History as an antidote to despair

Over two thousand years ago, Polybius, the soundest of ancient historians, began his History with the remark that “the most instructive, indeed the only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitude of fortune, is to recall the catastrophes of others.” History is the best help, being a record of how things usually go wrong. A long histori

History is the best help, being a record of how things usually go wrong. A long historical view not only helps us to keep calm in a "time of trouble" but reminds us that there is an end to the longest tunnel. Even if we can see no good hope ahead, an historical interest as to what will happen is a help in carrying on. For a thinking man,

“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” Lincoln said. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Abraham Lincoln occasionally got fuming mad with a subordinate, one of his generals, even a friend. Rather than taking it out on that person directly, he’d write a long letter, outlining his case why they were wrong and what he wanted them to know. Then Lincoln would fold it up, put the letter in the desk drawer, and never send it. Many of these le

But throughout these struggles—the years at war, the crippling illnesses, his troubled son—he never gave up. It’s an inspiring example for us to think about today if we get tired, frustrated, or have to deal with some crisis. Here was a guy who had every reason to be angry and bitter, who could have abandoned his principles and lived in luxury or e

Abraham Lincoln, admired his always developing, flexible brand of leadership: Lincoln “was perhaps the greatest figure of the nineteenth century.” He was to be admired “not because he was perfect but because he was not and yet he triumphed. . . . Out of his contradictions and inconsistencies he fought his way to the pinnacles of the earth and his f

“Somehow he managed,” Lincoln’s most thorough modern biographer has concluded, “to be strong-willed without being willful, righteous without being self-righteous, and moral without being moralistic,” thus yielding a “psychological maturity unmatched in the history of American public life.”110 Which is simply to say that he managed polarities: they