Lincoln's Succession Plan Was Not Good Planning

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Lincoln is considered to be one of the great presidents in the history of the United States. Are there ways that he failed? Is there things he could have done better? So he failed in the ways that most great leaders fail, which is that he had a terrible succession plan. His vice president, who I spend a lot of time on in the book, Andrew Johnson, was probably our worst president ever.

Jeremi Suri is a historian at UT Austin. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:45) – Revolutions and governments
(24:23) – American Civil War
(33:35) – Lincoln and election of 1860
(37:25) – Slavery
(50:35) – Freedom of speech
(1:02:17) – Death toll of the Civil War
(1:05:36) – Ulysses S. Grant
(1:07:45) – Ku Klux Klan
(1:19:27) – Robert E. Lee
(1:27:11) – Abraham Lincoln
(1:42:18) – If the south won
(1:50:54) – Hypocrisy of the Founders
(1:56:56) – John Wilkes Booth
(2:00:11) – White supremacy
(2:05:34) – Disputed elections
(2:15:56) – Politics
(2:24:20) – Donald Trump and Joe Biden
(2:37:06) – January 6th
(3:02:04) – Hope for the future