The Real Reason Lincoln Was Hated Before He Ended Slavery | Presidents Series | Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck examines Abraham Lincoln’s early life, shaped by his abusive father and stepmother’s moral influence, and his rise from a one-term congressman to president amid assassination threats. His Gettysburg religious awakening reframed the Civil War as a fight for unity over slavery, yet wartime actions like suspending habeas corpus and blockades without congressional approval sparked controversy. Post-Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s 55% re-election victory masked war fatigue and modern critiques of his incomplete abolitionist stance, contrasting with figures like John Quincy Adams. His assassination by John Wilkes Booth—after a failed earlier attempt—followed a confrontation over Lincoln’s "malice toward none" speech, while artifacts like the actress’s bloodstained dress (sold for $100K–$150K) and Mary Todd’s mourning dress highlight the era’s brutality. Beck questions judging history by today’s standards, drawing parallels to modern debates on equality and societal norms. [Automatically generated summary]
Not a lot of people like him, but he wins and he gets into office.
And on the way to office, he is in Baltimore and there is a threat on his life.
They're going to kill him at the train station in Washington.
So he gets into Baltimore at night and one of the guys who are protecting him, they're driving in a carriage.
President could be in an open carriage because nobody knew what he looked like.
He was known mainly by his hat, I think.
And so he takes his hat off and he's in the carriage and he's hearing people say, you know, is that Lincoln in town?
And he's hearing nasty things about him.
And he said, I realized how much trouble the union was in and how much trouble I was in.
George, we have programmed a lot of information and given you a lot of information on what's going on in today's America.
Based on your writings and the writings of the rest of the founders, what is it that you feel is the biggest problem or where we should start to fix things?
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If I may speak plainly, my countrymen, the danger, the greatest danger to our republic lies not in foreign arms or political faction, but in Manchester.
There's three of us, the American Journey Experience, David Barton's Wall Builders, and then My Collection.
And together, it is the largest collection of founding documents from 1610 to about 1830, 1820.
And so we put all of that into a database.
This is all proprietary.
This is not ChatGPT or anything else.
And then we fenced it off so it cannot pull from anywhere else.
It has to memorize.
It can't hallucinate.
And you can ask it to talk about any subject.
You have to kind of give it examples.
Like we asked it about Iran or Russia or something the other day.
And it was like, I don't know what that is.
But It is fascinating to be able to hear what the founders argued, what they actually believed, all from what the original documents are, and also anything that really influenced them when it came to founding our country.
I watch an extended portion, but even in the clip that we just showed at the top, because there's all the you and I, we can do all the dystopian versions of which way AI and robotics are going to go.
But to see it be used for something positive at the moment and get us back to some of our founding principles.
And I also, I really do love, as you said, that you guys walled this thing off.
So I don't even understand fully how the tech on that works, but basically it will not be hit by outside influence because otherwise, when it comes to AI, we're just following the road that many of the people who screwed up the last 20 years of big tech are taking us down.
So talk about that change because obviously, you know, people can give you a couple lines out of the Gettysburg Address, but it was a fundamental moment, not only for the country, but for him personally, as you're alluding to.
So, him personally, you have to understand, we had lost every battle but one up until this point.
And he is trying to find his brazen cane, if you will, that Donald Trump has.
He was trying to find somebody who would actually go in, fight it, and win.
And he couldn't.
And he kept going through people.
And Gettysburg happens.
And it's horrendous.
You know, we think of Gettysburg as the battle happened, and then he shows up, and they've buried the dead.
No, the battle happens, and then he shows up like three or four months later, after the summer, and they're still stacking bodies like cordwood.
I mean, I can't even imagine what that town smelled like at the time.
So he goes in and he is deeply moved by this.
He writes just on a little piece of paper, the Gettysburg Address, and basically says, we can't say anything here that anybody's going to remember.
We can't say anything to hallow this ground.
It's their blood.
It's our job to make sure that they didn't die in vain, that we answer the question, can this nation come back together?
And it was very simple.
The guy who gave the speech before him, I think, went on for about an hour.
Abe was like four minutes.
And somebody from the New York Times or one of the papers out of New York came up to him and said, that was a pretty good speech.
You have a copy of it.
And he said, yeah, he reaches in pocket, gives him the original.
And the guy takes it back to New York, types it up, throws the original away.
And there's the Gettysburg Address.
But after this, it drives him to his knees because he had been pleading, but toying with, as again, he said, I wasn't really a Christian.
He hadn't surrendered to God until Gettysburg.
After Gettysburg, he gets on his knees and he's begging God, whatever you want.
Tell me what you want.
I'll do whatever you want.
Just tell me what it is.
And you can see it in his speeches.
He says, you know, if all of the gold and the silver and everything that this country has today is all lost in one heap because of every drop of blood that was drawn by the lash of the whip, remember, God is just.
In other words, that would be a just thing.
If we lose everything, it's still just.
So he calls for a national day of prayer and fasting, humiliation, prayer and fasting.
Humiliation, I think, is the key.
Humiliation means you humble yourself and you realize you don't have any control over anything.
You know, everything you have, you've got from God.
Prayer, please, dear Lord, save the Republic.
And fasting, dedicate yourself, sacrifice something.
He does that.
We lose every battle but one prior to this.
We win every battle but one after the proclamation.
And I think that's important because that's very much like George Washington as well.
When we are a nation of covenants and when we make a covenant, things change.
I want to go back early before this.
He's not, he's a complex guy.
You know, he gets into Congress and John Quincy Adams is in Congress, and he's old by this time.
He's the only president to become president and then leave and go to the House of Representatives.
And the reason why is because he believed slavery had to end.
And so John Quincy Adams sees this young kid, and he's looking for a successor because he has been fighting against slavery forever.
In fact, they had a rule, I think it was the Adams rule, that you could not bring up slavery in session.
And so they'd finish one bill and they'd say, you know, what's next?
And he'd say, I propose, Mr. Speaker, that we end slavery.
And everybody would shout at him.
So they passed a deal because he just, he would not give up.
He sees Abraham Lincoln and he realizes, I think this is the guy that can do it.
So he downloads everything that he has done.
Abe is not necessarily a guy who is marching or leading with abolitionists.
And so, but John Quincy Adams gets him.
And that's the seed, I think, that is planted there at that time that eventually grows into the Abraham Lincoln that.
Do we know or do you know what his thoughts on slavery were before that?
I mean, he was obviously anti-slavery in some sense, but as you point out, he wasn't an abolitionist or it wasn't maybe in the top of his order of importance.
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No, I think, no, I think it's kind of like, I think it's kind of like what I feel now.
You know, there are people who say national divorce, national divorce.
You don't understand what a national divorce means.
A national divorce, you lose everything that we are.
We become a fundamentally different country.
One of the reasons why the Emancipation Proclamation happens is to stop France and I think England from endorsing the South.
And they said, you know, in fact, it was another Adams that happened to be in France, and they're going to send checks now to the South and back the South just for the trade was so good with the South.
And he's told by Adams, no, no, no, don't, don't do that.
I can't tell you what's coming, but wait a week.
I think you'll be impressed because what they were saying was, this isn't about ending slavery.
You're not doing that.
You're trying to preserve this union.
We don't care about the union.
We care about trade.
And trade is happening with the South.
So he knew that we had to keep this together if we were going to be one.
Otherwise, we would be divided up and eaten by foreign powers.
What else do we know about his sort of governing philosophy?
It sounds like we know a bit about his religious philosophy and his religious wake-up, but what about, you know, how he wanted to use government or not use government?
Obviously, you've referenced states' rights here.
There was an awful lot going on between the states and a federal government that still, well, it wasn't nearly as big as our federal government now, but was still kind of putting the pieces together.
I'm not sure you can, I'm not sure it's fair to judge him because he was constantly in war.
It's kind of like looking, Well, it's fair with FDR because FTR, you know, went through and built all this government, and then we went into war.
But presidents sometimes do things in war that you wouldn't necessarily do because it's really bad.
In his case, it was a civil war.
And so you can look at him and say he violated the Constitution at least three times, all on the same thing, writ of habeas corpus, and actually sending the blockade down and being the guy who basically said we're in war now.
And Congress, you know, this has been debated forever.
Does the president have the right to do that?
Or does Congress have the right to do that?
Most people agree that it's Congress that has the right to do that.
So there's his first violation.
And then the writ of habeas corpus.
He is dealing with all these people and he can't let them go because they're just going to join the ranks again.
So what do I do with these people who are seditious?
What do I do?
He holds them and he holds them without trial.
It's my understanding.
I could be wrong on this, but it's my understanding that's kind of like what's happening in Minnesota.
Are you going to get a fair trial of anybody in Minnesota?
And so the president, he believed we have to preserve the republic.
I can't have all these people go out on the streets.
But I think that's the biggest problem people have with Abraham Lincoln.
I mean, I never heard it because I grew up a northerner.
And when I came to the South, I started hearing people talk about, Glenn, I can't believe you like that tyrant, Abraham Lincoln.
I'm like, what are you talking about?
And in some ways, they're right because in war, he was doing things that you wouldn't like to do in peacetime.
But I think he was, my opinion, he was justified in doing those things.
He liked to have people, he's very much like Trump in this way.
He surrounded himself with people that were different.
He didn't like to have everybody think alike.
He brought a team of rivals in.
And that way he could hear all sides.
That was a problem, but it was also, I think, his strength.
I mean, I mean, he only won in second term, I think, by 55%.
You know, the Electoral College was a sweep, but the actual vote was 55%.
So he was just as controversial as any president.
But, you know, by the time you get to the second term, people are tired of war.
You know, again, people, I've heard this from people, you know, civil war.
Are you out of your mind?
You have no idea what that means.
You want to end up looking like Somalia?
That's how you do it.
You know, you're killing family members and family members.
And everybody was done by the time he gets into the second term and we're not winning.
And so he's, you know, I think he was unpopular everywhere.
As soon as he frees the slave, he again becomes more popular in the North, less popular in the South.
But the black community, I mean, he's like a god to the black community, at least at that time, up until really up until recent years, up until about the 60s or 70s, or a lot of it is happening today where, you know, he can do no right.
Is that just consistent with everything else we see, which is just the rewriting of history in every which way and applying our modern morals to people of the past?
I mean, you have to know he was not a guy who was living for that, but he understood it.
You know, the guy who, the woman who made all of his clothes and his wife's clothes, she was a freed slave that freed herself and bought her freedom and moved to Washington, D.C.
And Abraham Lincoln's wife went into her dress store.
She was a seamstress.
And they hit it off and became friends.
And she closed her store and said, I want to work for the Lincolns in the White House and adored Abraham Lincoln.
In her autobiography, she writes, and Mary Todd Lincoln also is known to have written this as well.
She was a black woman and the only one that Abraham Lincoln and his wife trusted in Washington, D.C.
They told her everything.
They were good friends.
It was a remarkable relationship, remarkable relationship.
But, you know, one of the things people will say is, well, Glenn, you know, he wanted his, he wanted some, I don't know, a private colony or an island for blacks.
That's not Abraham Lincoln's idea.
I mean, Thomas Jefferson even said that because the theory was you have put these people in chains.
You've treated them like this for a very long time.
You're now going to take the chains off of them and say, let's live side by side.
So it was not uncommon at the time to go, that's not going to happen.
Let's buy land.
Liberia is actually part of this.
Let's buy land and send them overseas back to Africa and they can start their own thing.
That's not Abraham Lincoln.
I think that was just a common fear at the time and not a stupid fear.
Even in 2026, it's hard to talk about that in some sense, like this idea that they would have resettled people who were brought here as slaves and yet try to imagine how difficult it would be discussing it then when you're one of the people who wants to free the slaves, ironically.
Well, you want to free the slaves and you want to then you're you're pushing for because everybody else is like, you free the slaves, they'll kill us all.
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Well, that's why when we have these conversations and people can only get on board the absolute abolitionists, it's like, guys, there was a lot going on there.
Thomas Jefferson was writing the laws to free the slaves while he had slaves.
Well, I knew you'd be the right guy for this because I wanted people to just get a bite, but also to relate some of the tensions to what's going on today without us having to talk about too much 2026 politics.
Glenn, I wish you a very happy birthday, my friend.