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Todd Brewster has had a remarkable career in both journalism and academia. He worked with both Life magazine and ABC News as a Senior Editor and Producer. When he was with ABC News he teamed with Peter Jennings on two monumental projects, The Century and In Search of America. The Century and In Search of America were mini-series that aired on the History Channel and ABC. In conjunction with the mini-series Todd Brewster and Peter Jennings wrote two bestselling books, The Century and In Search of America. In 2008, Brewster became the Don E. Ackerman Director of Oral History at the United States Military Academy. Brewster established a video archive of including veterans from World War II up to our most recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to his responsibilities at West Point, Brewster is the Director of The Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. The Project brings in 40 Jennings Fellows each year to study the Constitution in depth. The Project is committed to helping journalists understand how the Constitution reaches into every American's life.

So all of that made me interested in studying the document and its history more deeply. Then I found that the six months between July 1862 and January 1863 served as a neatly contained episode of Lincoln’s life in that they framed the time when he first mentioned the Proclamation and the date when he actually signed the document. More than that, those six months were some of the most turbulent for Lincoln, the nation, and the war. When the book begins, he is still mourning the death of his son, Willie, who succumbed to typhoid in February and in fact the opening scene is a carriage ride to the funeral of another child – this, the infant son of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton – who also died of typhoid. The climactic battle of Antietam falls in September of this year, the mid-term elections in November and Lincoln’s muddled address to the nation in December. Through all of this time, he is undergoing a spiritual, emotional and political crisis. What drama!

'''Are there any themes or ideas from The Century and In Search of America that you see in Lincoln’s Gamble? Both The Century and In Search of America were trying to decode America, does Lincoln’s Gamble also try to do this?'''

But what would have happened if Lincoln had issued no Emancipation Proclamation? For one, he might have lost the war. Soldiers in the North were already growing weary of the fighting and unlike the South they were not defending their homeland so they did not have the same passion for the fight as the rebel soldiers did. The Emancipation Proclamation not only provided a new mission to the battle; it also unleashed the force of thousands of new soldiers – the freed slaves – who provided renewed vigor to the fight. Finally, what would have happened if Lincoln had issued the EP not in 1863 but in 1861 when the war began? Many people believe that the country was not ready for such a radical policy and that Lincoln would have looked ruthless in his approach to the South. In fact, Lincoln still hoped that he could retain the Southern states and establish a plan for a gradual, negotiated end to slavery. Here is an incredible thought to behold: Lincoln, in his famous debates with Stephen Douglas, argued that the peaceful and gradual end to slavery might take a hundred years or more, meaning that slavery would have remained a part of American life to 1958! Of course the long-term alternative to freeing the slaves was to return them to Africa. This remained an interest of Lincoln’s well after the Proclamation was signed.

'''Even though Lincoln is perhaps the most carefully documented and discussed president in United States history, he has remained surprisingly enigmatic. How does your book help us understand this complicated man?'''