About the Author
Gordon Leidner is the author or editor of seven books on Abraham Lincoln, including Conversations with Lincoln: Little-Known Stories from Those Who Met America's 16th President and Lincoln's Gift. He is a board member of the Abraham Lincoln Institute and a past president of the Lincoln Group of D.C. He also maintains the Great American History website.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
President Abraham Lincoln walked solemnly through the private corridor that led from his office to the family living quarters in the White House. The war news was weighing heavily upon him. Union General Joseph Hooker and the Army of the Potomac had recently suffered a defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia, and the President was grieving deeply for the 30,000 casualties exacted on the two armies. He had been to the hospitals many times during the war to visit both the Union and Confederate wounded. He had personally witnessed their agony, wept at their bedsides, and held the hands of dying men.
The war had been going on for over two years now, and it seemed there was no end in sight. Lincoln had been unable to find a Union commander who could defeat Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Virginia, and now the War Department told him that the Confederates might invade Maryland again. Even the war in the West was progressing slowly, and the powerful Union army under General U. S. Grant seemed stymied. The campaign to take the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, Vicksburg, had dragged on for months. Grant’s army was bogged down in a siege of that city, and no one knew how long the siege would last or how many thousands of casualties would result.
He walked into the family quarters, where Mary stood in the middle of the room with her friend and seamstress Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley, who was fitting a dress on the First Lady. As soon as they saw him, they knew he was discouraged. He walked slowly to the sofa and threw himself on it in a dejected manner, “like a tired child,” Mrs. Keckley later recalled. He covered his face with his huge, powerful hands.
After a moment, Mary spoke in a soft, consoling voice. “Where have you been, father?”
“To the War Department,” was his brief, somber answer.
Mary swallowed hard. She knew what a trip to the War Department could portend. With some trepidation she asked, “Any news?”
“Yes, plenty of news, but no good news. It is dark, dark everywhere.”
Mary and Mrs. Keckley exchanged helpless looks. Mrs. Keckley went back to fitting the dress, but kept watching the President out of the corner of her eye.
He soon sat up and reached out with one of his long arms, taking a small Bible from a stand near the head of the sofa. The Lincolns had several Bibles in the White House, each in a convenient place so that they could be easily reached by the President. He liked to read the Bible every day when he could, especially before breakfast or at lunchtime. The Bibles in the living quarters were kept for his devotions, and the one he kept in his office was for quick reference when he was writing letters or important documents.
Sixteen-year-old Julia Taft, who babysat the Lincoln boys and her brothers in the White House, had often seen Lincoln reading the Bible in the family living quarters. She said that he always read it in a relaxed manner, with one leg crossed over the other, absorbed in it as if he was “enjoying a good book.” Mrs. Keckley was also familiar with this habit of the President’s, and was not surprised that Lincoln became quickly engaged in his Bible reading. The ladies did not disturb him.
Mrs. Keckley relates what happened next: “A quarter of an hour passed, and on glancing at the sofa the face of the President seemed more cheerful. The dejected look was gone, and the countenance was lighted up with new resolution and hope. The change was so marked that I could not but wonder at it, and wonder led to the desire to know what book of the Bible afforded so much comfort to the reader. Making the search for a missing article an excuse, I walked gently around the sofa, and looking into the open book, I discovered that Mr. Lincoln was reading that divine comforter, Job. He read with Christian eagerness, and the courage and hope that he derived from the inspired pages made him a new man.”
Lincoln’s most significant achievements are widely recognized. He successfully led the nation through the Civil War, which prevented the breakup of the Union and another possible failure of democratic government on Earth. He also transformed the purpose of the Civil War from one with the single objective of preserving the Republic to one with the additional objective of abolishing slavery. This transformation was especially significant because at the inception of the great American conflict, most of the northern people went to war for the exclusive purpose of preserving the Union rather than eliminating slavery.
Today, although a number of leadership theories can be applied to Lincoln, he is frequently identified as a transformational leader. Transformational leaders are unique in their ability to earn the trust, loyalty, and respect of followers and raise their morality level—inspiring them to make personal sacrifices to benefit the larger group or society. It was primarily because of his ability to inspire the people of the northern states into pursuing the higher purpose of abolishing slavery that Lincoln is often described as a transformational leader.
How did Lincoln accomplish this great inspirational feat? Even though leadership had been discussed by individuals such as Plato, Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli over the course of history, the academic field of Leadership Studies was not developed until the early twentieth century. Although Lincoln was an avid student of all things—he even checked out a book on military strategy from the Library of Congress during the war—books that addressed the subject of leadership would have been difficult for him to come by.
Charles Francis Adams, son of one American president and grandson of another, acknowledged Lincoln’s limitations. Adams was Lincoln’s ambassador to Great Britain during the Civil War, and when he first met Lincoln in 1861, he feared that the 16th president would be incapable of dealing with the national crisis. Recalling those days twelve years later, Adams said “I must … affirm, without hesitation that, in the history of our government down to this hour, no experiment so rash has ever been made as that of elevating to the head of affairs a man with so little previous preparation for his task as Mr. Lincoln.”
Herewith is an intriguing question. How could this self-educated, untrained, inexperienced small-town lawyer from the Illinois prairie attain the astounding results of winning the most desperately fought war in American history, preserving national unity and democratic government, and abolishing the powerful institution of American slavery?
According to three men that knew Lincoln well, it was not because he depended on strategic counsel. His old friend Supreme Court Justice David Davis "asked him [Lincoln] once about his Cabinet: he said he never Consulted his Cabinet. He said they all disagreed so much he would not ask them—he depended on himself—always." One of Lincoln’s secretaries, John Hay, said that Lincoln ruled his cabinet with “tyrannous authority,” and “the most important things he [Lincoln] decides & there is no cavil.” Lincoln’s close friend Leonard Swett said that “He [Lincoln] would listen to everybody; he would hear everybody; but he rarely, if ever, asked for opinions … As a politician and as president, he arrived at all his conclusions from his own reflections, and when his opinion was once formed, he never doubted that it was right.”
Swett mentions Lincoln’s reflections. What did Lincoln “reflect” on? What was the source of the wisdom and strength that guided and sustained him through multitudes of military battles, leadership decisions, and political conflicts?
To formulate and review all the possible answers to the question of how Lincoln became a great leader is beyond the scope of any single book. But Lincoln scholar Rev. William E. Barton, who in 1925 published the book that is today acknowledged as the most balanced investigation into Lincoln’s religious beliefs, said “he [Lincoln] read the Bible, honored it, quoted it freely, and it became so much a part of him as visibly and permanently to give shape to his literary style and to his habits of thought.” Lincoln scholar Earl Schwartz observed “Lincoln’s legacy, far more than any other president, has, over time, become inextricably bound up with the words and themes of the Bible.” Many scholars attest to the fact that the Bible had a significant influence on Lincoln, and based on my research into the Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Roy Basler, ed., nine volumes, with supplement), I have determined that he quoted the Bible more than any other book, including his other favorite, The Works of William Shakespeare.
Lincoln scholar Ronald C. White correctly states that the Bible’s influence in nineteenth century America was of extraordinary significance and cannot be over-emphasized. Consequently, in this work I will focus on Lincoln and the Bible. In each chapter of the biography, I will take into consideration the following questions as we discuss each phase of his life: How was he using the Bible?, What did he say about the Bible and God?, and How was the Bible informing his leadership?
Since there are no documented quotations of the Bible from Lincoln until he moved to Springfield, which is covered in Chapter Three, in the first and second chapters I will rely primarily on anecdotal information from those who knew him. In the remaining chapters I will use Lincoln’s own words to answer these questions.
In the Conclusion I will briefly discuss Lincoln’s personal faith in his presidential years. However, I will not attempt to answer the question of whether Lincoln was a Christian. I will instead follow Lincoln’s suggestion from his 1846 Handbill Replying to Religious Infidelity, and “[Leave] the higher matter of eternal consequences between him and his Maker.” The debate on whether Lincoln was a Christian is a rock on which the ships of many historians have foundered over the course of the last one and a half centuries.
The competing claims about his personal piety, originating with Lincoln’s contemporaries and proliferated by scholars today, are always interesting, but inevitably inconclusive. With the exception of a brief but necessary discussion in Chapter Two of what some of his colleagues said about this subject, and two anecdotes from his best friend Joshua Speed in the Conclusion, we will let Lincoln’s words speak for themselves when it comes to his personal religious beliefs.
[end of excerpt[
