Historian reportedly behind Biden’s victory speech raised the alarm early about Trump’s personality

As he prepares to take office in January, Joe Biden has been receiving help from one of the US’s most prominent historians in writing his major speeches, including the victory address he delivered after the election was called.

According to a report from the New York Times, sources close to the Biden campaign have confirmed that Jon Meacham has contributed greatly to many of Mr Biden’s most important campaign speeches.

Among those he apparently helped with was the candidate’s address to the Democratic National Convention in August, one of the best-received speeches of this election cycle (and of Mr Biden’s career).

Mr Biden’s victory speech, which he delivered after the election was finally called on 7 November, saw him make a conciliatory gesture to his rival’s supporters – and begin to plot the emotional and moral trajectory of his presidency.

“To those who voted for President Trump, I understand your disappointment tonight,” he said. “I’ve lost a couple of elections myself. But now, let’s give each other a chance.

“It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to each other again. To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy. We are not enemies. We are Americans.

“Americans have called on us to marshal the forces of decency and the forces of fairness. To marshal the forces of science and the forces of hope in the great battles of our time.”

Mr Meacham is a prolific scholar and author who has published on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, presidential lives from Thomas Jefferson to George H W Bush, and American protest songs.

This year he has presented a podcast, It Was Said, about 10 great American speeches of the 20th and 21st centuries. Among those featured are Martin Luther King’s final speech (“I’ve been to the mountaintop”), John F Kennedy’s first inaugural address, and Barack Obama’s 2015 sermon at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, after after a white supremacist shot nine of its congregants dead.

Early in the Trump presidency, Mr Meacham – author of a book on Andrew Jackson’s White House – recounted that Mr Trump told him he could have done a deal to prevent the Civil War.

“It's a projection of the President's fundamental and enveloping narcissism,” he said. “He believes… he told me a year ago that he thought he could have done a deal to have averted the war.”

His comments came after Mr Trump said in an interview that Andrew Jackson, president from 1829-37, saw the Civil War coming and was frustrated it couldn’t be stopped.

“He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War,” the president told SiriusXM. “He said, ‘There's no reason for this!’” Mr Jackson died 16 years before the war broke out.

At the time, Mr Meacham gave a pessimistic forecast of what high office would do to Mr Trump – or rather what it would not do.

“The presidency itself enhances your fundamental characteristics,” he said in an MSNBC interview. “It's very hard once you're there to change. Some people do, and that's why we talk about them as great presidents.

“But most people, once they're in the Oval Office, actually just become more like themselves. And I think in this case that's on a potentially tragic trajectory.”