He saw Mr. Lincoln but once; at the melancholy function called an Inaugural Ball. Of course he looked anxiously for a sign of char...acter. He saw a long, awkward figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism, but rather the same painful sense of becoming educated and of needing education that tormented a private secretary, above all a lack of apparent force. Any private secretary in the least fit for his business would have thought, as Adams did, that no man living needed so much education as the new President but that all the education he could get would not be enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet, The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,... Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves, Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales, Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A broad consensus exists that Lincoln was more eloquent than Davis in expressing war aims, more successful in communicating with t...he people, more skillful as a political leader in keeping factions working together for the war effort, better able to endure criticism and work with his critics to achieve a common goal. Lincoln was flexible, pragmatic, with a sense of humor to smooth relationships and help him survive the stress of his job; Davis was austere, rigid, humorless, with the type of personality that readily made enemies. Lincoln had a strong physical constitution; Davis suffered ill health and was frequently prostrated with illness. Lincoln picked good administrative subordinates (with some exceptions) and knew how to delegate authority to them; Davis went through five secretaries of war in four years; he spent a great deal of time and energy on petty administrative details that he should have left to subordinates. A disputatious man, Davis sometimes seemed to prefer winning an argument to winning the war; Lincoln was happy to lose an argument if it would help him win the war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The drama of the assassination has enlarged the personalities of both men, so it is as if each of them could have saved us from th...e troubled history that followed their deaths. Had Lincoln lived, many historians believe, his generous spirit would have labored in peace, as mightily as it had in war, to heal the nation's wounds, and perhaps much of America's tortured post-Civil War history would have been different. After Lincoln's death, a profound despair seized the nation, along with a deep bitterness that lasted for years, but America endured and the process of nation-building went on. Had John F. Kennedy lived, Robert Kennedy once told a reporter, the 1960s would have been different because he would have listened more sensitively to the young. It is somehow reassuring that even in the desperate hours after each assassination, a shaken nation, gripped with near-panic, gathered its will, looked to its Constitution, and reasserted political order.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Southern States are uneasy at the prospect of [Abraham] Lincoln's election today. The ultra South threatens disunion, and it n...ow looks as if South Carolina and possibly two or three others would go out of the Union. Will they? And if so, what is to be the result? Will other slave States gradually be drawn after them, or will the conservative States draw back into the Union or hold in the Union the ultra States? I think the latter. But at all events, I feel as if the time had come to test this question. If the threats are meant, then it is time the Union was dissolved or the traitors crushed out. I hope Lincoln goes in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As to Mr. Lincoln's name and fame and memory,--all is safe. His firmness, moderation, goodness of heart; his quaint humor, his per...fect honesty and directness of purpose; his logic his modesty his sound judgment, and great wisdom; the contrast between his obscure beginnings and the greatness of his subsequent position and achievements; his tragic death, giving him almost the crown of martyrdom, elevate him to a place in history second to none other of ancient or modern times. His success in his great office, his hold upon the confidence and affections of his countrymen, we shall all say are only second to Washington's; we shall probably feel and think that they are not second even to his.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still, That all his hours of travail here for men... Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace That he may sleep upon his hill again?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
here at midnight, in our little town A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,... Near the old court-house pacing up and down,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »