Abstract
Victorious war leaders win the plaudits of history, while the defeated struggle for reputation: Jefferson Davis’s efforts on behalf of a people mired in a moral enormity have done him few favors, while Abraham Lincoln has acquired mythic status as the savior of the American Union and the Great Emancipator. Moreover, Lincoln’s death, at the moment of his triumph, through a shot fired on Good Friday, led to the canonization of the martyr of the glorious Union. A contemporary journalist immediately understood what was at work: “It has made it impossible to speak the truth of Abraham Lincoln hereafter.”1
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Notes
Quoted in Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 21.
Henry Villard, Memoirs of Henry Villard, journalist and Financier, 1835–1900, 2 vols (Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1904), 1, p. 96.
Don E. Fehrenbacher and Virginia Fehrenbacher, comps. and eds., Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln [hereafter RWAL] (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1996), p. 455.
Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale, 111.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), pp. 54–55.
Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Publishing Company, 1886), p. xxix.
Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: vol. 2: War Becomes Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), pp. 385, 402.
Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon’s informants: Letters Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 332.
Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 209–210; Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward: Remarks Upon the Memorial Address of Chas. Francis Adams, on the late William H. Seward, With Incidents and Comments Illustrative of the Measures and Policy of the Administration of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Sheldon & Company, 1874), p. 32
Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall, eds., TheDiaryofOrvilleH. Browning, 2 vols. (Springfield, 111.: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925), 1, pp. 562–563.
James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), pp. 94–104.
Roy P. Basier et al., eds., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln [hereafter CW], 9 vols (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 4, pp. 232–233.
J.G. Randall and Richard N. Current, Lincoln the President, 4 vols (New York: Dodds, Mead, 1955), 2, p. 41.
William O. Stoddard, Inside the White House in War Times: Memoirs and Reports of Lincoln’s Secretary, ed. Michael Burlingame (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), p. 101.
Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale, 111.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), p. 93.
George W. Julian, quoted in William C. Harris, With Charity for All: Lincoln and the Restoration of the Union (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 1997), p. 241.
F.B. Carpenter, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995 [orig. pub. New York, 1866]), pp. 149–152.
William H. Herndon and jesse William Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life (The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln) (Chicago: Belford, Clarke, c1889), p. 334.
Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources, 4 vols (New York: Lincoln History Society, 1907), 3, p. 198.
Josiah Bus[h]nell Grinnell, Men and Events of Forty Years: Autobiographical Reminiscences of an Active Career from 1850 to 1890 (Boston: D. Lothrop Company, 1891), p. 174.
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), p. 436.
Victor B. Howard, Religion and the Radical Republican Movement 1860–1870 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), p. 71
David M. Potter, “Jefferson Davis and the Political Factors in Confederate Defeat,” in David Herbert Donald, ed., Why the North Won the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1960), pp. 102, 112.
Gary W. Gallagher, The Confederate War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 85–89.
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© 2010 George R. Goethals and Gary L. McDowell
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Carwardine, R. (2010). Wonderful Self-Reliance: Abraham Lincoln’s Leadership. In: Goethals, G.R., McDowell, G.L. (eds) Lincoln’s Legacy of Leadership. Jepson Studies in Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104563_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230104563_7
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