Sublime

Churchill’s War Speeches, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,

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

second tour guide, the antislavery, anti-abolitionist Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826).

“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”17 That quote may seem trite until you understand the context in which Douglass said it. He was explaining that he would partner with the American Anti-Slavery Society to abolish slavery, but he would not partner in their effort to abolish the American government as a whole. They

“I HAVE NO DOUBT that Lincoln will be the conspicuous figure of the war,” predicted Ulysses S. Grant. “He was incontestably the greatest man I ever knew.”

“Did Stanton say I was a d——d fool?” Lincoln asked. “He did, sir,” the congressman replied, “and repeated it.” Smiling, the president remarked: “If Stanton said I was a d——d fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I will step over and see him.”

Jacobus Hercules “Koos” de la Rey,

Harper’s Weekly agreed. In an editorial endorsing the president’s reelection, it claimed that “among all the prominent men in our history from the beginning none have ever shown the power of understanding the popular mind so accurately as Mr. Lincoln.” In moving gradually toward emancipation, as he had done, the Harper’s editor observed, Lincoln un