The inner life of Abraham Lincoln

Chapter 4: I.

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The author presents six months of close personal association with Abraham Lincoln, assembling fragmentary but factual daily observations, anecdotes, and corroborated contributions to sketch his private thoughts, habits, moods, and moral temperament during the wartime presidency. The narrative blends reminiscence, descriptive episodes, and reflections on emancipation, leadership, and character, emphasizing humility, integrity, and intellectual growth while avoiding hagiography, and aiming to illuminate the private motives and inner struggles behind public decisions.

I.

I leave to other and abler pens the proper estimate of Abraham Lincoln as a ruler and statesman,—his work and place in history. Favored during the year 1864 with several months of personal intercourse with him, I shall attempt in these pages to write the story of that association; not for any value which the record will have in itself, but for the glimpses it may afford of the person and character of the man,—every detail of whose life is now invested with enduring interest for the American people.