Roundtable

Learning from Lincoln

The sixteenth president’s lessons on love, death, war, and the art of persuasion.

By Angela Serratore

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

 Alexander Gardner portrait of Abraham Lincoln, November 8, 1863.

On April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln as the sixteenth president enjoyed a production of Our American Friend at Ford’s Theater in Washington, DC. Early the next morning, Lincoln died in a boarding house across the street—the first American president to be assassinated. With Lincoln’s death, the divided country lost not just its leader but one of its wisest thinkers, a man who had something to say on nearly every subject, and then some. His marriage to Mary Todd, the death of his son Willie, and a handful of scrapes gotten into as a young lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, all served as fodder and inspiration for Lincoln’s speeches, letters, and notes. (He was also a notorious storyteller and surprisingly funny.) Here we present a smattering of advice on a variety of issues from Honest Abe collected from the Lapham’s Quarterly archive. 

Lincoln on love:

Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason—I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

Lincoln on persuasion:

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim that “a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.

Lincoln on war:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lincoln on death:

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

Lincoln on love, again:

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.