Moses×Lincoln

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on THE TRIAL: Moses and Abraham Lincoln, on On the part of the public record they wish were classified.
2. 00:09
   Mosesshare moment

   I struck the rock twice. It is there, in the record, for all to see. Numbers, chapter twenty. The Lord had told me to speak to the rock, and instead I struck it. Twice.
3. 00:25
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well now, that reminds me of a fellow back in Illinois who hit his mule twice when once would've done the job. Got the water though, didn't you?
4. 00:33
   Mosesshare moment

   I got the water. I also got barred from the Promised Land. Forty years I led them through the wilderness, and for that one moment of... anger, of doubt... I was permitted only to see Canaan from Pisgah's height. Not to enter it.
5. 00:56
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   I reckon that does answer the question, doesn't it? Though I'm not sure I follow why you'd want it classified. Seems to me it makes you more human, not less.
6. 01:05
   Mosesshare moment

   Because it undermines what a leader must be. The people needed to see the Lord's power, not Moses's temper. When I raised that staff in fury, I made it about myself.
7. 01:20
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Hmm. Yes. I see that.
8. 01:25
   Mosesshare moment

   And you, Mr. Lincoln? What portion of your record do you wish the clerks had mislaid?
9. 01:31
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Oh, I've got a whole filing cabinet. But if I had to pick one? Probably that letter to General Grant about the Jew business. Or rather, my slowness in responding to it.
10. 01:41
    Mosesshare moment

    I am unfamiliar with this matter.
11. 01:44
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    December of '62. General Grant issued an order, General Order Number Eleven, expelling all Jews from his military district. As a class, mind you. Not individuals charged with anything, just Jews entire. On account of some were supposedly trading cotton with the enemy.
12. 01:59
    Mosesshare moment

    And you... permitted this?
13. 02:01
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I revoked it. Soon as I heard of it, I revoked it. But there were days in between. Days when families were being expelled from their homes, put on trains. And I was busy with other matters.
14. 02:13
    Mosesshare moment

    The war.
15. 02:14
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    The war, yes. Always the war. But that's the excuse, isn't it? There's always something larger, something that seems more pressing. Then you look back and see you let injustice stand a few days longer than you should have.
16. 02:26
    Mosesshare moment

    You revoked it.
17. 02:28
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I did. Doesn't mean I sleep well knowing it happened under my watch. Under my general. A man I trusted.
18. 02:34
    Mosesshare moment

    I led the Israelites out of bondage. My people. And yet in my anger I forfeited my own crossing. Perhaps there is something... instructive in our failures being recorded. Something the Almighty intends.
19. 02:56
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Maybe so. Though I confess I wouldn't mind if a few of my failures had been recorded a little less thoroughly. There's a speech I gave in Peoria in 1854 where I said things about colonization, sending colored folks back to Africa, that make me wince now.
20. 03:10
    Mosesshare moment

    You changed your mind?
21. 03:12
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well, the world changed me. Knowing Frederick Douglass changed me. Seeing colored troops fight at Fort Wagner changed me. I said a lot of things early on because I thought that's what white folks needed to hear to eventually do right. Turned out I was mostly just saying what I still half-believed.
22. 03:30
    Mosesshare moment

    There is no shame in learning.
23. 03:32
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, but there's embarrassment in being slow to learn what should've been obvious. You know what else I wish weren't in the record? The speed with which I suspended habeas corpus. Oh, I had reasons. Traitors in Maryland, rail lines being burned, the capital itself in danger. But I did it on my own authority.
24. 03:49
    Mosesshare moment

    Were you not Pharaoh... that is, were you not the sovereign?
25. 03:54
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No sir, that's just the thing. I wasn't. We'd gone to a lot of trouble not to have Pharaohs. We had a Congress. I justified it by necessity, and maybe I was right, but the point is I didn't wait to ask. Locked up newspaper editors, held folks without trial.
26. 04:10
    Mosesshare moment

    In war, there is often no time to convene assemblies.
27. 04:15
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's the trouble, isn't it? It's always war, or near-war, or the rumor of war. There's always a reason. And then one day you look around and you've become the very thing you set out to oppose.
28. 04:27
    Mosesshare moment

    I do not think you became Pharaoh, Mr. Lincoln.
29. 04:31
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Kind of you to say. But I bent the Constitution pretty hard. The record shows that clearly enough. And here's the thing: I'd probably do it again. Which bothers me more than the doing of it in the first place.
30. 04:44
    Mosesshare moment

    When I came down from Sinai the first time, I found them dancing before the golden calf. I threw down the tablets, the very words of God inscribed by His finger, and shattered them. In rage.
31. 05:05
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Had to go back up for a second set, I remember that story.
32. 05:08
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. Forty days and forty nights, again. But those first tablets... they were the work of God entire. The second set, I had to carve them myself, and God wrote upon what I had made. Do you see the difference?
33. 05:27
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I'm not sure I do.
34. 05:28
    Mosesshare moment

    My anger destroyed what was perfect. What replaced it was still holy, still true, but it bore the mark of human hands in its making. That is the cost of our failures.
35. 05:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Hmm. I wonder if the second set wasn't actually better for being partly yours. More suited to human use.
36. 05:51
    Mosesshare moment

    An interesting thought.
37. 05:53
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    What I mean is: if the first tablets had survived, maybe the people would've thought the law came down without any human struggle. But because you had to chisel that stone yourself, they saw that righteousness requires work. Requires us.
38. 06:05
    Mosesshare moment

    You are generous in your interpretation. The rabbis have been less so.
39. 06:12
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well, I've had my share of critics too. Still do, I imagine, wherever they keep the books. But here's my question for you: if you could truly strike that moment from the record, the rock-striking business, would you?
40. 06:23
    Mosesshare moment

    I have... considered this.
41. 06:26
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And?
42. 06:26
    Mosesshare moment

    If it were erased, what would the people learn? That leaders do not falter? That is a lie. That obedience is easy? Also a lie. Perhaps the record must be complete precisely because we wish it were not.
43. 06:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a hard teaching.
44. 06:47
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes.
45. 06:47
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You know what the hardest part is, for me? It's the letters. I wrote so many letters. Condolence letters to mothers who lost sons, tactical letters to generals, political letters trying to hold the border states. And in all of them, you can see me calculating.
46. 07:03
    Mosesshare moment

    Calculating what?
47. 07:05
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    How much truth to tell. How much hope to offer when I had none to give. I wrote Mrs. Bixby a beautiful letter about her five sons supposedly killed in battle. Turned out only two had died, and one was a deserter. But the letter's famous now. People quote it.
48. 07:20
    Mosesshare moment

    You meant it truly when you wrote it.
49. 07:23
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I did. But I also meant it to be read by others, to stiffen resolve. Is comfort less comforting when it serves two purposes?
50. 07:30
    Mosesshare moment

    I stood before Pharaoh and said, 'Let my people go.' But I also knew each plague would demonstrate the Lord's power, would become story, would be remembered. Does that make the deliverance less real?
51. 07:49
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I suppose not. I suppose we're always performing and meaning it at the same time. That's the strange position of anyone who has to lead with words.
52. 07:58
    Mosesshare moment

    And yet you wish the record showed less of your calculation.
53. 08:02
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I wish it showed me being better faster. Smarter sooner. More just from the beginning. But that's vanity talking, I expect.
54. 08:08
    Mosesshare moment

    Not vanity. Regret. They are different.
55. 08:12
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Are they? I'm not always sure.
56. 08:14
    Mosesshare moment

    Vanity would wish the record to show you perfect. Regret wishes you had been better. The first is about appearance. The second about substance.
57. 08:28
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    That's a fine distinction. I'll have to think on that. Though I'll tell you, there's one more thing I wouldn't mind erasing: the jokes.
58. 08:34
    Mosesshare moment

    The jokes?
59. 08:36
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I told jokes constantly. Even at cabinet meetings, even when we'd just lost ten thousand men. People thought I was callous. Thought I didn't feel things. Truth is, I felt them too much. The jokes were a levee against flood.
60. 08:49
    Mosesshare moment

    But the record makes you appear heartless.
61. 08:52
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Sometimes, yes. There's a story about me laughing after Antietam, after reading something by Artemus Ward while bodies were still being counted. It's in several memoirs. Makes me look like a ghoul.
62. 09:02
    Mosesshare moment

    Were you a ghoul?
63. 09:03
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No, sir, I was drowning. And I told a joke to keep my head above water for one more minute.
64. 09:08
    Mosesshare moment

    I understand. After the Red Sea closed over Pharaoh's army, the people sang. I sang with them. And even as I sang, I saw the bodies floating, the horses, the chariots. I have never told anyone this.
65. 09:27
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No?
66. 09:27
    Mosesshare moment

    We celebrated deliverance. We were right to celebrate. But I also knew those were mothers' sons in the water. Even Egyptians had mothers. The record shows only the song, not the shadow behind my eyes as I sang it.
67. 09:47
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Maybe that's the part we're really asking about. Not what we wish were classified, but what we wish the record could somehow show. The full truth, including what we felt behind what we did.
68. 09:58
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. That is precisely it.
69. 10:01
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Though I suppose if the record showed all that, showed every doubt and calculation and moment of fear, maybe nobody could lead at all. Maybe we'd all be paralyzed knowing how it feels inside.
70. 10:12
    Mosesshare moment

    Or perhaps they would lead differently. With more humility. Knowing that the leader, too, is only a man with a staff, standing before a rock, hoping he will be obedient when the moment comes.
71. 10:28
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And sometimes striking it twice instead.
72. 10:31
    Mosesshare moment

    Yes. Sometimes that.
73. 10:33
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Well. I still wish about three-quarters of what I said about race before 1860 would vanish from the libraries. But I take your point about the teaching in it.
74. 10:42
    Mosesshare moment

    And I still wish I had spoken to the rock. But I cannot unwrite what is written. None of us can. The record stands.
75. 10:52
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    The record stands. For better and worse, mostly both at once.