“Though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.”
—Letter to Anson G. Henry; November 19, 1858
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, one year before roaming men in suits combed the countryside collecting data for the third census of the United States. The information gathered by those census takers paints a picture of a nation far different from ours today; less than eight million people called themselves citizens and the predominant occupation of almost all individuals in the country was agriculture.
While baby Abraham was learning to crawl, his family and neighbors were busy taming the state of Kentucky, President Madison was enforcing the Embargo Act, and Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin—which had only won its patent in 1807—was revolutionizing the economy of the South. By the time Lincoln died, the U.S. population had more than quadrupled, the industrial age was in full swing, and construction had begun to link the East and West coasts via the transcontinental railroad.
For all that Lincoln was able to preserve, the Union Lincoln saved has become a Union he might not recognize were he alive today. In 2000 the U.S. population hovered just below three hundred million, with less than two percent of Americans employed in agriculture. Fifteen Amendments have been added to the Constitution Lincoln defended so unfailingly, and in 2008 a momentous event took place—one Lincoln himself could not have imagined—when the American people elected the first African-American president.
In a world that constantly seems to change at the speed of email, a nation looking for answers must be cautious about taking the past out of context or aggrandizing a national figure. It is far too easy to romanticize history—and to judge its participants—through the rosy lens of hindsight. But for all the differences between the nineteenth century and the twenty-first, the leadership skills developed and honed by Abraham Lincoln are timeless.
As a working man, Lincoln developed simple yet practical skills for dealing with the pressures of a heavy workload and balancing home-life with professional burdens. As a politician, he mastered the art of mass communication and compromise. As a leader, Lincoln envisioned a goal and attained it by tempering responsibility and determination with compassion and hope.
While no book will every truly allow us to re-create Abraham Lincoln's wisdom, or find out how he would deal with today's pressing problems, we believe he did leave behind an eternal legacy of leadership. Though the details differ, Americans in every socio-economic stratum face almost the same questions today as Lincoln did one hundred and fifty years ago: how to find equilibrium between work and life, how to interact personally and professionally, and how to meet the challenges that arise in a rapidly-evolving world.
For all the changes that took place during his lifetime, Lincoln fought for and succeeded in preserving a distinct democracy—one which does not try to forget, one which, for better or worse, folds the bloody lessons, painful memories, and awe-inspiring victories from the past into its present. For guidance in times of uncertainty and answers in an age of terrorism, housing bubbles, and health care crises, we can only turn to the scraps of paper left behind by a man who rose to the occasion when his nation called. Yet we believe that sometimes scraps of paper are enough to inspire a nation; and the test of a true leader can be found in a man who continues to inspire a country long after his own voice has faded to the echoes of time.