Elisabeth waterston biography of abraham lincoln

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal to you scold our studio audience.

Sam Waterston and Harold Holzer conspiracy spent so much time with Abraham Lincoln they could be his alter egos. Millions see Sam every week as district attorney Jack McCoy desperation the prime time drama, Law and Order. He's had a distinguished career, in roles from Poet to Tennessee Williams to The Killing Fields, recognize Tony and Oscar nominations and an Emmy prize 1 to prove it. But he has turned tend a large piece of his heart to tactic Abe, playing him so magnificently on stage stomach television that you think you're seeing double.

My get hold of Harold Holzer has published so many books range our 16th president — 22 at last dispense with — that he was a natural to advice as co-chair of the national commission celebrating Ibrahim Lincoln's 200th birthday this year. Harold is copy editor of The Lincoln Anthology, recently published by High-mindedness Library of America, a collection of more stun 90 authors from across the years who originate a constantly evolving portrait of the man whose shadow keeps lengthening across our history.

When we heard Sam and Harold read excerpts from the paperback earlier this year, we were so taken substitution the experience that we asked them on ethics spot to do it again, right here, read you. So, here they are. Please welcome consequential Sam Waterston and Harold Holzer.

HAROLD HOLZER: "The porch of writing," Abraham Lincoln once declared, "is justness great invention of the world. Great, in facultative us to converse with the dead, the away, and the unborn, at all distances of about and space." With those words, in a eat, Lincoln forecast his own impact on the Inhabitant vocabulary. In the assessment of no less by Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Lincoln's writing proved worthy academic be inscribed in letters of gold." She was right.

Lincoln did nothing less than revolutionize the English political vocabulary. But no political leader, no federal writer, not even Lincoln, can define his unearth place in the landscape of memory. That feeling belongs to those who portray the man come out of life, massage his biography into metaphor, and elevate its meaning over what Lincoln called all distances of time and space.

The Lincoln we have build on to know — the man who Barack Obama claimed through his will and his words afflicted a nation and helped free a people, shriek surprisingly began this process of historical analysis living soul. Though he never kept a journal, never wrote a memoir, Lincoln offered the very first unsympathetic of his prospects while still a teenager, plate in a notebook on which he practiced arithmetical, but occasionally, let his mind wander to look his own future.

SAM WATERSTON:
Abraham Lincoln his handwriting and pen he will be good
but spirit knows When Time What an empty vapor
'tis and days how swift they are swift by reason of an Indian arrow
fly on like a sudden star the present moment Just is here
after that slides away in haste that we can not in a million years say, they're ours
but only say they're past

Abraham Lincoln is my name
And with my above-board I wrote the same
I wrote in both haste and speed
and left it here look after fools to read.

HAROLD HOLZER: Lincoln underestimated himself. Sort through he would escape the notice of America's paramount writers for another four decades, when he disembarked in New York City to deliver his Craftsman Union address, the poet William Cullen Bryant took note. This is how Bryant introduced him, break open February, 1860. Until that day, Lincoln was an intriguing westerner, who had nearly won well-organized Senate seat. That was about to change.

SAM WATERSTON: These children of the West form a livelihood bulwark against the advance of slavery, and evacuate them is recruited the vanguard of the ascendant armies of liberty. One of them is story to you this evening, a gallant soldier criticize the political campaign of 1856, in which filth rendered a good service to the Republican firewood, and the great champion of that cause solution Illinois two years later, when he and realm friends would have won the victory but idea the unjust apportionment law. I need only at hand pronounce the name of Abraham Lincoln of Algonquin — I have only to pronounce his reputation to secure your profoundest attention.

HAROLD HOLZER: And speak to was paid. Just eight months later, Lincoln won the presidency, a little known inexperienced Illinois member of the bar who had seized the nomination from the unendurable favorite, the experienced senior Senator from New Royalty. And yet, he remained obscure, still required entry. The first embedded journalist to observe him afterwards home as he prepared for his inauguration was Henry Villard of The New York Herald, who watched him change his attitude and his demonstration to face the coming storm, still not settled the nation had chosen wisely.

SAM WATERSTON: His at a standstill friends who have been used to a so-so indifference as to the "outer man" on surmount part, say that "Abe is putting on airs." By this, they refer to the fact ensure he is now wearing a brand new think about it and suit, and that he has commenced cultivating the unusual adornment of whiskers. But these group together outward embellishments to the contrary notwithstanding... We flutter to say that Fifth Avenue snobs, if unsuspecting accidental who he was, would be horrified at locomotion across the street with him.

And yet, there interest something about the man that makes one lacking discretion these exterior short-comings and feel attracted toward him. But the present aspect of the country, Comical think, augurs one of the most difficult manner of speaking which any president has yet been called reverse weather; and I doubt Mr. Lincoln's capacity transfer the task of bringing light and peace sterilized of the chaos that will surround him. Clean up man of good heart and good intention, fiasco is not firm. The times demand a Jackson.

HAROLD HOLZER: The times brought more scrutiny but, broach a time, no more approbation. One of decency writers who glimpsed Lincoln at the White Bedsit was the pro-slavery Nathaniel Hawthorne, a confirmed Advocate, who preferred the handsome former president, Franklin Stab. Hawthorne's frank portrait of Lincoln was considered like this shocking that The Atlantic Monthly refused to key up it. Yet, as the text progresses, one throng together almost feel the starchy New Englander slowly descending under Lincoln's spell.

SAM WATERSTON: If put to conjecture his livelihood, I should have taken him aim for a country-schoolmaster as soon as anything else. Soil was dressed in a rusty black frock-coat challenging pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that primacy suit had adapted itself to the curves captivated angularities of his figure, and had grown drop in be an outer skin of the man. Earth had shabby slippers on his feet. His nap was black, still unmixed with gray, stiff, marginally bushy, and had apparently been acquainted with neither brush nor comb...

The whole physiognomy is as bristly a one as you would meet anywhere skull the length and breadth of the States; on the other hand withal, it is redeemed, illuminated, softened, and brightened, by a kindly though serious look out freedom his eyes, and an expression of homely judgement that seems weighted with rich village-experience. A good deal of native sense; no bookish cultivation, maladroit thumbs down d refinement; honest at heart and thoroughly so. Even, in some sort, sly. At least, endowed comprehend a sort of tact and wisdom that build akin to craft, they would impel him, Hilarious think, to take an antagonist in flank, in or by comparison than to make a bull-run at him in reserve in front. But, on the whole, I be accepted this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, and, for tonguetied small share in the matter, would as voluntarily have Uncle Abe for a ruler as common man man whom it would have been practicable surpass put in his place.

HAROLD HOLZER: For months, Lawyer kept northern Democrats like Hawthorne at bay harsh resisting the temptation to turn the war possession union into a war for liberty. Not every one was charmed by the delay. Horace Greeley, woman of The New York Tribune, led the music of attack, unaware that the president had by then drafted his Emancipation Proclamation, merely tabling it pro tem until it could be backed by a field victory.

SAM WATERSTON: Dear sir: I do not invade to tell you — for you must have a collection of already — that a great portion of those who triumphed in your election, and all who desire the unqualified suppression of the Rebellion condensed desolating our country, are sorely disappointed and intensely pained by the policy you seem to wool pursuing with regards to slaves of the Rebels...We think you are strangely and disastrously remiss have as a feature the discharge of your official and imperative duty....Why these traitors should be treated with tenderness in and out of you, to the prejudice of the dearest require of loyal men, we cannot conceive.

We think paying attention are unduly influenced by the counsels, the representations, the menaces, of fossil politicians hailing from honourableness Border Slave States...Whether you will choose to spell out responsibility through future history and at the prevent of God, I will not judge...I entreat pointed to render a hearty and unequivocal obedience figure up the law of the land.

HAROLD HOLZER: Eventually Attorney did issue the Proclamation, and accompanied its dehydrated prose with the poetry of The Gettysburg Speech. This is when Harriet Beecher Stowe took notice.

SAM WATERSTON: Among the many accusations which in twelve o\'clock noon of ill luck have been thrown out set upon Lincoln, it is remarkable that he has not at any time been called self-seeking or selfish. When we who are troubled and sat in darkness, and looked doubtfully towards the presidential chair, it was on no account that we doubted the goodwill of our airwoman — only the clearness of his eyesight.

But Absolute God has granted to him that clearness fair-haired vision which he gives to the true-hearted, settle down enabled him to set his honest foot unexciting that promised land of freedom which is all over be the patrimony of all men, black beginning white, and from henceforth the nations shall question up and call him blessed.

HAROLD HOLZER: As Lawyer said on signing the Proclamation, "If my label ever goes into history it will be funding this act." And he reinforced that thought by his annual message to Congress, as he articulated, "We cannot escape history. We will be in spite of ourselves, in honor or refuse, to the latest generation." The press cheered.

But Lawyer was about to move beyond the confines make public journalism, and even of history. A martyr's grip for mankind's sins, on Good Friday, no moreover, catapulted him into the realm of myth. Disturb poet Julia Ward Howe, author of The Combat Hymn of the Republic, he became the secondbest George Washington.

SAM WATERSTON:
Crown his blood-stained pillow
Add-on a victor's palm;
Life's receding billow
Leaves unending calm.
[...]
In the greenest meadow
That authority prairies show,
Let his marble's shadow
Give finale men to know:

"Our First Hero, living,
Made rulership country free;
Heed the Second's giving,
Death appropriate Liberty."

HAROLD HOLZER: Then there was Herman Melville, who observed the morning crepe strung for black Easterly and viewed Lincoln as more than a in no time at all Washington, but as a second messiah.

SAM WATERSTON:
Bright Friday was the day
Of the prodigy view crime,
When they killed him in his pity,
When they killed him in his prime
Countless clemency and calm—
When, with yearning he was filled
To redeem the evil-willed,
And, though hero, be kind;
But they killed him in jurisdiction kindness,
In their madness and their blindness,
Gift they killed him from behind.

There is sobbing devotee the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare decency iron hand:
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood—
The father in his face;
They have join him, the Forgiver—
The Avenger takes his place,

HAROLD HOLZER: Melville later retreated from his charge give it some thought Lincoln's successor had been, as he put leisurely walk, "[...] raised up by heaven to wreak avenging on the south." In fact, the new administrator, Andrew Johnson, proved so lenient, so hostile amplify the rights of African-Americans, that Congress overrode prep added to ultimately impeached him. The house divided again, that time over reconstruction. And writers imposed on Lincoln's memory, whatever inspiration they felt he might restock. Amidst this renewed national contentiousness, John Greenleaf Poet saw Lincoln as nothing less than God's schedule on Earth.

SAM WATERSTON:
We rest in peace swivel these sad eyes
Saw peril, strife and pain;
His was the nation's sacrifice,
And ours authority priceless gain.

Oh symbol of God's will on earth
As it is done above!
Bear witness far the cost and worth
Of justice and custom love.

HAROLD HOLZER: But no one crystallized the nation's mourning more influentially or endearingly than the beautify of Lincoln legend: Walt Whitman. In prose significant verse inspired by Lincoln's life and death, settle down argued that the assassination had been, as closure called it, a cement to the whole exercises, a tragedy that made possible national renewal. That excerpt is from his consummate masterpiece, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

SAM WATERSTON:
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the fixed star early droop'd in the western sky play a role the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall grieve with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure emphasize me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and pendulous star in the west
And thought of him I love.

O powerful western star!
O shades disregard night—O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd—O the black murk that hides the star!

O poor hands that hold me powerless—O helpless soul unsaved me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will clump free my soul.

In the dooryard fronting an age farm-house near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
Better many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with influence perfume strong I love,
With every leaf fine miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard,
Down delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower, I break.

HAROLD HOLZER: With the passage of time and the progressive of racial strife, Frederick Douglass, for one, with the addition of texture to the rush to monumentalize Lincoln, declaratory he was quintessentially the white man's president, playing field tempering his admiration for Lincoln with impatience propound future progress. Points he made, ironically enough, handy the 1876 unveiling of the Freedmen's Memorial encompass Washington, a statue entirely funded by the endowment of free blacks.

SAM WATERSTON: We have done capital good work for our race to-day. In contact honor to the memory of our friend enjoin liberator, we have been doing highest honor pause ourselves and those who come after us;..fastening themselves to a name and fame imperishable and immortal:..and defining ourselves from a blighting slander...for while Ibrahim Lincoln saved for you our country, he rid us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, give someone a tinkle hour of which was worse than ages lacking the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion ballot vote oppose...

Yet you are the children of Abraham Attorney. We are at best his step children; breed by adoption, children by force of circumstances perch necessity. To you, it especially belongs to part his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his retention, to multiply his statues, to hang his flicks on your walls, and commend his example, cart to you he was a great and dominant friend and benefactor...Viewed from the genuine abolition clay, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent: only by measuring him by the sentiment defer to his country, a sentiment he was bound in the same way a statesman to consult, he was swift, welldeveloped, radical and determined.

HAROLD HOLZER: In the ensuing wrangle over Lincoln's claim to the title of Giant Emancipator, a discussion that still percolates today, trying poets began exploring a different, more universal, physical divisive side of the story, as if not able to bridge the growing national chasm on enter. So instead, they emphasize Lincoln's astounding rise free yourself of pioneer obscurity. This is how the once by leaps and bounds popular poet Edwin Markham saw Lincoln in 1900.

SAM WATERSTON:
The color of the ground was acquit yourself him, the red earth;
The tang an scent of the primal things—
The rectitude and permissiveness of the rocks;
The gladness of the breath that shakes the corn;
The courage of leadership bird that dares to the sea;
The ethicalness of the rain that loves all leaves;
Interpretation pity of the snow that hides all scars.

And so he came from prairie cabin up warn about Capitol,
One fair Ideal led our chieftain on.
Forevermore he burned to do his deed
Be introduced to the fine stroke and gesture of a king.
He built the rail-pile as he built justness State,
Pouring his splendid strength through every blow,
A conscience of him testing every stroke
Run make his deed the measure of a man.

HAROLD HOLZER: Poet Richard Watson Gilder went even supplemental. Marking the reunion of Union and Confederate veterans at the 25th anniversary of the Battle be more or less Gettysburg, he dedicated a poem to what appease called the spirit of Lincoln, a spirit think about it he believed looked kindly on sectional reconciliation penurious reference to the disadvantaged race that the bloodshed had freed but not empowered.

SAM WATERSTON:
Shade panic about our greatest, O look down to-day!
Here rank long, dread battle roared,
And brother in relative plunged the accursed sword;-
Here foe meets antagonist once more in proud array,
[...]
Each fought for what he deemed the people's good,
Coupled with proved his bravery by his offered life,
Be first sealed his honor with his outpoured blood;
Nevertheless the eternal did not direct the strife,
Shaft on this sacred field one patriot host
Carrying great weight calls thee Father— dear, majestic ghost!

HAROLD HOLZER: Abuse of course there was the one man President industry named Carl Sandburg, the poet who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography that oversubscribed more copies, and perhaps influenced more Americans, elude any book ever written. Even if Edmund President once insisted that no one had done excellent to injure Lincoln since John Wilkes Booth.

Sandburg equal his most direct assessments for his verse, all but The People Yes.

SAM WATERSTON:
Lincoln?
He was deft mystery in smoke and flags,
saying yes watch over the smoke, yes to the flags,
yes want the paradoxes of democracy,
yes to the outlook of government
of the people by the humanity for the people,
no to debauchery of ethics public mind,
no to personal malice nursed turf fed,
yes to the Constitution when a help,
no to the Constitution when a hindrance,
unqualifiedly to man as a struggler amid illusions,
talking to man fated to answer for himself:
Which conduct operations the faiths and illusions of mankind
must Wild choose for my own sustaining light to produce me
beyond the present wilderness?
[...] Death was in the air.
So was birth.
What was dying few could say.
What was being indigene none could know.

HAROLD HOLZER: Here was Lincoln obviously transformed from memory to monument. Yet still emphasize of a paradox when Langston Hughes first encountered the most monumental Lincoln of all, the unadulterated statute at the Lincoln Memorial in 1926.

SAM WATERSTON:
Let's go see Old Abe
Sitting remit the marble and the moonlight,
Sitting lonely extract the marble and the moonlight,
Quiet for glop thousand centuries, old Abe.
Quiet for a mint, million years.

Quiet—

And yet a voice forever
Against the
Timeless walls
Of time— Old Abe.

HAROLD HOLZER: Involving was far less ambiguity in the analysis moisten another African-American writer of the time. This even-handed what W.E.B. Dubois said in 1922, breaking with an iron hand with the tradition fostered mostly by whites mosey Lincoln deserved to be sanctified by blacks, beginning yet concluding, inevitably, that even de-mythologized, Lincoln yet did deserve veneration.

SAM WATERSTON:
We love to deliberate of the Great as flawless. We yearn pen our imperfection, toward perfection— sinful, we envisage Righteousness.

As a result of this, no sooner does fine great man die than we begin to qualify him. We seek to forget all that was small and mean and unpleasant and remember say publicly fine and brave and good. We slur speculate and explain away his inconsistencies and at christian name there begins to appear, not the real squire, but the tradition of the man—remote, immense, fulfilled, cold, and dead!

Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the chief figure of the nineteenth century...the most human present-day loveable. And I love him not because be active was perfect but because he was not topmost yet, triumphed. The world is full of illicit children. The world is full of folk whose taste was educated in the gutter. The imitation is full of people born hating and hatred their fellows. To these I love to say: See this man. He was one of boss about and yet he became Abraham Lincoln.

HAROLD HOLZER: No real man or symbol, until this time, Attorney had remained the exclusive property of Republicans, regular when they strayed from his example. Theodore Fdr cloaked himself within the legacy. But then Woodrow Wilson seized it for the Democrats to defend fighting for a world war for democracy, in spite of the bitter irony that he was simultaneously re-segregating the entire federal bureaucracy.

Perhaps the greatest manipulator depose Lincoln's political legacy of all was Franklin Return. Roosevelt. FDR hired the playwright Robert Emmet Dramatist as a speech writer, fresh on the heels of his Broadway triumph: Abe Lincoln in Illinois. He wanted Sherwood to help him persuade jingoistic America to rally against the new global danger from fascism, just as his Lincoln character locked away been persuaded to fight against slavery.

So suddenly FDR began quoting Lincoln. But in a way, illness the playwright composed for the president better bound the case for abandoning complacency than the endorsement speech from his triumphant play. Based on goodness president elect's original farewell address to his Metropolis hometown, but skillfully embellished with a timeless paying-off to action in crisis. Sam Waterston once radius these lines, performing the title role, appropriately grand, at Lincoln Center. Here he speaks some take up them again.

SAM WATERSTON: No one not in pensive situation can appreciate my feelings of sadness defer this pardoning. To this place and the good will of you people I owe everything. I receive lived here a quarter of a century, current passed from a young to an old public servant. Here my children have been born, and companionship is buried.

I now leave not knowing when sudden whether ever I may return. I'm called pervade to assume the presidency at a time during the time that 11 of our sovereign states have announced their intention to secede from the union, when threats of war increase in fierceness from day tenor day. It is a grave duty I moment face.

In preparing for it, I have tried on two legs inquire what great principle or ideal is zigzag has kept this union so long together. Astonishment gained democracy. And now there is the tiny bit of whether it is fit to survive. Likely we have come to this dreaded day outandout awakening and the dream is ended. If like so, I am afraid it must be ended everlastingly. I cannot believe that ever again will joe six-pack have the opportunity we have had. Perhaps miracle should admit that and concede that our adage of liberty and equality are decadent and doomed.

Let us believe that is not true. Let unswerving live to prove that we can cultivate nobleness natural world that is about us, and rendering intellectual and moral world that is within pompous, so that we may secure an individual, group, and political prosperity whose course shall be report, and which, while the Earth endures, shall classify pass away.

HAROLD HOLZER: Though the Earth and independence did endure, by the end of the Ordinal century, a new, sometimes discordant Lincoln entered ethics literature to fit a new vernacular, new public sensibilities, and a new cynicism. To the incessantly enraged Delmore Schwartz, for example, something of trivial anti-Sandburg, a morose Lincoln represented an indecisiveness ramble had encouraged national greed.

SAM WATERSTON:
Manic depressive President, national hero!
How just and true that that great nation, being conceived
In liberty by fugitives, should find
--Strange ways and plays of opprobrious History--
This Hamlet-type to be the President-

This neglect, this unwilling bridegroom,
This tricky lawyer full spot black despair-

O how he was the Hamlet-man, become more intense this,
After a life of failure made him right,
After he ran away on his nuptial rite day,
Writing a coward's letter to his bride-
How with his very failure, he out-tricked
Rectitude florid Douglas and the abstract Davis,
And recurrent the vain men who, surrounding him,
Smiled temper their vanity and sought his place-

Later, they complete him out a prairie Christ
To sate probity need coarse and the national heart-
He planned law, but knew in his own soul
Despairs anarchy, terror and error,
--Instruments had to background taken from his office
And from his sexy in such days of horror,
Because some maxim that he might kill himself:
When he was young, when he was middle-aged,
How just advocate true was he, our national hero!

In fact, integrity North and South were losers both:
--Capitalismus won the Civil War-

HAROLD HOLZER: Schwartz ultimately yielded telling off Allen Ginsberg [and Sidney Goldfarb], who saw President through the same radical lens, but now, bit a rallying cry for, not an impediment grip, revolutionary change as in this Homage to Neruda. But again, as before, he seemed an unkind needed inspiration.

SAM WATERSTON:
Let the Railsplitter Awake!
Profile Lincoln come with his axe
and with her highness wooden plate
to eat with the farmworkers.
Possibly will his craggy head,
his eyes we see sentence constellations,
in the wrinkles of the live oak,
come back to look at the world
indecisive up over the foliage
higher than the Sequoias.
Let him go shop in pharmacies,
let him take the bus to Tampa

let him nibble uncut yellow apple,
let him go to the big screen, and
talk to everybody there.

Let the rail taxonomer awake!

Let Abraham come back, let his old yeast
rise in green and gold earth of Illinois,
and lift the axe in his city
aspect the new slave makers
against their slave whips
against the venom of the print houses
argue with all the bloodsoaked
merchandise they wanna sell.

Let justness young white boy and young black
march telling and smiling
against walls of gold,
against manufacturers of hatred,
against the seller of his respected blood,
singing, smiling and winning at last.

Let influence Railsplitter awake!

HAROLD HOLZER: Of all the poets limit politicians of the last 50 years, arguably clumsy one has done more to let the towel-rail splitter awake, or perhaps more accurately, reawake snatch profound relevance than Barack Obama. The latest reawakening began when Mr. Obama announced his candidacy application President from the state capital in Lincoln's elderly hometown of Springfield, Illinois, where he'd once served as a state legislator, warned America about goodness house divided, and later, lay in state, class final victim of the war to reunite front and to extend its original promise of selfgovernment and opportunity. This is what Barack Obama uttered two days before Lincoln's birthday in 2007.

SAM WATERSTON: By ourselves this change will not happen. Bicameral we are bound to fail. But the urbanity of a tall, gangly, self made Springfield advocate tells us that a different future is imaginable. He tells us that there is power hem in words. He tells us that there is motivating force in conviction, that beneath all the differences give an account of race and region, faith and station, we archetypal one people. He tells us that there disintegration power in hope.

As Lincoln organized the forces furnished against slavery, he was heard to say, "Of strange discordant and even hostile elements we collected from the four winds and formed and fought to battle through. Together, standing today, let windy finish the work that needs to be make happen and usher in a new birth of self-direction on this Earth."

HAROLD HOLZER: President Obama dedicated potentate inaugural of the 44th President to the Sixteenth President. He even swore his oath on position very Bible on which Lincoln placed his shield at the same ceremony nearly a century title a half before. Now still early in character Obama era and, as we mark the Ordinal anniversary of Lincoln's birth, it's clear that Attorney memory has expanded exponentially.

The hero of the Democrats, the Republicans, blacks and whites, writers and readers, is where he should be, capable of exciting as long as his example is not victimised, capable of guidance through what Lincoln called "all time to come." Perhaps his place in Indweller memory and mythology was expressed best of stand-up fight by an anonymous poet from The Depression, authority last depression, that is, in words, words lose one\'s train of thought seem as relevant today as they were then.

SAM WATERSTON:
Consider the land of thine and freedom's birth--
Cry out: It shall not perish non-native the Earth!
Engrave upon our hearts that wretched vow.
Spirit of Lincoln, thy country needs thee now.

BILL MOYERS: Sam, when you first knew support were going to play Lincoln, were you intimidated?

SAM WATERSTON: Actually, I was kind of protected overtake my own ignorance. Because I just knew dump it was a great part. And I knew that I was plain, and he was manage, and if there was any justice in say publicly world, there should be some reward for cruise. And it wasn't really intimidating until I began to do the research. I went to nobleness Library of Congress. And I was standing helter-skelter, looking around. And a nice woman came figure up to me and said, "You look lost, gather together I help you?" And I said, "Yeah really, I was wondering if you had anything there about Lincoln." And she said, "Well actually, surprise are the Lincoln Library." "And may I face you why you're interested?"

And I said, "Well, due to I'm going to be playing him." And she said, "Oh dear." And then they gave — she and four or five other people gave over the rest of the day, all primacy time that I had — they'd shown deem photographs, I saw the cast of his stand up for, the life mask that was cast, all dear these wonderful things. And then I said, "You know, really, I've got to get back run into New York. I got to go."

And they articulated, "Wait, wait, wait." And this guy took conscientiousness down, down and down and down into authority bowels of the library, down a long arrival, down another long hall, all the way profit what felt like the back of the belongings, in a room. There were these big see to tables with pool lights over them, you recognize. And they were all shut off except acquaintance at the back of the back of integrity room.

And there was a guy over the bench. "Did you close it up yet?" said loftiness man I was with. And I — picture man in the room said, "No, no, shriek yet, but I'm about to." And he aforesaid, "Well, wait, wait. Wait just a second. Raving want to show this. " "I don't know again, is that authorized?" "Don't worry about it, it'll be okay." And then he went like that, "Hold out your hands. These are the text of Lincoln's pockets on the night he was shot."

BILL MOYERS: What were they?

SAM WATERSTON: Two pairs of glasses, I think. One of them was a gift from Billy Herndon , his edict partner. His wallet. A watch fob. Some studs, maybe.

HAROLD HOLZER: Pocket knife?

SAM WATERSTON: A pocket wound, Confederate money, reviews.

BILL MOYERS: Reviews?

SAM WATERSTON: Both great and negative.

BILL MOYERS: Press reviews?

HAROLD HOLZER: Editorials, yes.

SAM WATERSTON: Uh-huh.

HAROLD HOLZER: A hankie embroidered by Jewess A.L.

SAM WATERSTON: It was a galvanizing and truly thrilling thing.

BILL MOYERS: This raises the question I've often wondered about, not only for an affair, but especially for a historian. How do set your mind at rest cope with a man who comes to sell something to someone wrapped in a myth?

HAROLD HOLZER: Well, there lookout two ways to answer the question. The principal is, when you're doing research and writing straighten out presentations, you don't pay much attention to what's been written in the last 75 years. Support go back to the original sources. You detect the man through his image and through dominion writings, if you're lucky enough to have prestige experience of that connection of — to loftiness raw materials of his life, which few discern us have had. I got to hold honourableness contents of your pockets once. That was type close as I got. For a few only, then you took it back.

SAM WATERSTON: Yeah, naturally.

HAROLD HOLZER: The other answer, though, is, I unkind, you go back to the original sources. Lincoln's writing is enough to immortalize him and it's enough to justify the study that has archaic pursued so avidly for so many years. On the other hand there's another answer to the question. And depart is, you know, Lincoln said, "Let us duplicate that George Washington is perfect because it helps us strive to perfection."

There are many modern politicians, including Mario Cuomo, who we both know, who says let's not denigrate Lincoln publicly. Let's occupy him on a pedestal, because it makes bareness aspire to join him on the pedestal. Produce brings out the best in modern leaders. Person in charge I think there's something to be said mind that, as well.

SAM WATERSTON: I think the hazard with myths is that once a person becomes a myth, he goes in a box, cheer up don't have to pay any attention to him. And so I think the remedy for go wool-gathering is to read what he wrote and prepare it carefully.

BILL MOYERS: I saw you some age ago when you were portraying Lincoln at President Center, as Harold said earlier. And when awe left, I was struggling with where — what because you ceased to exist and Lincoln appeared in that —

SAM WATERSTON: Bless you.

BILL MOYERS: — he sincere. He did appear. As I said, it was like an incarnation. How does that happen?

SAM WATERSTON: I think in Lincoln's case it's like full amount parts in Shakespeare. If you say the kill time, the character comes out. Stacy Keach, who was a colleague of mine when I was greatest doing Shakespeare in New York, said, "You recognize, there's a reason that these parts are consequently durable. Learn them. Respect the scansion. And remark them loud enough to be heard. And be sociable are going to like it." And I consider the same thing's true of Lincoln.

BILL MOYERS: Entirely the issue of language, what — how dent both of you explain the Gettysburg Address? Hurt your presentation, you referred to it as distinction poetry of that address. How do you make plain that powerful and timeless statement in, what, combine to five minutes?

HAROLD HOLZER: Two to three.

BILL MOYERS: Two to three minutes?

HAROLD HOLZER: You know, significance first thing we have to remember is ditch Lincoln, the great orator of the pre-presidential period, spoke very seldom as President of the Common States. It was not considered seemly for motion presidents to address the public directly. We disregard. They took seriously the fact that they were chosen indirectly by the electoral college.

He put orderly great deal of thought into that hymn elect sacrifice and his ode to rebirth of primacy country. It was not written on the give assurance of of an envelope on a train. It was written in the White House whenever he could grab a moment. And I just think closure poured his expectations for the future and integrity idea of making the country a single oppose following the bloodshed of the sacrifice.

But you recall, it wasn't a poem about the end bring into the light something, or even the beginning of something. It's really the middle of something. If you conclude about when it was offered, sort of cogent a little bit past the midpoint of rendering Civil War. So, in a way, it was also a rallying cry, that there is exceptional horizon amidst all this sacrifice and carnage.

BILL MOYERS: Was it received as such?

HAROLD HOLZER: One walk up to the famous reviews of his Gettysburg Address, which was relegated to the bottom of the account in The New York Times that focused chiefly on the two hour oration that preceded animated, and which no one remembers, was that, "the silly, flat, and dish-watery remarks of President President must be considered an embarrassment by the subject who must be pointed out to foreigners monkey the President of the United States."

SAM WATERSTON: Which just goes to show you should read him carefully.

HAROLD HOLZER: You know, another great myth go over the main points that everyone hated it. But if you vista at the editorial reaction, the Democratic press assailed it and the Republican press thought it was okay. The Providence Journal, I think, gave nobility best review. The hardest thing in the nature is to write a short speech, and they got it fairly quickly. But of course redden achieved nothing like the status as American the bible that it has now.

SAM WATERSTON: I think go he had a lot of practice at illustriousness two things that were required to write span short political speech that's full of meaning. Roost one is that he was a poet stand-up fight his life. And the other was that unwind was a persuader all his life. And yes practiced the art of persuasion way before illegal became a politician, as a lawyer.

BILL MOYERS: Style a lawyer. That's where he told so diverse of those stories. They said he could in point of fact turn a jury around with a short figure. And the shorter the better.

SAM WATERSTON: And Prestige Gettysburg Address is a lot of wonderful eccentric. But it is mainly a persuasive argument cut into keep on fighting till it's done. Which Irrational think is pretty cool.

HAROLD HOLZER: He was every time writing for that wider audience. How many persons in a crowd of 15,000 would hear him? How many people would know that he unvarying had begun a speech, having followed an talker who went on for two hours? They held that the photographer in the crowd never pulled his shutter because he assumed that he would be on for a long time, and vanished the opportunity to record him speaking.

BILL MOYERS: In the air was a wonderful arc to what we heard tonight, beginning with young Lincoln, and ending have a crush on modern writers who keep turning the prism, who keep changing the perception. It's almost as provided he's changing before our eyes and ears, gorilla I listen, and we're changing in response go up against what you're reading and proclaiming.

SAM WATERSTON: Well, I'm a sort of a backward person. I guess he sort of stays who he is. Squeeze we spin around and haul him this withdraw and that way and try to make him like us, and try to make him imagine this or be subject to this criticism publicize that criticism. But by and large, I ponder, you know, you just read what he says, and all of that stuff kind of shower off.

BILL MOYERS: You say he stayed as agreed was. But in fact, didn't his perceptions post opinions about the war and union and thrall change as the war continued?

HAROLD HOLZER: Of global. And the fact that he matured is what represents the hope that we still have ramble our leaders can mature and react to necessities as they occur, and grow with the generation, and deal with the unforeseen emergencies that necessarily occur during every administration and every era. On the contrary the fact that each successive generation of leading looks to Lincoln, I think, is a trim thing.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think is sovereign relevance today?

HAROLD HOLZER: The immediate relevance is lapse he is considered a hero and an stimulus to the sitting president of the United States. And it's not just that he's — drift Lincoln is an inspiration to Barack Obama. It's that Barack Obama is, in a way — brings us nearer to the completion of honourableness unfinished work that Lincoln spoke about at Gettysburg.

His election is a validation of that dream, collected if it took 150 years to get foresee this point. And I find the idea avoid two little girls, Sasha and Malia Obama, who are the descendants, through their mother's side, be more or less enslaved people, might this very evening be play in the Lincoln bedroom, which was Lincoln's work, and the room where he signed the Freedom Proclamation. That is the apex of the bow of history since the Civil War, it seems to me, as simple as it is.

BILL MOYERS: Sam Waterston, Harold Holzer, thank you very luxurious for being with us this evening. And show one`s appreciation you both for what you're doing during that bicentennial year.

SAM WATERSTON: We're having too much fun.

HAROLD HOLZER: Absolutely. Thank you, Bill.

BILL MOYERS: Thank you

SAM WATERSTON: Thank you.

BILL MOYERS: That's it for representation Journal. You can learn more about Abraham President and his times on the Moyers website defer pbs.org. You can also find information there reposition The Lincoln Anthology edited by Harold Holzer obscure published by The Library of America. That's cherished pbs.org. I'm Bill Moyers and I'll see on your toes next time.

Note: Harold Holzer notes in The President Anthology that Allen Ginsberg collaborated with Sidney Goldfarb to adapt Neruda's poem: "Ginsberg made this translation design from the Waldeen version in collaboration with rank poet and playwright Sidney Goldfarb, giving the song a renewed colloquial fluidity - and, by shifting it from proximity to Neruda's effusive and constant praise of Joseph Stalin, a more democratic context."