What is your best one-word description of President Abraham Lincoln's character?

[David Lockmiller]

(10-01-2023 07:54 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  

(10-01-2023 01:56 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Rob, as one of the well read and articulate members on this forum, would you expand upon your answer of "Human" to the question on this thread,
"What is your best one-word description of President Abraham Lincoln's character?"

Most of the people I know are Human.

Gene,

I would be glad to.

Growing up, I was always told that I should emulate Lincoln. That meant (as far as I knew at that young age) to be honest and try to do right by my fellow man. The only problem is that I could never get a handle on just who Lincoln was. He was too much of the marble saint. In the early 1970s, the city of Springfield referred to the Lincoln sites as the Lincoln shrines. I couldn't see him as a person, which, in my mind, would make emulation far more possible. As I began to study and read about Lincoln, it seemed to me that there was no middle ground where he was concerned. He was either a saint who could do no wrong or a sinner who did nothing right.

When I was in college, I took a special topics course on the life of Lincoln. Held like a seminar where each person took a topic and wrote a paper on it. I was given the topic of Lincoln and his cabinet. One of the quotes I remember from Burton Hendrick's book Lincoln's War Cabinet (which I honestly think is better than Team of Rivals; sorry, David) was Lincoln talking about the "shriek of locality" when he was selecting his cabinet. He was quoted as saying, "If the Lord was selecting the twelve apostles again, the shriek of locality would go up!" (or words to that effect). At the time, I still held a smidgen of religious feeling and thought it interesting that Lincoln could make such a statement.

As I began to study Lincoln more as an adult instead of a wide-eyed kid, I realized the "sanctified" Lincoln was just as false as what Lerone Bennett or Edgar Lee Masters had tried to make of him. To look at Lincoln as "human" requires us to accept that for every virtue Lincoln had, he also had numerous vices and frailties. David's whole raison d'etre seems to me to keep the sanctified Lincoln alive. That only inhibits knowledge and respect for Lincoln. It's often said that to understand the good in life, we must have experience with the bad. The same holds for Lincoln. It's OK to look at him with a deep respect, but that respect has to be tempered with the fact that he was not perfect, or even close to perfect. He was human.

Best
Rob

Rob, as a youth, you were set an absolutely impossible task: "Growing up, I was always told that I should emulate Lincoln."

Tolstoy spoke of President Abraham Lincoln in 1908:

“We are still too near to his greatness, but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding; just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.” (Doris Kearns Goodwin’s source in Team of Rivals: Leo Tolstoy, quoted in The World, New York, February 7, 1908.)

"Emulate" is defined at dictionary.com: effort or desire to equal or excel others.

Hundreds of millions human beings have lived and died since 1908. How many of those can be considered as comparable in laudable accomplishment to that of President Abraham Lincoln? Who in prior history accomplished so much good under such adverse circumstances? In his time, President Abraham Lincoln saved the institution of democracy for the world.

You wrote in your post: "To look at Lincoln as "human" requires us to accept that for every virtue Lincoln had, he also had numerous vices and frailties."

I will disagree with that statement to the end of time.