0:00:04 > 0:00:09Abraham Lincoln is the most celebrated figure in American history.
0:00:09 > 0:00:15His assassination almost 150 years ago transformed him from a mere politician
0:00:15 > 0:00:17into America's national saint.
0:00:17 > 0:00:21It's the original martyrdom. It's Lincoln dying for the nation's sins.
0:00:23 > 0:00:26He dies in the moment of his triumph
0:00:26 > 0:00:28on Good Friday in a Christian country.
0:00:28 > 0:00:30I mean, God, who wrote that script?
0:00:30 > 0:00:33To most Americans, he's the president who saved the Union,
0:00:33 > 0:00:38an everyman from the Kentucky backwoods who rose from poverty to become president,
0:00:38 > 0:00:40living out the American dream.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43He's all that Americans think the nation should be,
0:00:43 > 0:00:47and so consequently we've become infatuated with him.
0:00:47 > 0:00:52To African Americans, Lincoln will always be the Great Emancipator,
0:00:52 > 0:00:53the man who freed the slaves,
0:00:53 > 0:00:57thereby placing equality alongside liberty as one of those truths
0:00:57 > 0:01:00that Americans hold as self-evident.
0:01:01 > 0:01:05And for almost all Americans, particularly those in the North,
0:01:05 > 0:01:09he's the leader who guided the nation through the trauma of the Civil War,
0:01:09 > 0:01:13perhaps the central event in the country's history.
0:01:13 > 0:01:18But today, as America marks the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's presidency,
0:01:18 > 0:01:25an historic battle is being waged for the reputation of America's 16th president.
0:01:25 > 0:01:30Everything everybody's told me about Abraham Lincoln is a lie.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33Everything I learned in school, everything I learned in church,
0:01:33 > 0:01:36everything I learned from newspapers,
0:01:36 > 0:01:41everything I learned from the radio, everything I've learned about Abraham Lincoln is a lie.
0:01:41 > 0:01:44This struggle has unearthed another Abraham Lincoln.
0:01:44 > 0:01:47This Lincoln is a politician rather than a statesman...
0:01:47 > 0:01:51So much of the literature on Lincoln is just complete hero worship.
0:01:51 > 0:01:54..a calculating pragmatist rather than a visionary...
0:01:54 > 0:01:56He is not the Great Emancipator
0:01:56 > 0:02:01if you look just a teeny bit under...
0:02:01 > 0:02:02under the surface.
0:02:02 > 0:02:05..and a war criminal rather than a war leader.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09Here is the man who waged war on, in his view, his own people.
0:02:09 > 0:02:15He is responsible for 650,000 deaths. Please.
0:02:15 > 0:02:21Lincoln's critics claim that he plunged the nation into an unnecessary war
0:02:21 > 0:02:26and that generations of historians have conspired to hide the fact that the Great Emancipator
0:02:26 > 0:02:31was in reality a racist who planned to deport the slaves out of America.
0:02:31 > 0:02:36For good reason, the people of the South have mourned...
0:02:36 > 0:02:38This reassessment of America's greatest hero
0:02:38 > 0:02:41is conjuring up the ghosts of America's troubled history...
0:02:41 > 0:02:46This war over culture and remembrance is even bigger
0:02:46 > 0:02:49than Confederate heritage. It's about America.
0:02:49 > 0:02:52..while at the same time, it's feeding into the divisions
0:02:52 > 0:02:55that are drawing modern Americans further apart.
0:02:55 > 0:02:58And we're not going to take it any more!
0:02:58 > 0:03:01This is the story of America's struggle
0:03:01 > 0:03:05to discover the real Abraham Lincoln.
0:03:19 > 0:03:24Abraham Lincoln's last moments were spent here in the Petersen House,
0:03:24 > 0:03:27a cheap boarding house opposite the Washington theatre
0:03:27 > 0:03:30where he'd been struck down by an assassin's bullet.
0:03:35 > 0:03:40There were people with Lincoln who say, "We cannot allow him to die in a theatre."
0:03:44 > 0:03:49He's placed diagonally on a small bed - he's so tall he can't fit lengthwise on the bed.
0:03:52 > 0:03:57And there he spends the next nine hours, his breathing ever more laboured.
0:04:00 > 0:04:04He was oozing brain matter on his pillow
0:04:04 > 0:04:07and whenever his wife was brought in,
0:04:07 > 0:04:10they would put a handkerchief over that part of the pillow
0:04:10 > 0:04:12so she wouldn't be too upset.
0:04:13 > 0:04:18Out of that house, he emerges as his body is carried
0:04:18 > 0:04:20in the spring rain the next morning
0:04:20 > 0:04:23to the hearse that takes him back to the White House.
0:04:23 > 0:04:27He leaves, not the person he was when he was carried inside,
0:04:27 > 0:04:31he is now a national treasure, a national saint,
0:04:31 > 0:04:34a secular saint and a religious saint in many ways.
0:04:34 > 0:04:38And that's why images almost overnight begin appearing,
0:04:38 > 0:04:40showing not only the assassination,
0:04:40 > 0:04:46not only his dying moments in the grandest possible exaggerated way,
0:04:46 > 0:04:49but literally images showing him rising into heaven,
0:04:49 > 0:04:53where he's often greeted by his great hero, George Washington.
0:04:53 > 0:04:57Here is the father and the saviour - it's almost like God and the Son.
0:04:57 > 0:05:01# Glory, glory, hallelujah
0:05:01 > 0:05:05# His God is
0:05:05 > 0:05:10# Marching on. #
0:05:10 > 0:05:11From the moment of his death,
0:05:11 > 0:05:14the real Abraham Lincoln has been obscured
0:05:14 > 0:05:18behind the almost religious cult that still surrounds him.
0:05:18 > 0:05:20The tragic nature of that death
0:05:20 > 0:05:24and its timing, at the very end of America's Civil War, created a myth
0:05:24 > 0:05:28that has placed Lincoln outside of history and almost beyond rational debate.
0:05:29 > 0:05:34You have to remember he dies right at this perfect moment.
0:05:34 > 0:05:38He's assassinated a few days after the surrender of Lee's army,
0:05:38 > 0:05:42after this horrifying bloodletting
0:05:42 > 0:05:48from which now the Republic that is nearly destroyed can now survive.
0:05:48 > 0:05:54I mean, you couldn't write a better script in some ways for the epic inside of us.
0:05:59 > 0:06:03Today, that epic story of Lincoln's life and death
0:06:03 > 0:06:05stands at the heart of American culture.
0:06:05 > 0:06:08His image is everywhere.
0:06:08 > 0:06:11It's on the five dollar bill,
0:06:11 > 0:06:16it's on the coins that you carry in your pocket, there's billboards.
0:06:16 > 0:06:20My 18-month-old daughter has a little stuffed Abraham Lincoln
0:06:20 > 0:06:23and she could say "Dadda" and "Momma"
0:06:23 > 0:06:26and not too much later she could say "Abe Lincoln".
0:06:27 > 0:06:31The homes Lincoln lived in have all been lovingly restored.
0:06:31 > 0:06:36There are literally hundreds of statues of him peppered across the nation
0:06:36 > 0:06:39and his hometown of Springfield, Illinois
0:06:39 > 0:06:43has become the centre of a national Lincoln tourist industry.
0:06:50 > 0:06:53Lincoln is a church, he's a religion.
0:06:55 > 0:06:59Lincoln is a million-dollar industry,
0:06:59 > 0:07:01a 100 million industry,
0:07:01 > 0:07:06and you get thousands of people all over this country who make their living
0:07:06 > 0:07:08pushing the Lincoln message.
0:07:08 > 0:07:13May I present to you the president of the United States, Mr Abraham Lincoln.
0:07:13 > 0:07:16Good afternoon, everyone. Oh, please, be seated.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19'There is a Lincoln industry in this country, no question about it,'
0:07:19 > 0:07:22and there are large numbers of people who make their living
0:07:22 > 0:07:24impersonating Lincoln.
0:07:24 > 0:07:27She said, "Well, thank you, honest Abe, for your response."
0:07:27 > 0:07:31'I think second only to Elvis impersonators, probably.
0:07:31 > 0:07:35'There aren't too many American presidents you could make a living dressing up as
0:07:35 > 0:07:39'but they go to events, they go to schools, they open shopping malls.
0:07:40 > 0:07:44'Lincoln is the only American president
0:07:44 > 0:07:47'memorialised at Disneyland,
0:07:47 > 0:07:50'so Lincoln is certainly part of our popular culture
0:07:50 > 0:07:53'in a way that very few other presidents are.'
0:07:57 > 0:08:00The aspect of the Lincoln myth which has always appealed most
0:08:00 > 0:08:04to generations of American biographers and filmmakers
0:08:04 > 0:08:09is the story of how the young Lincoln overcame the hardships of his upbringing.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16Lincoln grew up on the frontier. He was born in Kentucky
0:08:16 > 0:08:19at a time when that was really a frontier state.
0:08:19 > 0:08:23This was real backwoods territory - there were wild animals in the woods,
0:08:23 > 0:08:26there were very few neighbours except some members of his family.
0:08:26 > 0:08:31The transportation was extremely primitive and they basically were self-sufficient.
0:08:34 > 0:08:35He is, in a way, from nowhere.
0:08:35 > 0:08:40There were ten million other sons of dirt farmers who remained dirt farmers.
0:08:40 > 0:08:42This guy didn't.
0:08:47 > 0:08:51This is this consummate American story.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55He wanted books, he wanted something bigger, he wanted off of that farm.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58Now, that's the story of so many millions of Americans
0:08:58 > 0:09:00from the 19th into the 20th century,
0:09:00 > 0:09:04as we became industrialised, urbanised, and cosmopolitanised.
0:09:16 > 0:09:21This is deep, deep in our culture that we are a place where a person
0:09:21 > 0:09:25from a dirt farm with virtually no formal education
0:09:25 > 0:09:29can rise and attain the highest office in the land.
0:09:42 > 0:09:45At the age of 19, Lincoln left his father's farm
0:09:45 > 0:09:49and made his way to what was then the frontier state of Illinois.
0:09:49 > 0:09:54A young man without money or connections, the route Lincoln took
0:09:54 > 0:09:59out of poverty was to run for office as a member of the State Legislature.
0:09:59 > 0:10:01Politics was a mode of social advancement.
0:10:01 > 0:10:07Politics in the 1830s and '40s was a way for people of modest backgrounds like Lincoln
0:10:07 > 0:10:09to rise in the social scale.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13It was a way to make connections. It was a way to influence the world around you, of course,
0:10:13 > 0:10:19but at a time when there weren't that many professions open to people,
0:10:19 > 0:10:23politics was one that anybody could get ahead in if they had drive,
0:10:23 > 0:10:28if they had the right personality, the right ability to communicate their ideas.
0:10:28 > 0:10:31Politics transformed Lincoln's life.
0:10:31 > 0:10:37By the early 1850s, the young, poorly-educated frontiersmen was long gone.
0:10:37 > 0:10:39Lincoln had become a wealthy man.
0:10:39 > 0:10:43He'd held office four times, been a congressman in Washington DC,
0:10:43 > 0:10:46and between terms of office, he trained as a lawyer.
0:10:52 > 0:10:54And as Lincoln's horizons had spread...
0:10:57 > 0:11:01..so had those of his nation, as America's great drive westwards had begun.
0:11:01 > 0:11:06Most people had a sense of the American West that was essentially infinite -
0:11:06 > 0:11:10they didn't know where it ended. They knew there were deserts and great plains,
0:11:10 > 0:11:12they knew there were mountains,
0:11:12 > 0:11:15but it was the sheer vastness of that West
0:11:15 > 0:11:21that gave everybody a sense of limitlessness and future and hope.
0:11:25 > 0:11:30The annexation of Texas and war with Mexico in the 1840s
0:11:30 > 0:11:32had opened up the West,
0:11:32 > 0:11:37raising the possibility of the nation advancing all the way to the Pacific coast.
0:11:37 > 0:11:42There's this continental mentality, sometimes called manifest destiny,
0:11:42 > 0:11:46this idea that American expansion is just ordained by God, you know,
0:11:46 > 0:11:51that we will dominate this entire continent and that is the divine will,
0:11:51 > 0:11:54and that creates this kind of ebullient spirit of expansionism.
0:11:59 > 0:12:02But westward expansion brought to the fore
0:12:02 > 0:12:07the issue that had divided the country ever since Independence - slavery.
0:12:09 > 0:12:12By the middle of the 19th century, a fault line ran across America,
0:12:12 > 0:12:16dividing the slave-owning South from the free states in the North
0:12:16 > 0:12:18where the practice had ended.
0:12:22 > 0:12:25But year by year, the increasing value of Southern cotton
0:12:25 > 0:12:31and the thought of the even larger fortunes it could generate if slavery were to spread West
0:12:31 > 0:12:35slowly undermined the sense of union that bound the states together.
0:12:36 > 0:12:38Not only is slavery growing
0:12:38 > 0:12:43in the American South in the 1820s, '30s, and '40s in leaps and bounds -
0:12:43 > 0:12:47I mean, the American slave population doubled in 25 years
0:12:47 > 0:12:52between 1820 and the mid-1840s.
0:12:52 > 0:12:54By the 1850s, slavery became,
0:12:54 > 0:12:59slaves became the single greatest economic asset
0:12:59 > 0:13:02in the entire American economy.
0:13:02 > 0:13:07It was the engine of wealth for the American South, and frankly for a good deal of the American North,
0:13:07 > 0:13:10especially the banking system in New York and other cities.
0:13:10 > 0:13:15At that point, you had a nation growing in leaps and bounds,
0:13:15 > 0:13:19had a sense of its infinite boundlessness,
0:13:19 > 0:13:23but also a sense of great anxiety and great dread
0:13:23 > 0:13:26of what on earth are they going to do about this problem.
0:13:27 > 0:13:31The figure who was to do most to tip America into crisis
0:13:31 > 0:13:35was the man who was also to become Abraham Lincoln's political nemesis.
0:13:35 > 0:13:37Stephen A Douglas,
0:13:37 > 0:13:42a Democrat from Lincoln's home state of Illinois, introduced in 1854
0:13:42 > 0:13:44a clause that would allow slavery to spread
0:13:44 > 0:13:49into the new Western states of Kansas and Nebraska.
0:13:49 > 0:13:53To oppose this, a new political party was formed in the North,
0:13:53 > 0:13:55the Republicans,
0:13:55 > 0:13:58and Abraham Lincoln abandoned his legal career to join them.
0:13:58 > 0:14:00The Republican Party started
0:14:00 > 0:14:04under the premise that slavery should not be expanded.
0:14:04 > 0:14:08They weren't abolitionists per se, some of them were,
0:14:08 > 0:14:10but many of them were not abolitionists,
0:14:10 > 0:14:12they were anti-slavery men.
0:14:12 > 0:14:18And what that meant was that they expected slavery to die a natural death
0:14:18 > 0:14:23but in order to do that, in order for that to happen, slavery had to be contained.
0:14:23 > 0:14:28And so the idea was you don't let it expand into the Western Territories.
0:14:31 > 0:14:35This new coalition is a coalition of Northerners
0:14:35 > 0:14:37who are absolute believers
0:14:37 > 0:14:40in this idea of a free-labour American dream,
0:14:40 > 0:14:44of their right to go West and get themselves 20 acres of land somewhere,
0:14:44 > 0:14:49or 40 acres, or whatever they could get and not have to compete with the slave labour system.
0:14:50 > 0:14:55Lincoln's political life, Lincoln's political career in the 1850s
0:14:55 > 0:14:58was built on this question of stopping
0:14:58 > 0:15:01the expansion of slavery into the West,
0:15:01 > 0:15:05or what the Republicans called the free soil persuasion.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11The Republican Party, in which Abraham Lincoln fast became a leading light,
0:15:11 > 0:15:16regarded the expansion of slavery as a direct threat to their free soil ideology.
0:15:16 > 0:15:20But although the enemy of slavery, they were no friend of the slave.
0:15:20 > 0:15:24You could be anti-slavery AND anti-black.
0:15:24 > 0:15:29You could be anti-slavery and not want black people around.
0:15:29 > 0:15:32And much of the anti-slavery fervour
0:15:32 > 0:15:36was, "We don't want them around."
0:15:36 > 0:15:37Partly, it was,
0:15:37 > 0:15:41"We don't want them around because they're alien people, they're different,
0:15:41 > 0:15:45"they're inferior," et cetera, et cetera,
0:15:45 > 0:15:48but there was also, "We don't want them around
0:15:48 > 0:15:53"because they're not paid and they're very bad for wages."
0:15:59 > 0:16:01Difficult as it is to believe,
0:16:01 > 0:16:04many, many Northerners separated out
0:16:04 > 0:16:06the question of slavery from the question of race.
0:16:06 > 0:16:11In other words, there are many reasons to oppose slavery which have nothing to do with race.
0:16:13 > 0:16:18If slavery moves out into the Western Territories, whites are not going to want to go there.
0:16:18 > 0:16:23The slave owners will absorb all the good land. They don't want to compete with slave labour.
0:16:23 > 0:16:28They don't want blacks around. There are all these reasons why whites in the North will say,
0:16:28 > 0:16:33"I don't care about slavery in Mississippi, but I don't want it expanding into Kansas
0:16:33 > 0:16:37"where I or my son may move out there to get a farm, to get a job."
0:16:42 > 0:16:46Lincoln's own impoverished upbringing had demonstrated to him what happened
0:16:46 > 0:16:51when free white labour was set in competition against slavery.
0:16:54 > 0:16:57Lincoln's father moves from Kentucky,
0:16:57 > 0:17:00crosses the Ohio River into Indiana,
0:17:00 > 0:17:06in part because Kentucky is a slave state and Indiana is a free state,
0:17:06 > 0:17:11and slavery limits the potential of the white labour to enjoy the fruits of his labour.
0:17:11 > 0:17:17How could a small labourer compete in an agricultural market
0:17:17 > 0:17:23with a slaveholder who has a gang of slaves doing labour for no wage whatsoever?
0:17:25 > 0:17:30Lincoln understood the damage that slavery did from that perspective,
0:17:30 > 0:17:34and says so, talks about the fact that the Territories should exist
0:17:34 > 0:17:40for these free white men who need a chance to rise as well.
0:17:45 > 0:17:49From 1854 onwards, Abraham Lincoln campaigned against
0:17:49 > 0:17:52the expansion of slavery into the Western Territories,
0:17:52 > 0:17:56but the man who a decade later was to sweep away the whole slave system
0:17:56 > 0:18:01did not call for the abolition of slavery where it already existed in the South.
0:18:04 > 0:18:11So why was it that, when so many white Americans were mobilising to abolish slavery,
0:18:11 > 0:18:15the Great Emancipator appeared to stand on the sidelines?
0:18:20 > 0:18:26The generation from 1830 to 1860
0:18:26 > 0:18:31was perhaps one of the greatest generations of white people we've had in this country.
0:18:31 > 0:18:34They were very much like
0:18:34 > 0:18:39the Civil Rights generation of the 1960s and 1970s.
0:18:40 > 0:18:42They marched,
0:18:42 > 0:18:46they organised against slavery, they organised in the churches.
0:18:46 > 0:18:53They staged sit-ins, they refused to capture fugitive slaves,
0:18:53 > 0:18:58and they prepared the ground which made it possible...
0:19:00 > 0:19:02..for emancipation to triumph.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06Lincoln did absolutely nothing.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11Although never an abolitionist, Lincoln, a man who had been exposed
0:19:11 > 0:19:17to slavery since childhood, was opposed to the Southern slave system.
0:19:17 > 0:19:21Yet the Great Emancipator of the 1860s spent the 1850s
0:19:21 > 0:19:25convinced that the political system made abolition impossible.
0:19:27 > 0:19:31On the one hand, he always says, "This is a moral question ultimately."
0:19:31 > 0:19:33He's like an abolitionist in that he says,
0:19:33 > 0:19:37"I am morally opposed to slavery, that's the bottom line here."
0:19:37 > 0:19:39On the other hand, as a lawyer, as a politician, he says,
0:19:39 > 0:19:43"There's not much we can do about slavery, it's in the Constitution.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46"It's up to the Southern states to deal with it."
0:19:46 > 0:19:51He understands there is not much you can do about slavery within the political system.
0:19:56 > 0:19:58In America's federal system,
0:19:58 > 0:20:02it was the individual states and not the national government in Washington
0:20:02 > 0:20:05that had the power to determine the future of slavery.
0:20:05 > 0:20:07But in the party politics of the 1850s,
0:20:07 > 0:20:10opposing slavery, if only in principle,
0:20:10 > 0:20:14was potentially enough to destroy Lincoln's political career.
0:20:14 > 0:20:20In 1858, Lincoln stood for Congress against his old opponent Stephen Douglas.
0:20:20 > 0:20:24The campaign centred on a series of now-famous debates.
0:20:24 > 0:20:28In the city of Charleston, Douglas suggested that Lincoln's opposition
0:20:28 > 0:20:33to slavery meant that he was also in favour of racial equality.
0:20:35 > 0:20:41Lincoln responded with words that saved his career, but that haunt his reputation.
0:20:43 > 0:20:44He said, and I'm quoting him,
0:20:44 > 0:20:47that he did not believe that black people
0:20:47 > 0:20:49should have the right to vote.
0:20:49 > 0:20:51He did not believe that blacks
0:20:51 > 0:20:53should have the right to sit on juries.
0:20:53 > 0:20:58He didn't believe that black people should have the right to hold public office.
0:20:58 > 0:21:02He believed that there's a physical difference
0:21:02 > 0:21:05between the white race and the black race
0:21:05 > 0:21:10that will forever make it impossible for them to live together
0:21:10 > 0:21:13on a plain of equality.
0:21:13 > 0:21:19Lincoln is saying things about race and the inferiority of blacks
0:21:19 > 0:21:21that we don't want him to say.
0:21:21 > 0:21:25Now, of course, it's just crucial
0:21:25 > 0:21:28to contextualise those statements.
0:21:28 > 0:21:33I mean, he's being goaded into them by Stephen Douglas,
0:21:33 > 0:21:37who's a shrewd, savvy political veteran
0:21:37 > 0:21:40who knows that his strongest attack
0:21:40 > 0:21:46is to link Lincoln's anti-slavery to some notion of racial equality.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50He's saying that Lincoln is in favour of racial equality, and Lincoln obliges.
0:21:50 > 0:21:55He does that. He does it, I think, for political reasons
0:21:55 > 0:21:58and it doesn't look good to us today,
0:21:58 > 0:22:03but that's the nature of mid-19th century politics.
0:22:03 > 0:22:08He always made a distinction between the morality of slavery,
0:22:08 > 0:22:13which he believed was fundamentally wrong, and the question of racial equality.
0:22:13 > 0:22:17Today that's hard sometimes for us to understand, especially young people,
0:22:17 > 0:22:21who are growing up in a society where the assumption of equality is absolute.
0:22:21 > 0:22:24Of course we're equal, everybody's equal, or we say we are.
0:22:24 > 0:22:28But Lincoln made the distinction between the immorality of slavery,
0:22:28 > 0:22:30unequivocal about that...
0:22:30 > 0:22:34On the other hand, he was no proponent of racial equality.
0:22:34 > 0:22:38And we see that over and over quite publicly
0:22:38 > 0:22:43and quite forcefully that he does not believe in social equality.
0:22:43 > 0:22:45Despite reassuring the electorate,
0:22:45 > 0:22:50Lincoln was unable to defeat Douglas. But the debates made him famous
0:22:50 > 0:22:53and it was this fame that enabled him to seize
0:22:53 > 0:22:56the Republican candidacy for president in 1860.
0:22:56 > 0:22:59Lincoln won just 39% of the vote,
0:22:59 > 0:23:02almost all of his support coming from the North.
0:23:02 > 0:23:05But within weeks of his arrival in Washington,
0:23:05 > 0:23:10the Southern states began, one by one, to secede from the Union.
0:23:10 > 0:23:13They then formed a new nation -
0:23:13 > 0:23:16the Confederate States of America,
0:23:16 > 0:23:19led by the Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis.
0:23:22 > 0:23:27The accusation that has been raised against Abraham Lincoln is that on coming to office,
0:23:27 > 0:23:31he pushed the American people into a disastrous and avoidable conflict.
0:23:31 > 0:23:33There's a school of thought,
0:23:33 > 0:23:37and it's still alive in a certain fringe of American scholarship,
0:23:37 > 0:23:41that the real cause, or immediate cause, of the Civil War was Lincoln.
0:23:43 > 0:23:49Now this argument is basically that Lincoln could have simply gently let
0:23:49 > 0:23:55the South go, that he didn't need to force military action,
0:23:55 > 0:23:58that he could have backed away and continued to compromise,
0:23:58 > 0:24:02that Southerners were willing to compromise on this issue or that issue.
0:24:02 > 0:24:07There is no evidence that the Confederate leadership, Jefferson Davis and his growing Cabinet,
0:24:07 > 0:24:10were truly willing to compromise
0:24:10 > 0:24:14on any part of the expansion of slavery issue or anything else.
0:24:16 > 0:24:18Lincoln did not cause the Civil War.
0:24:18 > 0:24:23What Lincoln did was create a situation where war was possible.
0:24:23 > 0:24:26In other words, he was willing to risk war.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29He put the onus on the Confederacy. They fired the first shot.
0:24:29 > 0:24:32They weren't willing to compromise either.
0:24:40 > 0:24:45While blame for the war might lie with both Lincoln and Jefferson Davis,
0:24:45 > 0:24:50neither side in 1861 foresaw the calamity they were about to unleash.
0:24:54 > 0:24:59No-one in the North or the South could have imagined the kind of war it would be.
0:25:01 > 0:25:05The military leaders on both sides didn't quite understand
0:25:05 > 0:25:09the significance of the technological changes.
0:25:09 > 0:25:12Changes particularly in the technology of the rifle,
0:25:12 > 0:25:15which made it a much more accurate long-distance weapon.
0:25:16 > 0:25:21The war becomes a situation of long-range sharpshooting.
0:25:21 > 0:25:24No-one would have imagined ironclad warfare
0:25:24 > 0:25:27and the terrific combats of the navies.
0:25:29 > 0:25:34The impact of the Industrial Revolution - we are talking about mass production of weaponry,
0:25:34 > 0:25:37telegraph, railroads, bringing troops to the front.
0:25:37 > 0:25:43Certainly no-one understood what kind of masses of armies would be required.
0:25:43 > 0:25:46No-one would have comprehended black recruitment.
0:25:47 > 0:25:52Nobody expected 620,000 deaths, thousands and thousands of injuries,
0:25:52 > 0:25:54and utter destruction in many parts of the country.
0:25:54 > 0:26:01So you might ask if Lincoln and Jefferson Davis had seen 1865,
0:26:01 > 0:26:03would they have compromised in 1861?
0:26:16 > 0:26:20The image of Lincoln that dominates the American consciousness today,
0:26:20 > 0:26:25150 years after the Civil War, is Lincoln as the saviour of the Union.
0:26:28 > 0:26:32Lincoln's role as commander-in-chief is less well remembered.
0:26:32 > 0:26:34Yet hard as it is for some to accept,
0:26:34 > 0:26:38Abraham Lincoln prosecuted the Civil War ferociously.
0:26:41 > 0:26:46By 1862, 1863, Lincoln's authorising troops to live off the land,
0:26:46 > 0:26:49to seize goods if needed for the maintenance of the army.
0:26:51 > 0:26:54His tactics, especially the destruction of Southern cities,
0:26:54 > 0:27:01are regarded by some as having been so aggressive that they constitute total war.
0:27:01 > 0:27:03Lincoln did not invent total war.
0:27:03 > 0:27:07He did invent maybe to some extent what they call the hard war.
0:27:07 > 0:27:10This was the term they used in the Civil War, hard war,
0:27:10 > 0:27:16in which the Union would no longer limit its activities
0:27:16 > 0:27:19in order to appeal to the loyalty of Southern civilians.
0:27:22 > 0:27:26Lincoln never thought that you should spare the hard hand of war to people
0:27:26 > 0:27:31who had begun the war. He said, on several occasions, that,
0:27:31 > 0:27:36"We will teach them the folly of starting a war," and he meant that.
0:27:41 > 0:27:45For most Americans, the terrible cost of the Civil War
0:27:45 > 0:27:48was the price the nation paid in order to save the Union.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53But there is another America.
0:27:53 > 0:27:55It's Veteran Memorial Day.
0:27:55 > 0:27:59For good reason, the people of the South
0:27:59 > 0:28:03have mourned on occasion,
0:28:03 > 0:28:08for over 150 years, the loss of our countrymen, the death...
0:28:08 > 0:28:11Amongst some in the Southern states of the former Confederacy,
0:28:11 > 0:28:17the Civil War is remembered as a war of aggression and Abraham Lincoln as a war criminal.
0:28:17 > 0:28:19The Bible promises...
0:28:19 > 0:28:21'I'm Chuck McMichael.
0:28:21 > 0:28:24'I am the great-great-grandson of John Henry Land,'
0:28:24 > 0:28:29who, as a 15-year-old farm boy in Georgia,
0:28:29 > 0:28:31joined Company H of the 54th Georgia Infantry.
0:28:31 > 0:28:37'He fought in battles through Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina.'
0:28:37 > 0:28:43Over the years, he probably thought by this time this would be forgotten.
0:28:43 > 0:28:44It will not be forgotten.
0:28:44 > 0:28:46'My name is Michael Givens.'
0:28:46 > 0:28:50I'm a lieutenant commander-in-chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
0:28:50 > 0:28:55We here today have proven that we take this sort of thing seriously.
0:28:55 > 0:29:00We are not afraid or ashamed to stand up and be counted.
0:29:00 > 0:29:02'This war was Mr Lincoln's war.
0:29:02 > 0:29:07'When South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20th 1860,
0:29:07 > 0:29:09'he did not ever recognise that.'
0:29:09 > 0:29:14OK? But yet he would send 75,000 troops there
0:29:14 > 0:29:20to kill people that HE said were his own fellow citizens.
0:29:20 > 0:29:22Starts to sound like Milosevic.
0:29:22 > 0:29:24Starts to sound like Stalin.
0:29:25 > 0:29:30'Here's the man who waged war on, in his view, his own people.'
0:29:30 > 0:29:36He was responsible for 650,000 deaths. Please.
0:29:38 > 0:29:43'One of my ancestors, he was shot through the leg at Gettysburg'
0:29:43 > 0:29:48and walked back to Virginia with a bullet wound in his leg.
0:29:48 > 0:29:52And now to be told, "Oh, he was fighting for slavery and he was evil
0:29:52 > 0:29:57"and a traitor who just wanted to overthrow the great Abraham Lincoln."
0:29:57 > 0:30:01No, he was up there so that his mother and father
0:30:01 > 0:30:03wouldn't be killed in Georgia
0:30:03 > 0:30:08and their property destroyed, and his little brother have to go to war
0:30:08 > 0:30:10and his sisters be raped.
0:30:10 > 0:30:12# To arms, to arms
0:30:12 > 0:30:14# In Dixie
0:30:14 > 0:30:16# And raise the flag of Dixie
0:30:16 > 0:30:19# Hurrah, hurrah for Dixie... #
0:30:19 > 0:30:22'As far as how I see Lincoln,
0:30:22 > 0:30:28'he ordered a bunch of strangers from up North to come down here
0:30:28 > 0:30:31'to my family's home, kill my ancestors,
0:30:31 > 0:30:35'burn down their property, and steal their goods.'
0:30:35 > 0:30:37- # Away - Away!
0:30:37 > 0:30:39# Away down south in Dixie. #
0:30:39 > 0:30:42He believed a whole class of Southern people
0:30:42 > 0:30:46needed to be eliminated. We're talking genocide.
0:30:46 > 0:30:49FINAL CHORDS OF SONG
0:30:49 > 0:30:51CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
0:30:59 > 0:31:04The ferocity with which the Lincoln administration conducted war
0:31:04 > 0:31:07was not restricted to the South.
0:31:07 > 0:31:11Lincoln had gone to war to prevent slavery expanding into the West,
0:31:11 > 0:31:15and defend the free soil ideology of his Republican Party.
0:31:17 > 0:31:22But the soil and the land of the West could only be made free for white settlers
0:31:22 > 0:31:26if first cleared of its original owners,
0:31:26 > 0:31:29the Native Americans.
0:31:32 > 0:31:35By the late 1850s, the Santee Sioux
0:31:35 > 0:31:39had been pushed into a reservation in the state of Minnesota.
0:31:39 > 0:31:44They had sold their tribal lands to the US government for 1.5 million,
0:31:44 > 0:31:48a bill that Lincoln's administration had not paid.
0:31:48 > 0:31:52In the late summer of 1862, at the height of the Civil War,
0:31:52 > 0:31:57the rains failed and the Sioux's crops wilted in the fields.
0:31:59 > 0:32:01The Sioux were literally starving.
0:32:03 > 0:32:07They rise up against the reservation system,
0:32:07 > 0:32:10they kill a number of white settlers,
0:32:10 > 0:32:13it's a very, very violent encounter.
0:32:13 > 0:32:18The federal government responds by sending General John Pope
0:32:18 > 0:32:22to Minnesota to end the uprising.
0:32:22 > 0:32:27General Pope is a general who, in the Civil War in the East, has turned the war into hard war.
0:32:27 > 0:32:28He's a very tough cookie,
0:32:28 > 0:32:33he talks about going to Minnesota to exterminate
0:32:33 > 0:32:35the Sioux men, women, and children,
0:32:35 > 0:32:39and when he gets there he puts the rebellion down brutally and quickly.
0:32:40 > 0:32:45By the end of the rebellion, thousands of the Sioux were imprisoned by the Union Army.
0:32:46 > 0:32:49General Pope convened a series of military trials
0:32:49 > 0:32:53that condemned 303 of the Sioux men to death.
0:32:53 > 0:32:56He then turned to Lincoln for approval.
0:32:57 > 0:33:01Now, Lincoln, who doesn't like Indians very much anyway,
0:33:01 > 0:33:08is prepared to give the Minnesotans a blood sacrifice of Sioux,
0:33:08 > 0:33:10but because of outside foreign influence,
0:33:10 > 0:33:15he doesn't want to be seen to hang 303 Sioux all at once,
0:33:15 > 0:33:18because they've only had trials lasting about 10 to 15 minutes.
0:33:18 > 0:33:22And so he decides he'll hang 39.
0:33:25 > 0:33:28Lincoln as executioner.
0:33:28 > 0:33:31This is an image of America's secular saint
0:33:31 > 0:33:34that most Americans find deeply uncomfortable,
0:33:34 > 0:33:37and Lincoln's role in the story of the Sioux uprising
0:33:37 > 0:33:41has often been brushed under the historical carpet or explained away.
0:33:42 > 0:33:46Now, his defenders say, "What a nice man, he didn't hang 303,
0:33:46 > 0:33:51"he only hangs 39," despite the fact that they haven't had any fair trials.
0:33:53 > 0:33:57I'm not defending Lincoln, but what is he supposed to do?
0:33:57 > 0:34:03Is he supposed to eliminate all of the executions,
0:34:03 > 0:34:07is he supposed to allow the Sioux that are deemed guilty of the uprising,
0:34:07 > 0:34:10is he supposed to set them free?
0:34:10 > 0:34:15I mean, he could do that, we would like him to do that, that would be political suicide.
0:34:17 > 0:34:23The story unfortunately doesn't end with the hanging of the 39 Indians,
0:34:23 > 0:34:28back in Minnesota about 60-odd Indians are left to rot and die in prison.
0:34:31 > 0:34:35Over and above that, Lincoln decides to deport all the Indians,
0:34:35 > 0:34:40the Sioux and Winnebagans, who are completely innocent, from Minnesota
0:34:40 > 0:34:44and as a result of that, all the Sioux lands are opened up for settlement and speculation.
0:34:44 > 0:34:49Members of Lincoln's Cabinet and members of his regime, of course,
0:34:49 > 0:34:53are very happy to make themselves rich by speculating in Indian lands.
0:34:57 > 0:35:00Meanwhile, the Sioux and Winnebago are sent to
0:35:00 > 0:35:05Dakota Territory, but only arrive when it's too late to plant corn.
0:35:05 > 0:35:09So they can't feed themselves. Of course, they again
0:35:09 > 0:35:11are hit by starvation and disease.
0:35:11 > 0:35:14The whole thing is a human disaster,
0:35:14 > 0:35:18and the 39 hanged are the least of it,
0:35:18 > 0:35:20and Lincoln is responsible.
0:35:24 > 0:35:291862, the year General Pope had decimated the Santee Sioux
0:35:29 > 0:35:33was also the year in which Abraham Lincoln's great struggle to drive
0:35:33 > 0:35:38the Confederacy back into the Union had ran into the sand.
0:35:38 > 0:35:42Well, the first year or so of the war does not go very well for the North.
0:35:42 > 0:35:47They lose most of the battles, particularly in the eastern theatre in Virginia.
0:35:47 > 0:35:52But if you look at the Civil War a year or so after it begins,
0:35:52 > 0:35:54if you looked at a map of the United States,
0:35:54 > 0:35:56you would be amazed how little territory
0:35:56 > 0:35:59had been recaptured from the Confederacy,
0:35:59 > 0:36:01a few little places on the outskirts,
0:36:01 > 0:36:05but the Union Army had made no progress in most of the Confederacy.
0:36:09 > 0:36:12Unable to defeat the South, Lincoln began to think
0:36:12 > 0:36:17the unthinkable and consider the act for which he is now most famous,
0:36:17 > 0:36:20the Emancipation of the Slaves.
0:36:20 > 0:36:24But as Lincoln slowly came to believe that slavery might be abolished,
0:36:24 > 0:36:26he also came to envisage
0:36:26 > 0:36:32the deportation or "colonisation" of the slaves out of America.
0:36:33 > 0:36:36The essence of colonisation is a belief that
0:36:36 > 0:36:40black people can't possibly be Americans
0:36:40 > 0:36:42and share in American society.
0:36:42 > 0:36:47That is their "patrie", their country, must be someplace else,
0:36:47 > 0:36:53probably Africa but white Americans often would take any place just to get them out of here.
0:36:56 > 0:37:02Organisations promoting colonisation had first emerged in the early 19th century.
0:37:02 > 0:37:04By the 1840s, free black volunteers
0:37:04 > 0:37:08were being shipped to the African colony of Liberia.
0:37:09 > 0:37:14By the 1860s, numerous plans had been drafted to deport the slaves
0:37:14 > 0:37:18to Haiti, the other Caribbean islands, or Central America.
0:37:21 > 0:37:25For Abraham Lincoln, colonisation became the means by which he could
0:37:25 > 0:37:28square the circle of his opposition to slavery
0:37:28 > 0:37:32and his belief in white supremacy.
0:37:32 > 0:37:36Of all the presidents and statesmen, he is the one who's obsessed by it.
0:37:36 > 0:37:39In all his speeches practically about emancipation,
0:37:39 > 0:37:43he talks about emancipation and deportation
0:37:43 > 0:37:47in the same sentence, in the same breath.
0:37:47 > 0:37:50Now, why is this?
0:37:50 > 0:37:52Lincoln fears that there was
0:37:52 > 0:37:57a population of four million blacks in the South and about a quarter of a million blacks in the North.
0:37:57 > 0:38:03If you emancipate these people after years of subjugation,
0:38:03 > 0:38:06the result would be race war.
0:38:06 > 0:38:11You can't give them civil and political rights because they don't deserve it in Lincoln's opinion,
0:38:11 > 0:38:14they are mentally and physically inferior.
0:38:14 > 0:38:20Lincoln could not conceive of the United States as a biracial society.
0:38:20 > 0:38:24Slavery should be ended but black people should be encouraged -
0:38:24 > 0:38:29he said it should be voluntary - but they should be encouraged to leave the country.
0:38:29 > 0:38:34In August 1862, Lincoln called a delegation of free black leaders
0:38:34 > 0:38:39to the White House for a now-infamous meeting to discuss colonisation.
0:38:39 > 0:38:44Lincoln tells that delegation, and has a recorder write it down
0:38:44 > 0:38:47and publicise it in the press, that were it not for them,
0:38:47 > 0:38:51this war would not be happening, he says that to them.
0:38:51 > 0:38:57He says to them explicitly that the white and black races must be kept separate in America
0:38:57 > 0:38:59and he even asked those handpicked five black leaders,
0:38:59 > 0:39:02who really weren't very important leaders,
0:39:02 > 0:39:08if they would themselves volunteer to lead a colonisation movement out of the country.
0:39:08 > 0:39:12When I have students read that for the first time, black or white,
0:39:12 > 0:39:15they are a bit stunned because it's so explicit.
0:39:15 > 0:39:19Of course, it's fraught with irony too because at that very moment of
0:39:19 > 0:39:22August 1862, he's already drafted the Emancipation Proclamation.
0:39:22 > 0:39:25He hasn't issued it yet. He's already got it in a drawer.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28So it's Lincoln kind of playing both sides of the street
0:39:28 > 0:39:31cos he doesn't know how this is going to come out.
0:39:34 > 0:39:40Was Lincoln serious about colonisation, or merely using it to appeal to white public opinion?
0:39:40 > 0:39:45Were his plans evidence of his political genius or his racism?
0:39:45 > 0:39:50Here, again, Lincoln's own words and speeches are used to condemn him.
0:39:50 > 0:39:54It's the very presence, he says, of blacks makes white people suffer
0:39:54 > 0:39:57and that the two races have to go their separate ways.
0:39:57 > 0:40:01He's totally explicit about this when he's talking to the blacks
0:40:01 > 0:40:04and he has also said the same many times before to whites.
0:40:04 > 0:40:08It's not a rhetorical ploy, it's not a sop politically
0:40:08 > 0:40:12to his opponents to keep them calm, he actually means it.
0:40:15 > 0:40:19The two ideas of emancipation and colonisation
0:40:19 > 0:40:24are absolutely indissolubly linked in Lincoln's mind.
0:40:24 > 0:40:27If you like, colonisation/deportation
0:40:27 > 0:40:30is the final solution to the Negro problem
0:40:30 > 0:40:32as far as Abraham Lincoln is concerned.
0:40:37 > 0:40:39Lincoln wanted to deport all black people.
0:40:39 > 0:40:44That wasn't something that he said with two or three of his friends
0:40:44 > 0:40:46in a back room.
0:40:46 > 0:40:51He proposed and asked for the deportation of black Americans
0:40:51 > 0:40:54in the State of the Union message
0:40:54 > 0:40:57in December 1862.
0:40:59 > 0:41:02He wanted to create a white state here.
0:41:02 > 0:41:06Now, if Abraham Lincoln had had his way,
0:41:06 > 0:41:09there'd be no Obama in the United States,
0:41:09 > 0:41:13there'd be no Oprah Winfrey, there'd be no Tiger Woods.
0:41:13 > 0:41:15If he had had his way,
0:41:15 > 0:41:20there'd be no black people here at all.
0:41:20 > 0:41:26The possibility of abolition and along with it the prospect of colonising the freed slaves
0:41:26 > 0:41:33was forced onto the agenda in 1862 by the actions of the slaves themselves.
0:41:33 > 0:41:36As the war had spread through the South, they had begun to escape
0:41:36 > 0:41:43the fields and plantations, changing both the course and the meaning of the conflict.
0:41:43 > 0:41:47The war, of course, begins as a white man's war.
0:41:47 > 0:41:49It's a war to defend the union.
0:41:49 > 0:41:55Lincoln states it's so, slaves simply don't believe that to be true.
0:41:55 > 0:41:59They see the enemy of their enemy
0:41:59 > 0:42:04entering the South and they believe the enemy of their enemy must be their friend.
0:42:04 > 0:42:07They run away to Union encampments.
0:42:07 > 0:42:13They offer their service, they offer information, they offer to do the dirty work of war.
0:42:13 > 0:42:17As these thousands of former slaves gathered around the invading Union Army in the South,
0:42:17 > 0:42:20Lincoln was losing control of events.
0:42:20 > 0:42:24He had gone to war to defend the Union and stop the expansion of slavery
0:42:24 > 0:42:26but now the Republican Party in Washington,
0:42:26 > 0:42:29radicalised by the experience of war, began to push him
0:42:29 > 0:42:34to transform the conflict into a struggle to end slavery everywhere.
0:42:34 > 0:42:41Lincoln is under enormous pressure in 1862 to take more dramatic action against slavery.
0:42:41 > 0:42:45Congress takes the lead, they abolish slavery in Washington DC,
0:42:45 > 0:42:47they abolish slavery in the Territories.
0:42:47 > 0:42:50They forbid the Army from returning fugitive slaves.
0:42:50 > 0:42:57They pass laws to confiscate the property of Confederates, which includes their slaves.
0:42:57 > 0:43:01Then there's public opinion in the North, abolitionists, others saying,
0:43:01 > 0:43:05"The war is not going well, we've got to take more dramatic action."
0:43:05 > 0:43:09And of course the action of slaves puts the question of slavery
0:43:09 > 0:43:12on the national agenda in a direct way.
0:43:16 > 0:43:24On 1st January 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
0:43:24 > 0:43:28It began the process that would end slavery in America
0:43:28 > 0:43:33and crucially, it did not call for the colonisation of freed slaves.
0:43:36 > 0:43:43The importance was that it said, "We are on the side of Emancipation."
0:43:43 > 0:43:48It said, "The Union is an anti-slavery Union."
0:43:48 > 0:43:53Before the Emancipation Proclamation, the war was about Union,
0:43:53 > 0:43:58and Lincoln said, "If I can restore the Union without freeing a single slave, I'll do it."
0:43:58 > 0:44:03But he couldn't do it and the Emancipation Proclamation
0:44:03 > 0:44:07became the symbolic turning point of the war.
0:44:10 > 0:44:13It committed the whole war effort now, whether those generals
0:44:13 > 0:44:19and colonels wanted to or not, to ending slavery as an aim of the war.
0:44:21 > 0:44:25Four million slaves, the labour system of the South.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28That is a radical move,
0:44:28 > 0:44:32because once you do that, there's really no going back.
0:44:32 > 0:44:36If you start rounding up thousands of slaves to free them
0:44:36 > 0:44:38and give them some kind of new status,
0:44:38 > 0:44:43you surely cannot send them back to anything resembling slavery.
0:44:48 > 0:44:55The modern reputation of Abraham Lincoln rests above all on his status as the Great Emancipator.
0:44:57 > 0:45:01It's the story that the Lincoln industry and the academic establishment stand behind,
0:45:01 > 0:45:05and it's what all Americans are taught at school.
0:45:05 > 0:45:08Abraham Lincoln is one of the best presidents
0:45:08 > 0:45:12this country has ever had because of what he did for the slaves.
0:45:12 > 0:45:15He thought it was wrong and no person should own another person.
0:45:15 > 0:45:21He just abolished slavery and all the wrongdoings of our country.
0:45:21 > 0:45:25Does Lincoln deserve his reputation as the Great Emancipator
0:45:25 > 0:45:30or was the Emancipation Proclamation as much an act of war
0:45:30 > 0:45:35as an act of mercy, a desperate manoeuvre motivated in large part
0:45:35 > 0:45:39by the failure of Lincoln to defeat the Confederate Armies?
0:45:39 > 0:45:43It's a war measure, it's a military measure, that's how it is justified.
0:45:43 > 0:45:44It's the only way it can be justified.
0:45:44 > 0:45:49There is nothing in the Constitution that enables the President to decree the abolition of slavery,
0:45:49 > 0:45:54what Lincoln rests an is his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army.
0:45:54 > 0:45:57Compare it to the Declaration of Independence,
0:45:57 > 0:46:00which begins with this wonderful preamble about the rights of mankind.
0:46:00 > 0:46:03There's nothing like that, this is a military order.
0:46:03 > 0:46:07It contains no soaring rhetoric whatsoever, which Lincoln was capable of.
0:46:07 > 0:46:10Only at the suggestion of Secretary of the Treasury Chase
0:46:10 > 0:46:17does it end with a statement, "This is an act of justice as well as of military necessity."
0:46:17 > 0:46:25Like the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation has become one of America's sacred texts
0:46:25 > 0:46:28and it places Lincoln at the centre of the story.
0:46:28 > 0:46:35But Emancipation was a process that Lincoln did not begin and was never able to control.
0:46:35 > 0:46:39To be perfectly frank, we give him too much credit for it.
0:46:39 > 0:46:42He caught up with the process of Emancipation
0:46:42 > 0:46:47as much as he made the personal decision to free the slaves.
0:46:47 > 0:46:52Emancipation comes about in 1862, and especially in 1863,
0:46:52 > 0:46:57in the midst of this war out of the process of its escalation.
0:47:04 > 0:47:09The Emancipation Proclamation not only freed enslaved Africans,
0:47:09 > 0:47:14it also did something that the North and Lincoln himself had resisted since the start of the war -
0:47:14 > 0:47:19it allowed the recruitment of black men into the Union Army.
0:47:19 > 0:47:22Many Northerners didn't believe blacks would fight, they'd run away
0:47:22 > 0:47:26when confronted or they'd massacre white people with their arms.
0:47:26 > 0:47:32Nobody knew what would happen if you armed these slaves, there were so many racist preconceptions.
0:47:32 > 0:47:36The service of black soldiers, the successes of black soldiers,
0:47:36 > 0:47:42the dignity of black soldiers changes many Northerners' attitudes about race, about the black men.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46It certainly had a powerful effect on Lincoln himself.
0:47:46 > 0:47:48If you want to know why Lincoln's racial views changed
0:47:48 > 0:47:52during the Civil War, a lot of it has to do with the black soldiers.
0:47:52 > 0:47:54Lincoln comes to feel as many Northerners do,
0:47:54 > 0:48:01that by fighting and dying for the Union, they have staked a claim to citizenship in the post-war world.
0:48:01 > 0:48:04The greatness of Lincoln is his capacity for growth.
0:48:04 > 0:48:10By the end of the Civil War, by the end of his life, Lincoln's views on race have changed significantly.
0:48:10 > 0:48:12He has not become Martin Luther King Jr,
0:48:12 > 0:48:18but he has come to recognise that the United States is going to be a biracial society.
0:48:24 > 0:48:30In April 1865, the Confederate Armies finally surrendered.
0:48:32 > 0:48:37The Civil War had consumed 620,000 lives.
0:48:40 > 0:48:44The cities of the South lay in ruins
0:48:44 > 0:48:47and slavery had been swept away.
0:48:49 > 0:48:53And Lincoln, like his nation, was a man transformed.
0:48:55 > 0:48:59In this very short period of time he's gone from believing
0:48:59 > 0:49:03that he has no right to do anything with slavery, that slavery
0:49:03 > 0:49:06should die a gradual, natural death,
0:49:06 > 0:49:08that African Americans really are not
0:49:08 > 0:49:15entitled to political rights, but at the end of the war he talks about
0:49:15 > 0:49:20wanting to see certain segments of the African American population
0:49:20 > 0:49:22get the right to vote.
0:49:22 > 0:49:26So who was Abraham Lincoln in 1865?
0:49:26 > 0:49:30Was he the Great Emancipator on the verge of awarding black people
0:49:30 > 0:49:34some degree of equality, or still an inveterate white supremacist?
0:49:34 > 0:49:36Was he the man who would save the Union
0:49:36 > 0:49:41or a war criminal whose ruthless strategies had devastated his nation?
0:49:41 > 0:49:49Was he America's saint or a man whose views captured all that was wrong with America in the 19th century?
0:49:49 > 0:49:51The problem here is that people always want to be
0:49:51 > 0:49:52all one or all the other.
0:49:52 > 0:49:55We want our Abraham Lincolns and our Winston Churchills,
0:49:55 > 0:50:00our Mahatma Gandhis, to be perfect in their principles.
0:50:07 > 0:50:12The case of Abraham Lincoln, however, always has to be understood within the story
0:50:12 > 0:50:17of a man who was a consummate, pragmatic,
0:50:17 > 0:50:19genius of a politician.
0:50:25 > 0:50:32But how far he'd have ever gone with civil or social equality is only speculation.
0:51:20 > 0:51:25The assassination of Abraham Lincoln marked the beginning of a disastrous political process
0:51:25 > 0:51:28that led America to reject the appeals for racial equality
0:51:28 > 0:51:32that had emerged from the radicalism of the Civil War.
0:51:34 > 0:51:41During the century between Emancipation in the 1860s and the civil rights movement of the 1960s,
0:51:41 > 0:51:48African Americans were pushed into segregated lives defined by the so-called Jim Crow laws...
0:51:50 > 0:51:51..and lynching.
0:51:53 > 0:51:56But throughout that century in the darkness,
0:51:56 > 0:52:00African Americans attempted to use the memory of Lincoln,
0:52:00 > 0:52:05white America's secular saint, to appeal for justice.
0:52:07 > 0:52:10African Americans understood how important Lincoln's memory
0:52:10 > 0:52:16was to the nation and they were hoping that they could tap into that memory.
0:52:17 > 0:52:22They're reminding white Americans that the promise has not been fulfilled,
0:52:22 > 0:52:24that they have to step up
0:52:24 > 0:52:28and honour the obligation that Lincoln had started,
0:52:28 > 0:52:34because these rights that African Americans had been promised had not been granted.
0:52:34 > 0:52:38Five score years ago, a great American
0:52:38 > 0:52:42in whose symbolic shadow we stand today
0:52:42 > 0:52:46signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
0:52:47 > 0:52:50'Exactly a century after the Emancipation Proclamation,
0:52:50 > 0:52:54'the Lincoln Memorial, America's temple to the cult of Lincoln,
0:52:54 > 0:52:57'became the stage on which African Americans came together
0:52:57 > 0:53:03'to demand the nation finally fulfil the promise of freedom that Lincoln had made in 1863.'
0:53:03 > 0:53:06But 100 years later,
0:53:06 > 0:53:11the Negro still is not free.
0:53:12 > 0:53:14100 years later...
0:53:14 > 0:53:18The part of that speech that everyone always hears,
0:53:18 > 0:53:21and it's even used in commercials in the United States,
0:53:21 > 0:53:27is only the dream part, "I have a dream, little black children, white children joining hands."
0:53:27 > 0:53:32In a sense, we've come to our nation's capital to cash a cheque.
0:53:32 > 0:53:38'What we almost never replay is the first three or four pages of that speech.'
0:53:38 > 0:53:39..wrote the magnificent words
0:53:39 > 0:53:43of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
0:53:45 > 0:53:48They were signing a promissory note...
0:53:48 > 0:53:52'King begins the speech by using the metaphor'
0:53:52 > 0:53:55of what he called the promissory note.
0:53:55 > 0:53:58It is obvious today
0:53:58 > 0:54:02that America has defaulted on this promissory note
0:54:02 > 0:54:07insofar as her citizens of colour are concerned.
0:54:07 > 0:54:11'That's Martin Luther King on the 100th anniversary of Emancipation
0:54:11 > 0:54:14'standing in the Lincoln Memorial and saying to the world',
0:54:14 > 0:54:20"The United States wrote a bad cheque in 1863, it bounced."
0:54:20 > 0:54:25But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.
0:54:25 > 0:54:29We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds
0:54:29 > 0:54:32in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation...
0:54:32 > 0:54:35'So here in 1963,'
0:54:35 > 0:54:41a chance, you might say, to reboot, to go back to 1863
0:54:41 > 0:54:49and build on the promises of the Civil War and the promises of the Emancipation Proclamation,
0:54:49 > 0:54:53and to try to do away with all the ugliness,
0:54:53 > 0:54:58all the white supremacy, and re-establish democracy.
0:55:03 > 0:55:05Half a century after the civil rights struggle,
0:55:05 > 0:55:09Abraham Lincoln has become perhaps the only historical figure
0:55:09 > 0:55:13sacred to both black and white Americans.
0:55:13 > 0:55:16Although he remains shrouded in myth and exaggeration,
0:55:16 > 0:55:20and although uncomfortable questions have been asked about
0:55:20 > 0:55:25who he really was and what he really thought, Lincoln's story, his rise from poverty,
0:55:25 > 0:55:32his battle against slavery, and his struggle with his own racism has made his memory a potent political force.
0:55:32 > 0:55:34It was here in Springfield where North,
0:55:34 > 0:55:38South, East, and West come together that I was reminded
0:55:38 > 0:55:42of the essential decency of the American people.
0:55:42 > 0:55:47'In his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama, a candidate whose very presence in the race threatened to
0:55:47 > 0:55:51'divide America, consciously linked himself to Lincoln.'
0:55:51 > 0:55:56..State capital where Lincoln once called on a House divided,
0:55:56 > 0:56:03I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President
0:56:03 > 0:56:05of the United States of America.
0:56:05 > 0:56:09'Obama very much played on Lincoln's image.
0:56:09 > 0:56:12'He mimicked Lincoln's trip'
0:56:12 > 0:56:15on the train from Philadelphia to Washington DC.
0:56:15 > 0:56:23'He swore in on his inauguration on the very OUP Bible that Lincoln had used 100 some odd years earlier.'
0:56:23 > 0:56:26I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear...
0:56:28 > 0:56:32He has cloaked himself, his candidacy, indeed his Presidency,
0:56:32 > 0:56:34in the Lincoln myth.
0:56:34 > 0:56:39As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours,
0:56:39 > 0:56:42"We are not enemies but friends.
0:56:42 > 0:56:48"Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
0:56:48 > 0:56:52The Lincoln that Obama adopted most was Lincoln the healer.
0:56:52 > 0:56:58It's the Lincoln through whom we can all somehow come together.
0:56:58 > 0:57:01Our stories are singular but our destiny is shared.
0:57:01 > 0:57:05'Not Lincoln the ruthless war maker, not Lincoln even the Emancipator,
0:57:05 > 0:57:09'it's Lincoln the healer.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12'That's the Lincoln that Obama most tried to use.'
0:57:12 > 0:57:16That the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms
0:57:16 > 0:57:19or the scale of our wealth but from the enduring power of
0:57:19 > 0:57:25our ideals, democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.
0:57:29 > 0:57:32I think we all look at Lincoln from a perspective of
0:57:32 > 0:57:38what we see America as, and what we think America should be.
0:57:42 > 0:57:46And those of us who see America as this perfect place, always right,
0:57:46 > 0:57:50did everything right from the very beginning,
0:57:50 > 0:57:58need a Lincoln who is larger than life, who is a Herculean figure who did Herculean things.
0:58:00 > 0:58:05But I think we as a nation need to understand that we can
0:58:05 > 0:58:08honour Lincoln and be truthful.
0:58:08 > 0:58:14He was a human being who made mistakes, who had prejudices,
0:58:14 > 0:58:19who had his own agenda - that does not diminish his greatness.
0:58:19 > 0:58:24I think it makes him even greater because it shows that with all his prejudices,
0:58:24 > 0:58:29with all the baggage that he brings to the Presidency and to Emancipation,
0:58:29 > 0:58:32he still did the right thing in the end.
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0:58:52 > 0:58:55E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk