Whom did Lincoln admire?

[AussieMick]

I had thought of Shakespeare as well. And Robert Burns.

Others : Garibaldi. Ethan Allen.
Harriet Beecher Stowe. (Even if he didnt say "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." ... he was obviously aware of the world-reaching impact of the enormous bedseller)

Henry Ward Beecher ( Lincoln apparently said of him, "no one in history had so productive a mind." And sent him to the UK to speak and undermine support of the South ... He was anti-Catholic and involved in an adultery scandal after the War)