again in what he chose to say and in what he chose to leave unsaid. That's what his politics was.
S1: Steve Inskeep , his new book is titled Differ We Must How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America. And Steve , thank you so much for joining us.
S2: This was fun. Thank you for the questions.
S1: That's our show for today. Don't forget to watch Evening Edition tonight at five for in-depth reporting on San Diego issues. We'll be back tomorrow at noon. And if you ever miss a show , you can find the Midday Edition podcast on all platforms. I'm Jade Hindman. Thanks for listening.
