Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen
Jul 25, 2026 · 28 min · 7 segments
If this historian could go back in time and attend any of Lincoln's speeches, he'd pick the Cooper Union address rather than the one you (I?) think: "Why go to Gettysburg and stand around for hours…
One of the profiles in Profiles in Courage, the book President Kennedy pretended to write.
among Benton's accomplishments, being expelled from college for theft, promoting Manifest Destiny, and fighting two duels with the same guy.
You know, if you do things right the first time, Dueling was a feature of American politics through the middle of the 19th century.
Henry Clay fought one, Hamilton and Burr, Andrew Jackson fought a dozen and killed a guy.
They met on Bloody Island opposite St. Louis and fought with pistols, each wounding the other.
In that era, President Kennedy might have objected to my suggesting he's a plagiarist and challenged me to a duel, but he's long dead, shot by an assassin, another feature of American politics.
I like to approach my guests obliquely, not talking directly about them, but about a person, a place, and a thing of their choosing.
This time, that guest is Harold Holzer, Manhattan Borough historian, Lincoln scholar, and director of Roosevelt House, where we spoke about his person, Abraham Lincoln, considered as a writer.
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