Bonaparte×Lincoln

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   From the studio at Reborn Radio — next on TITANS, Napoleon Bonaparte and Abraham Lincoln. They take up On a fear they had to learn was unfounded.
2. 00:10
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well, General, I heard tell once of a man so afraid of his own shadow he walked backwards into a well. Drowned facing the wrong direction. Now I've done some foolish things in my time, but I reckon we're here to talk about the fears we carried that turned out to be just shadows.
3. 00:26
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   Your folksy openings, Monsieur Lincoln. Always the joke. Very well. I spent years—years—convinced that my origins would destroy me. That someone would stand up in the Directory, in the Consulate, and say: this Corsican, this nobody from an island of goatherds, he has no right.
4. 00:52
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Corsican bothered you that much?
5. 00:53
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   It consumed me. Do you understand? I was nine years old at Brienne, surrounded by French aristocrats who mocked my accent, my name, my poverty. They called me 'the little Corsican' like it was a disease. I learned to speak French without the Italian inflection. I changed my name from Napoleone di Buonaparte to something more... French.
6. 01:21
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Changed your name to fit in. I know something about that.
7. 01:24
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   You?
8. 01:24
   Abraham Lincolnshare moment

   Well, not the name exactly. But the shame of where you're from? That I know. My father was, by most accounts, a failure. Landless, shiftless, couldn't read or write. We moved constantly, always one step ahead of creditors or just plain embarrassment. I wore buckskin breeches to court sessions when I started lawyering because I couldn't afford proper clothes.
9. 01:45
   Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

   But you were at least born French. American, I mean. Native to your soil.
10. 01:51
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Granted. But I wasn't born to anything else. No family name, no education, no prospects. Just a rail-splitter from Kentucky by way of Indiana. The fear I carried—and it was with me right up into the White House, if I'm honest—was that I was a fraud. That someone would notice I had maybe one year of formal schooling total and say, 'What's this backwoods ignoramus doing here?'
11. 02:14
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    An imposter. Yes. Exactly that.
12. 02:19
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I used to have dreams about it. Standing before Congress, opening my mouth to speak, and nothing but Kentucky holler coming out. Couldn't find the words educated men use. Just stood there, exposed.
13. 02:31
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I had similar dreams. Josephine once found me awake at three in the morning, pacing. This was after Marengo, after I'd beaten the Austrians, after I'd become First Consul. And still I was terrified that the old aristocracy would somehow claw back power and throw me out. That my lack of noble blood would be my undoing.
14. 02:57
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    So you made yourself Emperor.
15. 02:59
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I made myself unchallengeable. If I created my own legitimacy, they couldn't question my birth. I crowned myself. I married into the Habsburg line. I built an empire so vast that Corsica became irrelevant—a footnote.
16. 03:19
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Did it work?
17. 03:20
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    No. The fear remained. Even at the height of my power, I worried. The old families of France still whispered. And when I fell, what did they say? 'The Corsican adventurer has been defeated.' After everything, I was still the outsider.
18. 03:42
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    But here's the thing I learned, General, and it took me longer than it should have. The people who mattered didn't care.
19. 03:47
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    What do you mean?
20. 03:49
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    The soldiers in your Grand Armée—did they follow you because of your bloodline? The French people who supported you through the Consulate—were they checking your genealogy? Or were they watching what you did?
21. 04:00
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    They... they followed because I won victories. Because I brought order from chaos.
22. 04:07
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Exactly. Your birth didn't matter to them. It only mattered to you. And to a handful of aristocrats whose opinion you could never have won anyway, because they didn't object to where you were from—they objected to the fact that you existed at all in their world.
23. 04:21
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You speak as if you learned this lesson cleanly. Did you?
24. 04:26
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No. I learned it in pieces, painfully. First time I ran for the state legislature, I lost. Thought it was because people saw through me, saw the farm boy pretending. Then I won. And people kept electing me. Springfield lawyers accepted me. Then I lost a Senate race to Douglas—lost badly—and the fear came roaring back. 'See? You don't belong here. They've figured you out.'
25. 04:50
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    But you became President.
26. 04:52
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I became President, and you know what the newspapers called me? 'The Illinois ape.' 'A Simple Susan.' They mocked my appearance, my clothes, my jokes, my lack of sophistication. Everything I'd been afraid people would notice, they noticed and published.
27. 05:06
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    So the fear was justified.
28. 05:08
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    No. That's what I'm trying to tell you. The fear was that if people knew the truth about my background, I'd be disqualified—that I couldn't do the work. But the work got done anyway. I held the Union together. I issued the Emancipation. I got the Thirteenth Amendment moving. My lack of Harvard education didn't prevent any of that.
29. 05:27
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    The mockery, though. You cannot pretend it didn't wound.
30. 05:31
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Oh, it wounded. But it didn't disqualify. That's the difference. The fear said: 'If they discover you're inadequate, you'll fail.' The truth was: they discovered everything, announced it loudly, and I still did the job.
31. 05:44
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I never separated those two things. The mockery and the failure.
32. 05:49
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I think that's because you made your background into an enemy you had to defeat. You couldn't just be Corsican and successful—you had to erase the Corsican part. Make it irrelevant by overwhelming it.
33. 06:01
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    What else could I have done? Accept it? 'Yes, I am from nowhere, and yes, I am your Emperor'? That's absurd.
34. 06:10
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Is it? I'm from nowhere too. Kentucky and Indiana, one-room cabins, barely any schooling. I never pretended otherwise. Told stories about it. Made it part of who I was publicly.
35. 06:23
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    And you think that's why you succeeded? Because you accepted your origins?
36. 06:28
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I think I succeeded despite spending energy worrying about something that didn't matter as much as I thought. Imagine what you could've done, General, if you hadn't been carrying that fear. If you'd just been Napoleon, full stop, instead of Napoleon-trying-not-to-be-Corsican.
37. 06:43
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I conquered most of Europe.
38. 06:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You did. But you also said the fear never left. Even at the height. Even as Emperor. So the conquering didn't cure it.
39. 06:51
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Nothing cured it. That's my point. The fear was rational.
40. 06:57
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Was it? When did your Corsican origins actually prevent you from doing something? Not when did someone mention them, not when did they use it as an insult, but when did it actually stop you?
41. 07:09
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I... it was always present. The obstacle.
42. 07:14
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    In your mind. But in fact? You rose through the military. You became a general at twenty-four. You took power at thirty. You crowned yourself Emperor. Your origin story is one of the most dramatic rises in history, General. Where exactly did being Corsican block you?
43. 07:29
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You make it sound simple.
44. 07:31
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    It's not simple. The fear is real when you feel it. Kept me up nights too. But looking back now, from this distance, I can see it plain. The things I was afraid people would discover about me—they knew them already. And most people didn't care. The ones who did care were going to oppose me anyway, for other reasons they'd have found.
45. 07:50
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    The aristocrats.
46. 07:51
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    The aristocrats. The slaveholders. The people invested in the old order. They weren't going to accept you or me based on pedigree. They opposed us because we represented change.
47. 08:01
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    So the fear was... misdirected?
48. 08:05
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I'd say it was natural but ultimately unfounded. We thought our backgrounds were weaknesses that would be exploited. Turns out they were just facts. Uncomfortable facts we carried, but not the disqualifying flaws we imagined.
49. 08:19
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I spent thirty years trying to prove I belonged. Building the Empire, the nobility, the dynasty. All of it to show I was legitimate.
50. 08:28
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    And I spent twenty years expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, 'Excuse me, sir, there's been a mistake. You're supposed to be splitting rails in Indiana.' Neither thing happened the way we feared.
51. 08:40
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    But I did fall. They did exile me. Twice.
52. 08:45
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    You fell because you overreached in Russia and made enemies of every monarchy in Europe. Not because you were born in Corsica. Those are different things.
53. 08:53
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    You believe that?
54. 08:54
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    I do. And I'll tell you why. Because if being Corsican was truly disqualifying, you never would've become a general in the first place. The French army would've stopped you at lieutenant. But they didn't. They kept promoting you because you kept winning. Your origin didn't matter until you needed it to matter—to explain the exile, to make sense of the fall.
55. 09:18
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    That's... perhaps there is something to that.
56. 09:23
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    The fear protected us, in a way. Kept us sharp, kept us working. But it lied to us about what would happen if we failed. We thought failure would prove we never belonged. Turns out failure just meant we failed—same as anyone else.
57. 09:37
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    I don't know if I can accept that my fear was unfounded. It shaped everything.
58. 09:42
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Oh, it was real enough while we felt it. But looking at the evidence now, General? Your career, my career? The fear warned us about a danger that never actually manifested the way it threatened. We succeeded despite our backgrounds. And when we fell, it wasn't because of where we came from. That's what makes it unfounded.
59. 10:00
    Napoleon Bonaparteshare moment

    Unfounded but not unfelt.
60. 10:02
    Abraham Lincolnshare moment

    Exactly right. Most powerful fears are.