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Mr. LERONE BENNETT Jr. (Author, "Forced Into Glory"): I thought
that book captured the essence of what I was trying to say in the
sense that Lincoln, from my standpoint, was driven, was forced into a
glory that he resisted, I think, every step of the way. Adam
Gurowsky, one of the--of his great critics during the Civil War here
in Washington, wrote a--a--a paragraph which said that he was
literally whipped into glory. I--I--I--I thought maybe forced would
be a better term for the cover, and so I settled on "Forced Into
Glory." And it, again, captures my idea.

And one of the basic ideas of--of the book is that there were all
these extraordinary men and women, many of them white, in Washington
in 1862 and '63. The American people generally do not know anything
about any of them. Ashley, Lyman Trumbull, Zachariah Chan--Chandler,
Salmon Chase--all these people, I say--and I try to detail it for 650
pages or so--really pushed Lincoln to glory. And I--my--my--my--the
pin I put into it, Lincoln himself said, `I was driven to it,
literally driven to it.'

LAMB: Your subtitle on the book is "Abraham Lincoln's White Dream."
What's that mean?

Mr. BENNETT: It means that contrary to what most people think,
Abraham Lincoln's deepest desire was to deport all black people and
create an all-white nation. It's--sounds like a wild idea now and it
is a wild idea, but from about 1852 until his death, he worked
feverishly to try to create deportation plans, colonization plans to
send black people either to Africa or to South Africa, ma--South
America or to the islands of the sea.

No--most people--and you know the story--one of his greatest
utterances--people quote it all the time--Copeland's great thing, `We
cannot scape--we cannot escape history, the last, best hope of the
world.' He said these words in a State of the Union message on
December the 1st, 1862, in which he asked Congress to pass three
constitutional amendments: one, to buy the slaves; second, to--to
declare free all people who'd actually escaped; but the third one, his
proposed 15th Amendment, asked Congress to allocate money to deport
black people to another place.

Now th--his most--I think it's probably--other than the second
inaugural, the--the `we cannot escape history' ending there is
just--just--just--portrait everybody knows. Nobody talks about the
fact that what he was asking Congress to do was to deport black
people. That was one of his deepest ideas.

And I make the point also--and--and--and--almost everything I say in
here, I take from Lincoln or from documents of the time--it was not
just something he wanted to push black people out, he had an idea
of--of--of--of this great, giant vacuum sound, black people leaving
and white people from all over the world come in here and creating
this all-white nation. As a matter of fact, I say, as you know, in
his `I have a dream' speech at Alton, Illinois, in--in 1858, he called
for a haven, a white haven for free, white people everywhere, the
world over.

Now these are Lincoln's words. And the interesting thing about that
is that he underlined these four words: free white people everywhere.
He underlined them. This was his `I have a dream' speech. He was
passionately committed to--to--to deporting black people and creating
a white nation.

Let me say, in--in--in extenuation, he believed that that was the only
way to solve the race problem. I--I found that offensive and--and
strange, but he believed that that was the only way to solve the
race--race problem. He said over and over again he did not believe
that black people and white people could live together in equality in
the United States of America.

LAMB: Did you ever think differently about Abraham Lincoln?

Mr. BENNETT: No. Really, and I try to explain in--in the beginning
of the book, first sentence in the book. First sentence in the book
says, `I was a child in whitest Mississippi reading for my life when I
discovered for the first time that everything I'd been taught about
Abraham Lincoln was a lie.' Now I imagine I was 10 or 11, somewhere
there. Before then, apparently, I believed that this--this
great--this was the Great Emancipator.

What happened, actually, when I was 10, 11 and I--I ought to explain.
I was one of these strange children. I read everything I could put my
hand on. Any--any book, any piece of paper, anything I could find, I
read. And so for some strange reason in Mississippi, in the '30s, I
happened to see Abraham Lincoln's address at Charleston, Illinois, on
September the 18th, 1858.

LAMB: The Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Mr. BENNETT: In the Lincoln-Douglas debate. An--and I read it and
I--and I was just--just absolutely shocked. And from that point on, I
started to--researching Lincoln and trying to find out everything I
could about him. I wasn't trying to get a degree. I wasn't trying to
pass a course. As I say in the book, I was trying to save my life
because I find it difficult to understand how people could say this
man was the greatest apostle of brother--brotherhood in the United
States of America.

LAMB: You say on page 114, `Not only is Lincoln a church, he is also
an industry.'

Mr. BENNETT: Precisely. Precisely. And that key--one of the keys
to the American personality, but an industry. Yes, all over the
country now, people are engaged in packaging information on--on--on
Lincoln, putting together exhibits on Lincoln, doing this and doing
that about Lincoln. It's--it's a whole industry that--that--that
employs hundreds of people, probably thousands of people. And it's
important from that way. He's also a religion. And as I indicate in
that same chapter, Barbara Petrick, I think her name is, said
in--in--in The New York Times before this book was published
that--that Lincoln is such a god that the ordinary rules of evidence
don't apply to him.

And--and--and also, the third point, I think, is important. He is one
of the keys to America. Americans see themselves in Lincoln.
American politicians tend to measure themselves by Lincoln. He is a
secular saint. And I know that and I know and I said that--that what
I'm proposing here--that we look at Lincoln--is painful, painful to
whites and to blacks. But I think it's necessary for the health of
this country and for what we've got to do about completing the task we
started in the Civil War but never finished.

LAMB: Have you ever been invited to speak to the Abraham Lincoln
Association or the Lincoln Forum?

Mr. BENNETT: Neither, no. I have not. I've talked to a number of
great groups across the country, but I've not been invited by those
two groups. I have been honored by some Lincoln associations before
this came out, but, no, I've not been invited to speak to them. And
one of the suggestions I make in this book--I feel strongly about
it--that--that there ought to be a dialogue between academic people,
the Lincoln establishment, as I say, and--and--and--and--and other
people who have a different vision of Lincoln.

To--to back up and--and to get into some--this book has been attacked
pretty harshly in some quarters, praised enthusiastically in others,
but I am not, up to this date, in--in late summer, early fall--I've
not seen a single review which disagrees with any one of my four major
points. The fifth point, they disagree with. I've not seen a
de--a--a--a--a review anywhere which disagrees with my four or five
major points.

And if I--possibly I can make them. My--my--my first point is that
the Emancipation Proclamation did not free black people. And it's
doubtful if it ever freed anybody anywhere, and that Abraham Lincoln
was not the Great Emancipator or the small emancipator or the
medium-sized emancipator. That's the first point.

LAMB: Can I stop and ask--di--you say that, in fact, the Emancipation
Proclamation may have created another half million slaves, as I
remember.

Mr. BENNETT: Right.

LAMB: How did that happen?

Mr. BENNETT: Thank you. Thank you. Not only did it not free
anybody, it enslaved or re-enslaved more slaves than it ever freed
because Lincoln said in the document, which most people will never
read--he said that he was specifically excluding certain slaves in
southern Illinoi--southern Louisiana and eastern Virginia and
elsewhere. But these were the two main categories. Now--now why did
he exclude these slaves in Louisiana? Because they were the only
slaves he could have freed on January the 1st, 1863. The Union
controlled southern Louisiana and New Orleans. The Union controlled
eastern Virginia. Now on January the 1st, he could have freed these
slaves. All he had to do was just not specifically exclude them.

Instead of freeing them, Abraham Lincoln, unfortunately, on January
the 1st, said, `I'm not talking about you. This document--you're
in--the same as you were, as though this document never existed.' So
we have about 100,000 slaves in southern Illinois--southern
Louisiana--sorry about that--and 80,000 or so in eastern Virginia,
having some 275,000 slaves in--in Tennessee who were not touched by
it. All across the South, I give an estimate of approximately
50--500,000 slaves who were re-enslaved or kept in slavery by the
Emancipation Proclamation.

I want to come back to that--and--and--as--as I make my second
point--and I want to tell you what the critics say in response to
this--is--the second point is that Abraham Lincoln was a racist.
I--I--I don't have any joy in making that, but I think truth is
important. He who said--who used the N-word habitually, who loved
darky jokes and--and--and black-based shows, who said in Illinois and
elsewhere that he was opposed to black people voting, sitting on
juries, intermarrying with white people and holding office. Two,
Lincoln was a racist.

Three, Abraham Lincoln wanted to deport black people and create an
all-white nation. That's three.

Four, Abraham Lincoln was--and--and this is the controversial
point--maybe there were not five. Four, that Abraham Lincoln was,
contrary to what all the historians say, an--an equivocating,
vacillating leader who prolonged the war, delayed emancipation and
increased the number of casualties.

Now ther--there's no agreement on that. But the other three points or
four points all my critics agree on. What they say--and I'll--I'll be
very brief about this--they say, `Lerone Bennett said that the
Emancipation Proclamation didn't free black people, and he's a
terrible man for disturbing the peace of the republic.' That's the
first sentence. The second sentence, `Of course, the Emancipation
Proclamation didn't free black people. The 13th Amendment--everybody
knows that freed the black people.' They agree with my first point.

The second point--Le--they say, `Lerone Bennett'--this is a
reviewer--`says that Abraham Lincoln was a racist, and he's a terrible
man for saying that. Of course, he was a racist,' second sentence.
`All white people in the 19th century were racist.' I disagree with
that and I--I--I defend white people in 19th century. I think it's
absurd to say that everybody in the white--in the 19th century
was--was a racist. But that's their defense.

My point is they agreed with my second point. They say, `Of course,
he was a racist.' And the third point again is, `Lerone Bennett says
that Abraham Lincoln wanted to deport bl--black people and create a
white nation.' They say, `Of course, he wanted to deport black people,
not because he disliked them but because he loved them so much and he
didn't think he--they'd ever be treated right in America.'

My point is--in late summer, early fall, is that all of the critics
I've seen agree with my basic points. I don't know a reputable
historian with a library card anywhere who maintains that the
Emancipation Proclamation freed black people. I--I don't believe one
exists anywhere. And yet, I'm--I'm--they--they--people are screaming
and hollering, `Why did you say this?' It's the truth.

LAMB: You were born where?

Mr. BENNETT: In Mississippi. I was born in Clarksdale. My mother
was visiting there. We were--grew--I grew up in Jackson--and I grew
up in Jackson, Mississippi.

LAMB: What did your dad do?

Mr. BENNETT: My daddy was a chauffeur and my mother was a cook. She
was a chef/cook in a restaurant. There were two of us in the family,
my sister and I, and we growed--we grew up in--in--in Mississippi
during the '30s and--and--and '40s.

LAMB: When did you leave?

Mr. BENNETT: In '45, I left to go to college. I left to go to
Atlanta to Morehouse College, where I finished in 1949 and started
working there in Atlanta for four, five years on the Atlanta Daily
World. And then I went to Atlanta--to Chicago to Ebony magazine.

LAMB: Where you still are.

Mr. BENNETT: A writer.

LAMB: Still there.

Mr. BENNETT: Still a writer, yeah.

LAMB: At Ebony.

Mr. BENNETT: I am still at Ebony, yes. I--I've worked as associate
editor and senior editor and now I'm executive editor, yeah.

LAMB: When you were at Morehouse College, what were they telling you
about Abraham Lincoln? And that's an all-black college.

Mr. BENNETT: It's an all-black college. Two things. It's very
interesting, very interesting. The most enlightened--lightened
professors said, `Of course, he didn't free the slaves. Of course, he
was a racist.' Some orthodox professors said, `Well, there were
extenuating circumstances.' And--and...

LAMB: Were these black professors?

Mr. BENNETT: Some--some black professors. `There were extenuating
circumstances.' The major point is--the point I make in this book is
people in black institutions didn't talk about Abraham Lincoln that
much. And as I said about one--one interesting point--and somebody
needs to do a long essay on it. If somebody does not, I'll do it if
I'm still here--white authors have written about 16,000 books and
monographs on Abraham Lincoln. Black authors have written, in the
last 135 years, maybe two or three, maybe four. This is probably,
possibly, the first full-scale reassessment and study of Abraham
Lincoln. But in the last 135 years, black authors have paid very
little attention to Abraham Lincoln. Three or four books, maybe five,
compared to 16,000 books and monographs. Basler--and I quote him in
my book--Basler had an essay in 1935.

LAMB: Roy Basler.

Mr. BENNETT: Roy Basler. He--he was--he was astonished by that. He
said, `You know, why--why--why black intellectuals
don't--don't--don't--don't--don't deal with Lincoln more.' And he
said, `Perhaps they've not found a sign to--to--to emancipate them by
it or--or to move or to follow.' At any rate, the interesting thing is
that in predominantly black institutions, in black circles, apart from
a few pieces of poetry here and there, Abraham Lincoln has never been
the thing in black America that he's always been in white America,
which suggests to me--and this is speculation but I say it in the
book--I surmise that black people know Lincoln, have always known him
at a depth beneath words. At any rate, they have not felt it
necessary, they've not felt a need or the interest to address him the
way white historians have addressed him.

LAMB: If you'd have had the opportunity, what would you have said to
Martin Luther King when he was standing on the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial giving his `I have a dream' speech in 1963?

Mr. BENNETT: I would have said that, `You're absolutely right when
you said that--issued a check and it came back insufficient funds
because the Emancipation Proclamation was precisely that.' I would
have said, `You're absolutely right to say that the real task now is
to get together and write the Emancipation that Lincoln didn't write,'
because as I say in this book, Martin Luther King Jr. had a healthy
dose of skepticism about what Abraham Lincoln meant and what Abraham
Lincoln said. And in his book, "Where Do We Go From Here?" I think
it's--he--he--he details most of the things I say in here, but says at
the end, `There were extenuating circumstances.' He believed he can
detect some growth in Lincoln. I have problems with the growth, but
we are together on the analysis. He was a racist and King knew it,
King said it. And fundamentally, I agree with most of his analysis.

Now if--if you're just--let me put one pin in this. This is painful.
I've said it, and I--I keep saying it over and over, not only to white
people--not only to white people. For--for--for the last 135 years,
every medium of communication outside the mediums--media we've
controlled has said Lincoln was the great savior, the great liberator.
He freed you on January the 1st out of the goodness of--of--of his
heart. And so large numbers of black people just worship Lincoln. I
mean, he's--because they believe that he did what people say he did.
And it's painful to say to them and to my community and other
communities, `He didn't do it. He didn't want to do it. He was a
completely different man.'

Now the point I'm coming to, finally, if you're--you'd let me go
through this scenario, on January the 1st, a--a Thursday, 1863, here
in Washington, slightly after 12:00, they had the New Year's reception
in the morning. And slightly after 12:00, Secretary Seward and his
son took the document, the Emancipation Proclamation, to--to Lincoln
in the Cabinet Room, I think it was, and--and--and--I don't know--let
me tell you the story.

Lincoln--Lincoln took a steel-tipped pen and--and he--he took the pen
and he moved to the line where he's supposed to sign. And all of a
sudden, when he got to this line--Lincoln tells this story--when he
got to this line, his hand started shaking so violently that he
couldn't sign it. And he--and he dropped the pen. You know--well,
wha--what's going on here? So he took the pen again, steel-tipped
pen, and he moved it to the place. And he started to sign it and his
hand started shaking so violently that--that--that he couldn't sign
and he dropped it again. And Lincoln was very superstitious.
And--and--and he--he stopped in awe. And then he said--Abraham
Lincoln is talking--then he said, `A very simple explanation came to
me. I had been signing ord--I mean, I've been shaking hands all that
morning at the New Year's res--re--reception and my arm was virtually
paralyzed.' `Hence,' he said, `a very simple explanation for this
phenomenon.' I think the exp--explanation is too simple, but that's
what he said. At any rate, he finally was able to sign the document.

Now my point: The poetry, the songs, the scholars, the major
newspapers, the major museum people tell us that at that moment,
choirs started to sing over the Alleghenies and over Stone Mountain in
Georgia and black people started saying, `Free at last, free at last.
Thank God al--Almighty, I'm free at last.' That's pretty--it hurts me
to say it's not true. Hurts me now to say it's not true,
but--but--but--but any slave in Georgia who said, `Free at last,'
surrounded by Confederate troops on January the 1st, 1863, was
immediately sent to heaven. Any slave in Alabama who said that. So
I'm trying to say that--that--that this poetry, I wish it were true.
It is not true. Virtually--almost everything we've been told about
Abraham Lincoln in the last 135 years is wrong and needs correcting,
needs somebody to have a long dialogue on.

LAMB: When you hear that they're trying to raise about $125 million
to buy--or to build a library to Abraham Lincoln in Springfield,
Illinois, what's your reaction?

Mr. BENNETT: I think we need an equal amount of money, more money,
in fact--let me--let me back up. I think we need to--to research
Lincoln's life. I think we need to know everything we can about him.
My book complains that--that people don't know anything about Lincoln,
even 135 years later. I think we need to know that. I think also, we
need an equal am--amount of money--we need more money dedicated to the
task of studying the real emancipators, of studying Charles Sumner and
Thaddeus Stevens and Wendell Phillips.

LAMB: All white men.

Mr. BENNETT: All white men. All white men. They tell me
all--everybody was a racist then. These men were 100 years ahead of
Abraham Lincoln in terms of their understanding of democracy and
racial equality in this country. Now one of the--one of my complaints
in that book is that--and I'm coming back to black--white
Americans--white America--no--few, if any, white Americans know who
Lyman Trumbull was.

LAMB: Who was he?

Mr. BENNETT: Lyman Trumbull was a senator from Illinois in Lincoln's
time. He had the traditional problems of many of the white men of the
area--of the time, but he was far more advanced in his understanding
of what liberty required of him. He opposed the Fugitive Slave Act in
Illinois at a time when Abraham Lincoln was--was backing the hunting
of men, women and children. He defeated Abraham Lincoln for the
Senate.

And the reason he defeated Lincoln for the Senate is because Lincoln
was too conservative on the issue of slavery in Illinois and in
America. But the bottom line: Lyman Trumbull came to Washington. He
was the author of the first Confiscation Act, which began the
Emancipation Proclamation in August 1861. He was the author of the
second Confiscation Act, which was the most sweeping act of
emancipation passed by Congress or--or enacted during Lincoln's time;
more sweeping than the Emancipation Proclamation.

And he was one of the principal authors of the 13th Amendment; 100
years ahead of Lincoln. Nobody in Illinois knows Lyman Trumbull and
I'm--I'm--that--that--I'm exaggerating. One or two people know him.
But they've--we've had no major exhibits in--in--in Illinois on Lyman
Trumbull. We had 100 exhibits on Lincoln, who didn't believe in
equality, who did little or nothing to advance the abolitionist
process. Why isn't the culture structure teaching people Lyman
Trumbull's name? Or Wendell Phillips? Or Charles Sumner?

LAMB: As you know, almost every poll that's ever taken has Abraham
Lincoln as number one. As you know, because you write about it in
your book--and you don't put this qualifier on it--but a lot of
liberal American college professors think Lincoln was the greatest.

Mr. BENNETT: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: Why? White college professors.

Mr. BENNETT: White college pr--and--and almost all of the major
history professors in this country. And I--I--I find that--I find
that extraordinary becau...

LAMB: Why?

Mr. BENNETT: Because until the capture of Atlanta and the nomination
of General McClellan on the Democratic ticket late in 1864--until late
1864, almost all members of Lincoln's party thought he was a disaster
as a president. And all--most of them were looking for some
alternative candidate. Almost all members of--of--of the Washington
power structure at that time said he lacked will, he lacked the
resolution, he lacked vision and that he was prolonging the war by his
inadequacies. Or Lyman Trumbull said he lacked the resolution needed
in this great task. His secretary--I mean, his attorney general,
Bates, said he lacked will. Others said--in it--at the time that he
was simply a terrible leader. And yet, 135 years later, almost all
the scholars say he was the greatest leader we've ever had in our
country, perhaps in--in--in the world.

LAMB: Why?

Mr. BENNETT: Because they have not read the record, I--I say.
Because there has been for 135 years one of the biggest attempts in
all history to hide a man and a history and to make the man entirely
different from what he was and--and--and...

LAMB: Why?

Mr. BENNETT: Because Lincoln is a mask for certain deep-seated
problems we blacks and whites have resisted and refused to deal with,
particularly, oddly, the problem of slavery, the problem of
emancipation and--and--and the problem of--of black freedom in this
country. Lincoln--far from being a leader--and let--let me stop and
deal with it. Lincoln, far from being a leader, was--everybody knows
him, everybody. He was a man on the fence who denounced the
extremists on both sides who talked out of both sides of his mouth,
and this is an ideal that--that--that--that--that appeals to--to many
people. I say in the book that although people won't tell us who
Lincoln was, history knows Lincoln. They know that he was a waffling,
equivocating person.

I quoted a person in--in--in one of the major pa--papers just before
the book was published. They say--who said that George Bush and the
other presidential candidates reminded them of Lincoln. Why did they
remind this columnist of Lincoln? Because he waffled. Because he
talked out of both sides of his mouth in different audiences. History
knows Abraham Lincoln. And I--it's my suggestion that many scholars
are defending that image of leadership.

LAMB: What's the isolated quote school?

Mr. BENNETT: The isolated quote school is the--the--the--the
tendency of major Lincoln biographers to quote--take isolated quotes
out of context and use them without giving us the context or the
setting of the man. For example, they--they tell us--and I won't name
the--the--the--the historian whom I admire and respect on other
grounds--said that the December--the 1862 State of the Union message,
where he talked about `the last, best hope of the Earth' was one of
the greatest statements in the history of the world. He does not tell
us that Lincoln was asking Congress to deport black people. So we
get--in the Peoria speech, Lincoln says, you know, `I love the
Declaration of Independence, one of the great documents of all time.'
One paragraph. Two paragraphs later, he said, `Now I don't want you
to misunderstand me.' He's talking to 10,000 or 12,000 peo--white
people in the lo--`Now I don't want you to understand me, I--I'm not
talking about equality, I'm not talking about making black people
equal, I'm not talking about freeing black people in the South. But
it's a great document in the abstract.' You get this--and I--I--I took
a whole chapter because I knew I would have to do that. I took a
whole chapter and detailed the defenses that scholars built into their
work.

LAMB: You--you talk about Benjamin Thomas...

Mr. BENNETT: Mm-hmm.

LAMB: ...and I know I've done so many shows here on Abraham Lincoln
that more often than not, a--an author will say, `It's the single-best
volume, best one-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.'

Mr. BENNETT: Right.

LAMB: Number one, why did they say that? Who was he? And why did
you spend a lot of time writing about him?

Mr. BENNETT: Thomas' one-volume work is readable, came at a time
when people were groping for some new way to--to deal with Lincoln.
If--if memory serves, I think it came out sometime around '52 or
something. It was sometime around there. And--and--and it was just
immediately elevated to the best one-volume treatment of Lincoln
available. I use it as an example--and I went down a list of all the
things that--that--that Thomas did not tell us.

LAMB: Let me read them so it'd be easier for you.

Mr. BENNETT: Yeah. OK, OK.

LAMB: You say Lincoln doesn't tell us that Lincoln--he--that--`Thomas
doesn't tell us that Lincoln used the N-word. He doesn't tell us that
Lincoln loved N-jokes. He doesn't tell us that Lincoln voted for Jim
Crow legislation in the Illinois Legislature. He doesn't tell us that
Lincoln said there was a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all
white people about black and white sex. He doesn't tell us that
Lincoln supported the Illinois Black Laws. He doesn't tell us that
President Lincoln personally ordered Union officers to return runaway
slaves to slave masters. He doesn't tell us that President Clinton
tried for, quote, "nearly a year and a half," in his own words, to
save slavery in the United States.'

Mr. BENNETT: All these things I--I say, and--and this is typical of
major biographers on Lincoln in the last 135 years that the--that the
famous Charleston quote is--is--is--is--is the stumbling block. As I
say in the book, the best biographers will summarize the Charleston
quote and...

LAMB: And what is that and where--what was the reason for it?

Mr. BENNETT: The Charleston quote on--on--on Saturday, September the
18th, 1858, Lincoln said to about 10,000 or 15,000 white people in the
Lincoln-Douglas debate that, `I will say then that I'm not now, nor
have I ever been in favor of bringing about, in any way, the social
and political equality of the white and black race, that I'm not, nor
ever have been, in favor of making voters of--of Negroes or jurors of
Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, not to intermarry with
white people.' And he goes on and on, a full quote he ends by saying
that he's in favor of white supremacy.

Now this--this is a terrible quote, and it's a sort of litmus test for
Lincoln biographers. The best ones will summarize the quote and will
make an excuse for him. The--one of the--the major excuse, as you
know, from Thomas and others, is to say that Douglas was pushing him
and he had to say that to get elected. Other--other people say,
`Well, he had to say that in order to get elected in 1858.' But most
biographers do not give the full quote. They certainly don't give it
in context. And they certainly do not, as Thomas does not, tell us
that Lincoln voted for Jim Crow laws in the Illinois Legislature,
voted for a white school system in Illinois, as a legislator, said on
the platform that he supported the Black Laws and lived in Illinois
and never said a word about an Illinois law that made it a crime for
black people to live in Illinois. We don't get any of this in the
traditional biographies.

And my problem is beyond Lincoln--I raise a question and it's a
question of dialogue. I always raise the question of scholarship.
I--I--I say you can't divorce a man from a setting like that and write
a biography on him. I say, `If you don't tell us about the Jim Crow
laws he supported and the fact that he supported the hunting of men,
women and children, the Fugitive Slave law, if you don't tell us these
things, I think we have to re-evaluate what we doing in--in--in
scholarship.'

LAMB: But it--I mentioned earlier, the Abraham Lincoln Association,
which meets in Springfield, the Lincoln Forum, which meets up in
Gettysburg every year, has speakers and they've never invited you to
speak.

Mr. BENNETT: No.

LAMB: If they did, would you walk into that group and give the same
thesis that you do in your book?

Mr. BENNETT: I would walk in that group and give the same thesis
with one exception. One exception. I don't believe in lynching
parties. And if they want to arrange 15 people on a platform and they
say, `Now you speak and now these 15 people are going to lynch you,' I
don't believe in that. But if they want me to make a speech, I'll
make it. But one scholar, one vote. The way they generally do
it--and that's another one of the techniques--they--they will
ask--there's 15, 20 people to come in and you speak and then 15 to 20
people will speak. I will speak, one scholar, one vote, and would
be--be--be delighted to--to speak. And I--I--I think we need this
kind of dialogue, but--but--but again, back to a small problem here.
I sa--I did--and--and you know--I've been this road before. In
February of 1968, I wrote a small essay in Ebony called Was Abraham
Lincoln A White Supremacist? Just--just explosions everywhere
of--people said, `The republic is in danger.' I mean,
that--that--just--it was much worse than this time. OK. Then people
say, `Well, you know, he makes some good points. We ought to
re-evaluate Lincoln.' And a--a number of--of people said that. But
the re-evaluation did not come. That essay has been out there for
some 32 years; no real response to it.

One of the ways they--the academic authorities respond to me is they
put it as one of the major books on 676-page--in the footnotes.
And--not in the book, not deal with Lincoln and racism, but they'll
say in the footnotes, `Oh, Lerone Bennett say this,' way down, small,
small type. And then they will go on. We still haven't had a
dialogue on this in the country, and I--without being provocative, I
think it's important to the truth of white people and black people for
us to know what was done and was not done and to certainly know about
the black and white mem and--men and women who tried to emancipate all
of us.

LAMB: If Stephen A. Douglas was elected president 1860, what do you
think would have happened, unlike what happened with Abraham Lincoln
getting elected, for black people?

Mr. BENNETT: The first--first case--and I'm going to ask you--answer
your question--I--I think the abolitioners had driven the South mad
and they were not going to take Stephen Douglas. But that--that's my
first question--first answer. The second one, if they had, I think he
would have tried to create a compromise, extending or modifying his
earlier compromise and I don't think it would have--would--would have
worked. I think it had--it had gone beyond that point at that time.
And I don't think there was any solution that the Southerners would
have approved of.

I say in my book, and I--I--I--I believe it's true--Wendell Phillips
said it first--that fugitive slaves and abolitionists and the threat
of insurrections had driven Southerners mad. The--they--in essence,
they committed suicide. Lincoln, in his inaugural address, said that
he would have personally backed a 13th Amendment, which had already
been passed, which would have guaranteed slavery forever in the United
States of America. The South refused to accept it. A--a--another
question in that area--and I appreciate your
question--I--I--I--I--I--I did--I--I asked myself the
question--Lincoln was a compromise candidate, again, going back to the
leadership. He was not elected because he was a flaming
anti-sl--slavery advocate. He was ou--he was elected because he was
less of an anti-slavery advocate than Seward and--and Salmon Chase.
The question is: What--what would have happened if--if Seward
and--and--and Chase had been elected president? My view is that
emancipation would have come sooner and in a better context than it
did under Abraham Lincoln, under both of them. I think you would have
had pretty much the same thing. I think there would have been
withdrawals. But I don't think Chase and Seward would have gone so
far in appeasing the South and the border states.

And I think--and this comes to my--my theory of leadership, which is
real--if Lincoln had not spent two years appeasing Kentucky, if he had
mobilized 400,000 black soldiers and issued an emancipation order
giving the soldiers freedom, I think the Civil War would have been
over two years, three years at most. And I will say, again, on this
leadership issue--and then I'm through with it--I don't understand the
historians who say his great leadership--if Fran--if Franklin Delano
Roosevelt had conducted World War II as disastrously as Abraham
Lincoln conducted the Civil War in the first two years, America would
be a German protectorate today.

LAMB: How many years have you been in Chicago?

Mr. BENNETT: About 47.

LAMB: How big is Ebony magazine?

Mr. BENNETT: Biggest black magazine in the world, about 2 million
subscribers, about 10 million readers overall every month.

LAMB: And this book was published by Johnson Publishing.

Mr. BENNETT: Right.

LAMB: John Johnson?

Mr. BENNETT: Yes.

LAMB: Did you try to get it published anywhere else?

Mr. BENNETT: No, I did not.

LAMB: Does Johnson publish books all the time?

Mr. BENNETT: No, he publishes books by authors, internal books by
authors. Primarily--we publish several books outside, but primarily
books by authors, people who work at Johnson Publishing Company or who
have worked at Johnson Publishing Company.

LAMB: Has your book been reviewed by The Washington Post or The New
York Times or The Wall Street Journal?

Mr. BENNETT: It has not, to this date, been reviewed by The
Washington Post, The New York Times or some other journals we can
name. It has been reviewed by a number of major journals in this
country, and--and has received, as I say, I think, enthusiastic
reviews from radio people and--and television people.

LAMB: When did you first think about doing a book?

Mr. BENNETT: About--my--my--my--there's a disagreement in my family
about that. I say seven years; my wife said I've been doing it for 10
or 12 years. We have split on 10 years, maybe. What I started to
do--as I mentioned, I did the essay in February of 1968, and--and--and
it--it--it was not being circulated anywhere. I've had a young
historian call me from the University of Illinois in Urbana and say,
`I--I can't find this in--anywhere. It's not in the index.' So based
on the fact that it was not being circulated, I said, you know, 10 or
12 years ago, seven years ago, `I think I'll create a book of essays
and put the Lincoln essays in it. I have a number of other essays
that I want to put in it.'

Well, as I worked on it, I said, `Well, you know,' as an author says,
`maybe, you know, it--it needs a little update.' A year or two later,
300 or 400 pages, I say, `Well, it has to be a book.' And so it--it
evolved into that in let's say 10 years, maybe seven or 12 years, but
I've been working on it that time. And--and--and I
say--and--and--I--I hope you'll let me say immodestly, I gu--guess,
I--I worked on this book nights and weekends for 10 years or so, after
my day job. I didn't--I just--couldn't do this at my day job. I
worked 14 hours or so at my day job and then I--I would go home and I
would work at night and then I'd work all weekend. People thought I
was crazy, and I--but just--I just did it year after year. And
I--I--I did not receive--I had no graduate assistance. Books like
these are generally done with--with an army of graduate assistance. I
had no graduates assistance. And I didn't get a--I didn't get a grant
from--from a foundation.

I did it 10--10 years on my own and people a--you know, feel sorry for
you and people, of course, say, `You're crazy.' But it was one of the
most exciting 10 years I've spent because what I had to do is to--I
had to learn how to see again. I had to create new concepts for
pre--for trying to understand Lincoln because the dominant concept
would have left--led me into--to error. So all this time I was
involved in trying to see again, learning how to see again and in
creating new concepts or containing a phenomenon that I think we need
a new perspective on.

LAMB: How many copies did you print?

Mr. BENNETT: I don't--I don't--I don't remember. I know we're in
the second printing but I don't--I don't remember the num...

LAMB: It is like 30,000 vs...

Mr. BENNETT: No, it wasn't that many at all. No.

LAMB: Not that many.

Mr. BENNETT: No.

LAMB: What's been the reaction among black people to this?

Mr. BENNETT: The reaction has been tremendous. It's 650 pages,
footnotes, it's not the kind of book you expect people to walk down
the streets reading. But I walk down the streets an--an--and--and
black people say, `Thank you for doing the book. Thank you for this.'
And I've gotten more response on this book in the black community than
I've ever gotten, and I have another book, "Before the Mayflower,"
which is one of the widest circulated black history books ever. But
the--the response to this has been electric and I've been very humbled
by it.

LAMB: Now this is a bit convoluted.

Mr. BENNETT: Yeah.

LAMB: Let me try to walk through this.

Mr. BENNETT: OK. Mm-hmm.

LAMB: If white people, both--you know, you hear both c--Republicans
and Democrats, liberals and conservatives putting their arms around
Abraham Lincoln. If they think he did a good thing and they are
supporting him because they think he freed the slaves, what advantage
is it to this discussion if, in the end, you're successful in pulling
the rug out from under that?

Mr. BENNETT: All right. I'm asked that question a number of ways,
and it's a good question. I--I appreciate it. The first--the
first--my first response without getting up on a high horse--but my
first response always is that I think the truth is its own defense and
is absolutely necessary. My second response is--to whites and
blacks--is this warm, confident symbol who gives out freedom on
January the 1st, 1863. My second response is that--that--that--that
you can't lie your way to freedom, can't lie your way to freedom. You
can't do it. You can't lie your way to a rainbow nation.

My third response, and I say it in the book, people who say that
they're too late--I won't name a presidential candidate, anybody's
name, but--but the people who say that in general know who Abraham
Lincoln is, they know he was not John Brown. They know he was not
Wendell Phillips. They know he was not a major advocate of
liberation. They know in general--and what--this is what most people
know about Lincoln, that they--he did it reluctantly. He did it to
save the Union. That's--that's--that's the--the Lincoln that--that
these people worship.

What is that saying? That you don't fight for freedom if there--if it
causes problems. They know the Lincoln they're worshiping. They
don't want to know John Brown. They don't want to know Wendell
Phillips. They don't even want to know Lyman Trumbull. And I'm
saying that--that we ought to teach young white children Wendell
Phillips' name, who said--and--and--94 years before King, 133 years
before Mandela that he wanted to create a rainbow nation composed of
the learned and the ignorant, the old and the young, the black and the
white, pagan, Christian, Jew--all in one great procession marching
toward a rainbow land.

He said that 100 years ago. That ought to be taught. If we're going
to overcome the madness we're going through in this--in this country,
we need to know white people in this country are going back to Abigail
Adams, who really were in favor of the liberation of black people. We
need to know--to know black people like Harriet Tubman and Frederick
Douglass, etc.

LAMB: Again, my facts may not be right on the money, but a couple
weeks ago, President Clinton stood in front of the Anderson Cotttage
out here at the Old Soldiers' Home, $750,000 to repair it. I think he
mentioned that it was in this cottage that Abraham Lincoln wrote a lot
of the Emancipation Proclamation, implying that's very positive, very
good. Kind of connect that to--I want to ask you whether--is Bill
Clinton, as they said several years ago, the first black American
president?

Mr. BENNETT: Give me two seconds. I--I'd hoped that we'd come to
this. First point, the dedication of this cottage in--in the
summer--and I read newspapers all across this country, almost all of
them wrong, almost all of them totally wrong. The big American
newspaper, the paper of record said that it was in the Soldiers' Home
where--that-that Abraham Lincoln drafted the Emancipation
Proclamation. He did no such thing. Did no such thing.

Another major American newspaper--and just let me read this. I--I--I
brought it to read. I won't name the newspaper. Said, `It was at the
cottage in 1862 that Lincoln wrote the final draft of the Emancipation
Proclamation. Issued January the 1st, 1863, the Proclamation freed
slaves in Confederate territory controlled by Union forces.'

Now I read about five sentence here--sentences here and there's six
major errors in the--just these five--this is a major American
newspaper. In the first page--place, what he--he did not write the
second draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in that cottage. What
he wrote there--and he didn't write it--he wrote--he made notes there
for the preliminary proclamation.

Now--now this is 2000. American media don't know the difference
between the preliminary proclamation and the Emancipation
Proclamation? The other point was that document was issued on
September the 22nd, 1862. The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted
in the White House on December the 31st, 1800 and--and 62. But I call
your attention to this sentence in a major newspaper which said, `The
Proclamation freed slaves in Confederate territory controlled by Union
forces.' It did the precise opposite. Lincoln freed slaves in
Confederate territory controlled by Confederate troops. He left them
in slavery in Confederate terr--territory controlled by Union forces.
So...

LAMB: Well, what about the other half of that? Bill Clinton?

Mr. BENNETT: I--I think his appointment policy has--has--has--has
been extraordinary and is an indication of--of--of what we should
expect from a president and points in the direction that we ought to
go in terms of trying to create a rainbow nation. Lincoln was not
going in that direction at all. And again, here's an indication of a
direction we need to go in in order to create the rainbow nation
that--that was dreamed that has never been lived.

LAMB: But--now he's--you know, he was part of that symbol of
endorsing the Abraham Lincoln thing and the whole--you know, standing
in front of the cottage and that doesn't bother you? I mean,
we're--is there--I mean, all of these presidents, both sides, all say
great things about Abraham Lincoln. But you're basically saying it's
all a lie.

Mr. BENNETT: Forget--I said--I--I'm saying fact, fact, fact. All
the major newspapers in America--I can name them--said that he wrote
the draft of the Declaration--I mean of the Emancipation Proclamation
in that cot--he did not do it. And this indicates one to me--and I
come back to your question, that the misinterpretation and
misunderstanding of Lincoln on this issue has reached the level of a
national scandal when all of the newspapers put out this
misinformation.

The second--second point, it doesn't bother me, even scholars it
doesn't bother me--500,000 thousand PhDs swearing that Lincoln wrote
the Emancipation Proclamation in that co--in that thing will not
change the fact that he did not do it. The facts are against the
theory and it's the duty of all Americans to begin now to deal with
the facts.

LAMB: Our guest has been Lerone Bennett Jr. This is what the book
looks like, "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream." Thank
you very much.

Mr. BENNETT: Thank you. Delighted to be here.

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Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream