William Brennan

The Choice Not Made William Brennan

As the American Civil War winds down Bryson Moore, a prominent history professor at Union College in Schenectady, NY, meets with politically connected colleagues and shares his alarm that the competing plans for national reconstruction put forward by President Abraham Lincoln and radicals in Congress are seriously flawed. He suggests an alternative proposal that would partially bridge the difference between the alternatives. The president of Union College seizes on the idea and puts Moore in touch with Secretary of State William Seward, a Union Alumnus, who in turn arranges for Bryson to brief the president on the merits of his proposal vis-a-vis the two competing for national approval. In a pivotal meeting between Lincoln and Moore, the president confronts his very being in an existentialist crisis and realizes he must make a crucial choice among the options, none of which is ideal. Moore presses the president by indicating a failure to choose a new plan could result in decades of racial animus and anticipates many of the possibilities of Jim Crow laws. In this intense environment, an exhausted Lincoln demands time to make his choice, but even as he ponders his options a traitorous cabal is planning his assassination.