Lincoln×Bonaparte

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on THE TRIAL, Abraham Lincoln and Napoleon Bonaparte. They take up On something the future got right about them that they never imagined.
2. 00:11
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well, General, I heard a fellow say once that posterity is a hard audience to please — harder even than a jury of twelve Sangamon County farmers. They remember us, you and I, but not always for what we figured they would.
3. 00:23
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Posterity? I built an empire from the Channel to Moscow. I reformed law, administration, education across a continent. Of course they remember.
4. 00:38
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Oh, they remember all right. But here's the curious thing — and I confess it puzzles me still — they remember me most for freeing the slaves. Now, I did sign that Proclamation, that's true enough. But I spent most of my presidency trying to save the Union, not necessarily to end slavery.
5. 00:55
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   You freed slaves and this surprises you? I abolished feudalism, the Inquisition, serfdom in lands I conquered. This is what power is for — to modernize, to rationalize.
6. 01:10
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   But you see, General, I said it plain as day in letters, in speeches. My paramount object was to save the Union. If I could save it without freeing any slave, I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. I put Union first.
7. 01:24
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Strategy. You said what was necessary. But you acted — you freed them. Why does this disturb you?
8. 01:34
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   It doesn't disturb me exactly. It's more that I wonder if they've made me into something I wasn't. I grew up in Kentucky and Indiana. I never claimed to see Black folks and white folks as equal in all respects — I said so in debates with Douglas, said it more than once.
9. 01:49
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Ah. So the future has made you a saint when you were merely a politician.
10. 01:56
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    A politician, yes, but one who thought slavery was a monstrous injustice. I could hold both those thoughts, General. That it was wrong, deeply wrong, and also that I didn't quite know what to do with four million freed people in a country half of which hated them.
11. 02:10
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Then your Proclamation was military necessity. You weakened the South, strengthened your armies with Black soldiers. Good generalship.
12. 02:21
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That it was. That it surely was. And yet the future calls me the Great Emancipator, as if I woke up every morning with abolition on my mind. When the truth is I woke up most mornings thinking about McClellan's timidity or Grant's casualties or whether we'd lose another border state.
13. 02:37
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Let me tell you what the future says of me. They call me — how do they say it — a champion of meritocracy. Of careers open to talent. That I broke the old aristocracy and any man could rise on merit alone.
14. 02:57
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well, you did come up from Corsica, didn't you? Artillery officer to Emperor — that's a considerable rise.
15. 03:03
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Yes, yes. But they make me into some democrat, some believer in equality. I was Emperor, Lincoln. Emperor. I created a new nobility — princes, dukes, counts. My brothers were kings.
16. 03:26
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I take your point. Though I recall you did keep the Code Napoléon, which by all accounts treated men more equally before the law than the old system.
17. 03:34
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    The Code was rational. Efficient. It removed feudal nonsense that hampered administration and commerce. But equal? I believed in hierarchy. Natural hierarchy. The talented at the top, the mediocre below. This is order.
18. 03:57
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And yet they remember you for opening careers to talent. Doesn't that suggest you did something larger than you intended?
19. 04:03
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Perhaps I did. But they forget — conveniently forget — that I restored slavery in the colonies. Saint-Domingue. Guadeloupe. I sent Leclerc with an army to reimpose it.
20. 04:19
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I confess I didn't know that. The histories I read called you a son of the Revolution.
21. 04:23
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    The Revolution was chaos. I brought order. And order required that the colonies produce sugar, coffee, wealth. The Black Jacobins had other ideas, of course. They defeated Leclerc. But I tried.
22. 04:41
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So the future's made you a meritocrat despite yourself, and me an abolitionist despite my caution. There's a strange symmetry to it.
23. 04:49
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    They need heroes, not men. Heroes are simple. Men are complicated, contradictory. I was both a liberator and a tyrant, depending on which side of my armies you stood.
24. 05:02
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I expect that's it exactly. They need the story to be clean. I freed the slaves because I was good. You opened careers to talent because you believed in equality. Never mind what we actually said or thought.
25. 05:13
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Does it anger you? This simplification?
26. 05:16
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Anger? No, I don't think so. I'm grateful they remember the Proclamation at all. And if they choose to think better of me than perhaps I deserved, well, I won't argue from the grave. But I do wonder sometimes if the real man — the one who told darky jokes and thought colonization might solve the race problem — if that man is lost to them now.
27. 05:34
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    The real man is always lost. They remember what is useful to them. In my time, they needed a monster — the Corsican Ogre, the tyrant of Europe. Now they need something else, so they remember something else.
28. 05:53
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    What do they need from you now, do you think?
29. 05:55
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    A self-made man. A genius who rose from nothing. Someone to prove that talent matters more than birth. They live in democracies now, most of them. They want to believe merit wins.
30. 06:10
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Does it trouble you that they've turned you into a democrat?
31. 06:12
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Trouble? No. I am beyond trouble. But it is ironic. I spent twenty years trying to prove that Europe needed kings, that republics were weak, that only empire could bring peace. And now they admire me for destroying kings.
32. 06:35
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    We're both of us ghosts haunting the wrong houses, then. They've put me in the house of Abolition when I lived most of my life in the house of Union. And you in the house of Merit when you built yourself a palace.
33. 06:47
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Perhaps. Or perhaps we did build these houses without realizing it. Your Proclamation did free slaves, whether you meant it primarily or not. My Code did open careers, whether I intended meritocracy or efficiency.
34. 07:05
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a charitable reading, General. You might be right. I used to say that actions have consequences beyond our intentions. Maybe legacies do too.
35. 07:13
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I prefer to think I knew what I was doing. But the future will believe what it wishes. We are clay in their hands now.
36. 07:22
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Clay in their hands. Yes. Though I take some comfort that the thing they remember me for — the freedom of four million souls — that at least was a good thing, even if I came to it by a crooked path.
37. 07:34
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    And I take comfort that what they remember of me — the opening of opportunity — is better than what they might remember. The dead at Leipzig. The retreat from Moscow. The conscripts who never came home.
38. 07:50
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    We're fortunate, then, in our myths. There are worse things than being remembered as better men than we were.
39. 07:56
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Or perhaps we were those men, Lincoln, just not in the way we understood at the time. History sees the pattern we could not see while we were living it.
40. 08:08
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Maybe so, General. Maybe so. Though I suspect the truth is somewhere between the man I knew myself to be and the saint they've made of me. Most truth is found in the middle distance.
41. 08:18
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Philosophy from a lawyer. Very well. I will accept that the future got something right about me, even if they got the reasons wrong. Meritocracy was never my religion. But I served it anyway.
42. 08:35
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And I'll accept that they got something right about me too. I did free the slaves, in the end. Even if I spent half the war wondering whether I should and the other half wondering what would come after. The result is what they remember. Maybe the result is what matters.
43. 08:50
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Then we agree. The future sees us more clearly than we saw ourselves. Or at least, it sees what we did more clearly than we understood what we were doing.
44. 09:03
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I expect there's worse epitaphs for a man than that, General. Worse epitaphs by far.