How to describe Abraham Lincoln in letter to friend
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What made Abraham Lincoln able to steer the country through a war with itself and preserve the Union? Scholars have described his acumen, judgment, empathy, and any number of other traits in their quest to understand what distinguished Lincoln as a leader. They have rooted their explanation in his cabinet choices, the books he read, his jokes, his melancholic mood, and even his relationship with his dog in an endless survey of his life.
William Herndon, Lincoln’s early law partner in Springfield, Illinois, began this systematic accounting just after Lincoln’s death. Herndon interviewed and corresponded with people Lincoln had known at all points in his life. One of Lincoln’s closest friends, the one whom Herndon thought Lincoln loved more than anyone else, was their mutual friend, Joshua Speed, a partner in a Springfield general store where the young men of the city met to work and discuss politics. From 1837-1842, Lincoln and Speed were always together, except when their work called them to separate buildings or other towns. Many friends at the time, including Lincoln’s future wife Mary Todd, recognized that there was something exclusive about the relationship between the two men. If anyone, Speed would have known what made Lincoln Lincoln.
Many Lincoln scholars have sensed a deep level of intimacy between the two men and consider their relationship to be one of the most enriching of Lincoln’s life. But out of discomfort, fear, or ignorance, they have not known what to ‘do’ with the relationship, other than acknowledge it as a heartwarming curiosity of Lincoln’s early life and move on.