Race for the White House (2016) s01e02 Episode Script

You've done good for a hick woodsman from the frontier.
But you know, something lies rotten at the heart of your country.
And you're the one to save it.
But how does a clean-shaven prairie lawyer stay as "Honest Abe" when you know you'll have to play dirty and devious to become president? And what if you reach the White House and there's no nation left to save? The United States is on the brink of civil war.
The dispute is about whether the New Territories should become free states like the North or slave states like the South.
Nowhere is the debate fiercer than in Ottawa, Illinois.
(Cheering) Thousands have descended on this little town.
It's the campaign for the US Senate, and they've come to hear Abraham Lincoln confront Senator Stephen A Douglas on the issue that threatens to tear America apart: Slavery.
The debates between Lincoln and Douglas drew enormous crowds.
People are drinking.
People are cheering.
People are fighting.
It was almost pugilistic, as though people were coming to a boxing match to watch these two heavyweights slug it out.
Lincoln is a rookie politician, a member of the brand-new Republican Party.
Just four years old, it was formed to end slavery.
He's an unknown.
Abraham Lincoln's career as a politician has been almost non-existent.
The only thing Lincoln has is his brain, is his ability to orate.
That's it.
His opponent in this election is the current Senator of Illinois, Democrat Stephen A Douglas.
Stephen A Douglas was among the most ruthless politicians of the day.
And more importantly, probably the most powerful Democratic politician in the United States.
I would call it David and Goliath, but it's worse than that.
It's David and Goliath if David didn't even have a slingshot.
Douglas doesn't open on the issue of slavery.
Instead, he plays to the crowd.
Ladies and gentlemen, I do not question Mr Lincoln's conscientious belief that the Negro is his equal.
But I do not regard the Negro as my equal.
(Overlapping voices) Douglas was not one to talk about legalising slavery in the Territories so much as he wants to paint Lincoln as a pro-Negro politician.
He is, in other words, playing the race card, and playing it in the most shameless fashion imaginable.
But the prairie lawyer is not going to be deflected from his mission: To see the end of slavery in America.
Lincoln had always said that if slavery isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong.
That slavery was horrendous.
BURLINGAME: And I think it was because he hated the way his father had treated him, which was like a slave.
Because his father would yank him out of school, force him to go work on neighbours' farms, performing all kinds of backbreaking labour.
There is no reason why the Negro is not entitled to all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence.
When Lincoln invokes the Declaration of Independence, there's no quarrelling.
There's no quibbling with it.
That is the authority.
He is as much entitled to these rights as the white man.
(Applause and cheering) Lining the Declaration of Independence up on his side provides a formidable obstacle for Stephen Douglas to scramble over.
He is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas.
Lincoln argues that if slavery is allowed to spread into the New Territories, it will lead to war.
But he doesn't call for abolition.
GUELZO: And Lincoln's solution was brick the thing in.
Make sure that it doesn't spread.
Let it asphyxiate within its own casket.
and place it on the course of ultimate extinction.
(Whistling and cheering) The Lincoln-Douglas debate became a national sensation because people found out about them literally within hours, which had never been done before.
For the first time, Americans will read the exact words Lincoln has used to defeat Douglas.
TAPPER: You had people writing things down in shorthand.
GUELZO: Have a runner take it to the nearest train station and then the notes would be sent up to Chicago.
TAPPER: To a telegraph station.
The telegraph would then relay exactly what was being said, word for word, at these debates, to newspapers.
GUELZO: And within 24 hours, the newspapers could have those debates all cased up and ready to go into print.
So Lincoln is getting a national reputation and his words are being printed even internationally.
As the election for the Illinois Senate gains speed, Lincoln dukes it out with Douglas at six more debates.
TAPPER: Lincoln was the winner of the seven debates.
But with a guy like Stephen Douglas, there was just no way that Abraham Lincoln was gonna become the next senator.
(Cawing) Douglas's team get busy.
On a cold wet polling day, they lure supporters in with the perfect antidote.
One of the things that Douglas did was to provide the supporters of his candidacy with liquor.
TAPPER: They would ship in all of these Irish workers.
They would become registered voters, vote for Stephen Douglas and then they would disappear.
And as was said later, they voted early and often.
Douglas plays all the dirty tricks in the book.
Lincoln is defeated.
This was a devastating political loss for Lincoln.
Lincoln was humiliated.
Lincoln had wanted to win, believed he was going to win.
Lincoln's brief and inglorious political career looks over before it's even really begun.
Lincoln has lost all hope of a seat in the Senate.
Dejected, he returns to his hometown of Springfield.
Out of the blue, a telegram arrives for Abraham Lincoln.
It's an invitation to come and speak in New York City before the elite Republican leadership on the East Coast.
Republicans are buzzing about how this rank outsider demolished Stephen A Douglas with nothing but oratory.
People wanted to see him.
They wanted to hear him.
And he realised that his star had really not diminished.
As a matter of fact, it had risen.
And I think it stoked the idea in his mind, and the minds of many others, that he was a potential president.
Somehow we've gotta come up Lincoln knows New York can give him his break.
But he's saying nothing about reaching for the top job.
He played this game and danced this coquettish dance about whether or not he could see himself as president for months and months and months, pretending that he had no interest in it.
LINCOLN: He lies in secrecy.
God help us Lincoln understood that the later he emerged as a candidate and the less time his opponents had to attack him, the better off he'd be.
Lincoln arrives in New York.
He's spent months preparing for this moment: His address to the elite of the party at the Great Hall of Cooper Union.
Lincoln sees this as an opportunity for what amounts to a political screen test.
(Applause) But Lincoln's attire leaves something to be desired.
BURLINGAME: He's wearing a wrinkled suit.
WASHINGTON: He has one pant leg shorter than the other.
His hair looks like it hasn't been brushed.
He's a mess.
All the sophisticated New Yorkers look at each other.
"Who is this country bumpkin?" TAPPER: People are unsure of who this guy is.
He knows this is a key moment, and so he's understandably nervous.
And then he speaks, and then he talks.
Mr President and fellow citizens of New York.
It starts off a little shaky.
The the facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar.
But then he begins to tell his audience why he's there and the arguments begin to flow.
Can we allow slavery to spread into the national territories and to overrun us here in these free states? And he starts delivering a beautiful, powerful oration.
The audience is stunned.
And let us stand by our duty fearlessly and effectively.
BURLINGAME: They forgot about his accent.
SCHULTEN: And the speech becomes so moving and people feel incredibly inspired.
LINCOLN: On the question about which all true men do care.
And he ends by saying Right makes might.
And in that faith, let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.
(Applause) By the time he finishes with that major sentence, he has them in the palm of his hand.
BLUMENTHAL: It is one of the great American speeches.
One person in the audience said, "He's the greatest man since St Paul.
" Lincoln's moment has arrived.
He throws his stovepipe hat in the ring and announces his intent to run for the Republican nomination.
Nothing can stop him now except for the hot favourite to win, William Henry Seward.
William Henry Seward was an upstate New Yorker, a man of fabulous gifts as a speaker, a man of principled opposition to slavery and a man of great political experience.
He was urbane.
He was charming.
GUELZO: Here was a man who looked like he was effortlessly ascending the steps toward the presidency.
And the man behind Seward is the most terrifying operator in American politics, his campaign manager, Thurlow Weed.
His cheery nickname, "The Dictator.
" Thurlow Weed was known as The Dictator in part because of his ability to get things done.
WASHINGTON: Some people would say he was a bully.
Some people despised him.
Other people were afraid of him.
He was not a spokesman of high principle, but of clever backstage manoeuvring and bribes and kickbacks.
WASHINGTON: Everyone knew that he held the power within the Republican Party.
Lincoln will have a fight on his hands at the Convention.
(Whistling and cheering) Chicago, more of a Roman orgy than a convention.
It was something of a cross between a poorly organised riot and the World Series.
Tradition dictates that neither candidate attends the convention.
It'll be down to the campaign managers to slug it out.
BURLINGAME: Thurlow Weed and his cohorts arrive and they're pretty certain that they're going to win.
TAPPER: They think this is a done deal.
They're so confident, many of them are drunk.
- Mr Weed.
- Welcome.
Champagne.
He served champagne.
He hands out cigars.
He's brought raucous New Yorkers to pack the convention hall led by a prize fighter.
But Weed is in for a fight himself.
Lincoln has assembled a prized team to take on the favourites.
Central among them is the maestro David Davis, the judge who weighs 300 pounds, who is very wealthy.
Davis has a kind of, oh, I guess you might say ruthlessness.
But Weed is the consummate political street fighter.
He was taking names and he was taking numbers.
And you'd pay a price.
So part of that was to send a message to everybody else, "Hey, you might be thinking about dancing with Lincoln and I'll remember.
And you'll be dead to me.
" Lincoln's team face an almost insurmountable challenge.
There's just two days to go till the ballot to choose the Republican nominee for President.
To win, they need 233 delegate votes.
So far, they can count on just 22.
And so they went to work like beavers on a dam.
They worked their way into every nook, cranny and smoke-filled room they could.
The team, led by the judge, David Davis, are a law unto themselves.
Lincoln has a very good team who are quite prepared to suggest that Lincoln will remember you.
Davis meets with the leader of the Indiana Delegation, Caleb Blood Smith.
Caleb Smith is probably one of the most incompetent and lazy people of any prominence at the convention.
But they don't care.
TAPPER: They start offering him a job.
I don't mean like being like the butler at the White House.
They offer him a cabinet position if the Indiana Delegation eventually comes around to Lincoln.
GUELZO: Word of these promises comes back to Lincoln.
Lincoln is not happy at hearing this.
He has cultivated an image over the years of being "Honest Abraham".
BURLINGAME: And Lincoln sends a message back saying, "Make no promises in my name.
I will not be bound by any.
" Which in a way of saying is, "If you are doing this sort of thing, I don't want to know about it.
I don't want to hear about it.
" PLOUFFE: Make no mistake, Abraham Lincoln was chief political strategist.
He relied on his aides maybe sometimes to do the dirty work, to be ruthless, to cut deals.
But he was he was the lead dog.
And Lincoln did some very difficult and even sometimes devious things to get in the White House and thank God he did.
But they'll need all their political cunning when they hear that Thurlow Weed is planning to jam the hall with his supporters.
These were like sporting events.
Commanding a convention hall was crucial.
It is going to be just a mass, adoring crowd calling for Seward.
So they have to do something to stop this.
On the morning of the balloting, Weed leads a great parade full of brass and noise through the streets of Chicago.
And they come up to the doors of the convention hall.
WEED: All right, make way for the New York Delegation.
Only to find that all the seats have been taken.
Why? The night before, Lincoln's people got their hands on a convention ticket.
This is this is so devious.
They printed counterfeit passes to get into the convention and stacked the hall with people who were not legitimate delegates.
And they printed 5,000 counterfeit tickets.
Sorry, but even our greatest president, our most honest president, was not above a little a little dirty politics.
Their ploy works.
The hall is packed with Lincoln men shouting from the rafters.
Lincoln! Lincoln! Lincoln! They had a guy known as having leather lungs belt out his name.
Lincoln! Lincoln! Lincoln! And it made Lincoln seem like a natural winner.
Order! Order in the house! - (Bangs gavel) - Order! Who is the nomination? On behalf of the Delegation of New York, I commend to the Convention William H Seward.
On behalf of the delegation from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln.
(Massed cheering) And at that point, the entire convention hall is almost lifted off its foundations.
(Massed cheering) Call the roll! I call on New Hampshire.
The convention moves to the first round of balloting.
Seven votes for Lincoln.
There were 13 candidates for the Republican nomination.
Whoever gets an outright majority is the winner.
- Three votes for Seward.
- (Cheering) The State of New York casts 70 votes for William H Seward.
Lincoln himself says he knows he's not the delegates' first love.
But once their own first love has left or fallen away, I will be their second.
So their whole strategy had to be how do we survive until later rounds of balloting? At the end of round one, Lincoln and Seward lead the field.
Seward comes in first.
But he's 50 votes short and Lincoln's in second place.
Before balloting resumes, Davis and his team have just 15 minutes to win over delegates whose nominees are now out of the running.
BLUMENTHAL: The key state is Pennsylvania.
Its boss, Simon Cameron, he wants a big job.
GUELZO: Simon Cameron was widely regarded as a flagrantly corrupt politician.
Lincoln's team promises him a cabinet position if he and the delegation back Lincoln.
Lincoln's team doesn't care because now it's all about the win.
Call the roll! Seconds away, round two.
DELEGATION REP: Indiana casts 26 votes for Abraham Lincoln.
(Cheering) Pennsylvania! Pennsylvania casts 44 votes to Lincoln.
(Cheering) Lofty Lincoln, having let his political aides do this dirty work, the Pennsylvania Delegation goes with Abraham Lincoln.
(Cheering) At the end of round two, Lincoln catches up with Seward, but he's not over the finish line yet.
Call the roll! And Lincoln's team has played all its aces.
Order! At the Republican Convention, tension is at a fever pitch.
Lincoln is just one and a half votes away from the presidential nomination.
Order, please! Ohio! The Ohio Delegation stands up and announces that Ohio has decided to change its four and a half votes to Abraham Lincoln.
(Cheering) GUELZO: Pandemonium breaks out in the Convention Hall.
Thurlow Weed, who nobody should feel bad for, he breaks down crying.
People describe him as crying like a little boy.
This is one of the biggest upsets in American political history.
Fire the salute! TAPPER: Abraham Lincoln is now the Republican nominee for President.
Lincoln wins, at a price.
His campaign team has bribed some of the most corrupt men in the land.
Was it justified? Well, Abraham Lincoln is probably our most important president.
So I would argue every means that was utilised was justified.
We'd love to think that he was above politics, but he wasn't.
Lincoln now finds himself in a rematch with his arch rival, the man who beat him in the Illinois State Senate election two years earlier, Stephen A Douglas.
Stephen A Douglas is the little giant.
He's a man of physically short stature but titanic ambition.
And Douglas desperately wishes to be President of the United States.
But Lincoln has the advantage.
After an angry convention in Charleston, South Carolina, Douglas' Democratic Party has split down the middle over slavery.
The news that the Democratic Party had split was an enormous boon to the Republican Party and to Lincoln.
Because now they faced a divided opposition.
But he still has an uphill battle.
The Republicans know it's futile to put Lincoln up for election in the South.
No decent upstanding slave owner is going to vote for him and slaves don't vote.
Now it's a double race between Lincoln and Douglas in the North and Democrat John C Breckinridge and Constitutional Unionist John Bell in the South.
Abraham Lincoln has to win without his name even on the ballot in the South.
And that's not gonna be easy, because he has to win New York.
If he doesn't win New York, he will not be president.
New York State has the highest number of electoral votes.
But it is also the stomping ground of William Seward and Thurlow Weed, who Lincoln has so publicly humiliated.
They hate Lincoln.
They feel like they got cheated out of the nomination.
(Dog barks) (Clock chimes) Lincoln has to make peace.
He invites Weed to his home in Springfield.
Lincoln's attitude is nobody's his enemy, everybody's his friend.
Lincoln's approach here wasn't to stand over a vanquished opponent and rub it in.
And not just tell Weed, "Hey, you lost.
I won.
Get on the programme.
" And the two men spend five hours talking.
PLOUFFE: He courted Weed, and he had to offer Weed any number of things to secure the right level of support and endorsement.
(Chimes) What Lincoln and Weed talked about has been lost to history.
We don't know exactly.
But it did not escape anyone's notice that William Seward ultimately became Lincoln's Secretary of State.
(Laughter) Weed gives Lincoln his full public support.
Oh, well, I look forward to the future.
He proclaims there is no more thorough or bolder Republican on the continent.
Not one of more sturdy integrity or of more unflinching purpose.
Weed's endorsement comes just in time as the campaign ratchets up.
Douglas focuses his attack on Lincoln.
If you desire Negro citizenship, then support Mr Lincoln and the black Republican Party.
His weapon, race hate.
He accuses Lincoln of being in favour of race mixing, in favour of black equality.
Calls him a black Republican.
He calls him things far worse.
BEGALA: Lincoln did a lot of things that today seem unethical.
But he never appealed to the darker angels of our nature, and Douglas did.
And Stephen Douglas should have been ashamed of himself.
The very Union itself is coming apart under the pressure of the election.
Down South, the homes of Republican sympathisers are attacked.
GUELZO: The prospect of a Lincoln presidency drives Southerners to extremes.
They prepare politically.
They prepare militarily.
Their state arsenals are opened up.
Their militia companies begin to drill.
One newspaper declares, "Let the boys arm.
Abolitionism is at your doors with torch and knife in hand.
" (Gunshot) Slavery is breaking the Union apart.
What is Lincoln doing? Nothing.
It appears he doesn't care.
Lincoln's response to all this is puzzling.
Silence.
Lincoln refused to believe that Southerners would go to the ultimate extreme of attempting to destroy the Union.
While Lincoln stays home, his rival, Stephen Douglas, resolves to act.
He heads South.
WASHINGTON: Douglas is a plantation owner.
He was a slave owner.
So he understands how deeply embedded slavery is in the South.
GUELZO: And he knew that they were making preparations.
They were getting ready.
They were fully prepared to do something dramatic.
BLUMENTHAL: He decides he must plead the case for the Union against secession.
He's now campaigning for the nation.
TAPPER: And he does this incredibly bold and brave thing.
Douglas travels a thousand miles from state to state.
But his case for the Union makes him a traitor in the eyes of Southerners.
(Shouting) Stephen Douglas really was putting everything on the line, particularly his own personal safety.
GUELZO: He has to take the chance that some fanatic may decide that the best way to deal with Douglas is assassination.
(Angry shouting) And Stephen Douglas, the most ruthless, partisan, vicious, underhanded politician becomes the patriot.
With just three days to the election, Douglas delivers a forceful defence of the Union.
There is a conspiracy to break up this Union.
GUELZO: And he makes it very plain.
"I'm not here to solicit your votes.
" It is the duty "I am here for the sake of the Union.
" I regard the Union as the greatest blessing upon a free people.
(Shouting) For Douglas, the take-home message is clear.
The South has already launched itself to create something entirely new in the New World: A slave empire.
The very idea of America is at risk.
81% of the electorate come out to vote, one of the highest turn-outs in United States election history.
The stakes were so high because it might have been the last election for a United States of America.
BLUMENTHAL: Lincoln is waiting on the telegraph to tell him just what the vote count is.
GINGRICH: Look, you have to be nervous because you have a brand-new party.
It has never won the presidency.
You're only its second candidate.
You're up against very powerful forces on the other side.
PLOUFFE: And it's not just superstition.
You realise that something funky could happen.
Elections have the capacity to surprise us enormously.
There's only one result Lincoln needs to know.
(Tapping of telegraph) Has he won New York? A message for Mr Lincoln.
There.
TAPPER: He is not taking anything for granted.
Gentlemen, we've taken New Jersey, Indiana and Illinois.
TAPPER: Until he hears about New York.
He knows it all rests on New York.
There is nothing more nerve-racking professionally, I think, than awaiting the results in a presidential election.
By midnight there's still no news.
(Tapping) He took New York! - You got New York! - Yes.
(Cheering and laughter) The man from the prairies takes New York and with it, the presidency.
However, he's done it with less than 40% of the vote.
The South has backed John C Breckinridge and John Bell.
Lincoln has a narrow victory.
For almost half the country, he's illegitimate.
He's not accepted as the President.
SCHULTEN: No sooner has he won than several states in the South make clear that they are moving toward leaving the Union.
And so immediately he's gone from winning the White House into a crisis mode.
Lincoln's victory was probably the first shot of the Civil War.
It looks like the die has been cast.
Abraham Lincoln, President Elect, sports his distinctive beard for the first time.
Now he prepares to leave his hometown for Washington, DC.
My friends, here my children have been born and one is buried.
He asks for their prayers.
He wants them to be with him mentally and spiritually as he takes a journey which, in truth, he never will return from alive.
The 12-day journey will take him right across the Western heartland and Mid-Atlantic states.
Lincoln's train trip is to rally the country to him.
People during that time were very worried.
And he tried to show above all else that he could lead the country.
So he's actually barnstorming in almost a modern form in order to create a personal bond with the people of the North.
(Bell) Lincoln arrives at Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence, his revered document, was signed.
And he raises, himself, the American flag over it.
Lincoln speaks about how the Declaration of Independence must be the guiding principle to save the Union.
But his speech ends with an ominous remark.
If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it.
The crowd is unaware that Lincoln has been told of a plot to assassinate him.
There is a group that has plotted to kill him on his route to Washington.
That evening Lincoln and his aides discuss their next move.
So it would be incredibly nerve-racking to think about the debate they had about what to do in that circumstance.
Do they just leave? Does he carry on? TAPPER: They actually suggest that he disguise himself, that he wear different kinds of clothing.
He doesn't want to do that.
What president wants to arrive in the National Capitol for his inauguration as though he was afraid? Reluctantly, Lincoln agrees.
For additional security, he travels on an unmarked train.
Still, he's taking a huge risk.
He has to go through Baltimore where known Confederate sympathisers are lying in wait.
The threat to his life is very real at that moment.
- (Whistle blows) - (Train whistle) Lincoln makes it to the Capitol.
He escapes the assassin's plot for now.
Inauguration Day dawns on a chilly Washington.
And it's a chill that comes not so much from the weather as from the anxiety that something desperate is going to be attempted.
The Army is lined up along Pennsylvania Avenue in case of attack.
Lincoln has come from absolutely nothing.
He has become a practised, consummate politician whose skills will be put to the test in the greatest national crisis of the country.
Waiting for Lincoln on the podium is his old rival, Stephen A Douglas.
BLUMENTHAL: At his inauguration, his speech is blown about a bit and he's trying to hold his hat at the same time, his top hat.
Douglas is seated there, and Douglas takes his hat and holds it.
The old rivals had come to a meeting of the minds, at least on each other, and what they owed to each other.
We must not be enemies.
The passion may have been strained.
It must not break our bonds of affection.
Just five weeks after Lincoln's inauguration civil war breaks out.
620,000 Americans would lose their lives.
But it will be Abraham Lincoln who saves the nation and abolishes slavery.
The things Lincoln worked toward are the most important things America's ever done.
Nothing will ever be as important as ending slavery, and at least setting us on a course toward full equality.