Differ We Must How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America

In his book "Defawy Maast", the NPR journalist Stevens' Keep explores the life of Abraham Lincoln.

In his book, differ we must, how Lincoln succeeded in a divided America.

Stevens keeps a dress we all have much to learn from Lincoln.

It's about the political life of Abraham Lincoln through the lens of disagreement.

It's called Differ We Must, How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America and it's structured around these kind of key moments and key relationships that Abraham Lincoln had on topics of disagreement, really difficult topics, topics like slavery.

It's a political strategy book in a lot of ways, because one of InSkeeps major points is that political leaders in democracies need to have majorities, which seems super obvious, but it seems also pertinent in today's climate.

Lincoln was in many ways a partisan. He was a member in his early years of what was called the Whig Party, which was one of the two major parties. And he was a very loyal party guy who did partisan things. But he realized that he needed a majority for his point of view.

He was urged by a slave owner that he'd known for years named Duff Green... urged to accept a compromise with the South. And the compromise was they would enshrine slavery in the Constitution forever, along with a number of other things. And Lincoln talked to the guy, but ultimately he and his party could not go along with that kind of compromise.

I think that probably out of every president there's been more books written than any other president we've ever had. And they still continue to be written today.