CHAPTER 1
“Leave nothing for tomorrow
which can be done today.”
A man, nameless to the annals of history except for a random chance of geographic proximity, once dared to look beyond the veil of martyred hindsight to remember a lanky yet surprisingly strong young man from Kentucky, “Abe Lincoln worked for me … didn't love work half as much as his pay. He said to me one day that his father taught him to work, but he never taught him to love it.”
This charmingly unsentimental anecdote fits with what little is known about Lincoln's early years. Other neighbors interviewed years after Lincoln's death would recall watching Abe helping his father on the farm. The tall youth was known to faithfully, if not quite enthusiastically, perform the backbreaking labor required to survive on the frontiers of Kentucky, Indiana, and eventually Illinois.
No one would say Lincoln ever shied away from hard work; instead he saw physical labor as a means to an end. In his youth, that end was most often the chance stick his nose back in a book. As Lincoln grew in both wisdom and age, that end would become a defining and unshakable principle: the Union must be saved.
Lincoln's personal experiences as a “hired hand,” lawyer, and eventually a politician, allowed him to develop a unique perspective on the American struggle to earn a living. For all the promise of opportunities and hope of the New World, few individuals in nineteenth-century America were truly able to rise above the standard of living they were born into. Even fewer were able to successfully navigate through both the spheres of physical laborer and intellectual professional. Though Lincoln undoubtedly enjoyed his career as a politician more than his life on the frontier, it can be argued he was definitely successful in both arenas.
The future president earned his first dollar ferrying passengers across the Ohio River on a raft he built himself. In the years that followed he worked his way up from hired hand to store clerk for one Mr. Denton Offutt. Eventually Lincoln was known as one of the most popular lawyers to travel the Illinois circuit court; whether he won or lost a case, he could always be counted on to tell a captivating yarn to the other legal professionals gathered around the inn hearth at night. Most obviously, as a politician, Lincoln attained the highest and most powerful civilian office in the country.
Impossible as it is to try and isolate one root cause for Lincoln's success, several themes do become obvious in his words below. Whether affixing his signature to a new law, swinging an axe above his head, or passionately calling a nation to arms, Lincoln was a man who diligently persevered. When there was a task to finish, he followed through; when there was a case to be won, he argued with passionate honesty; when there was a nation to save, he bore down with grit and determination.
Diligent Habits
Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good object can be frustrated by it.
—Lincoln's First Inaugural Address;
March 4, 1861
You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit. It is more important to them, because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after they are in.
—Letter to J. D. Johnston; January 2, 1851
Some poet has said “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I meet that argument, I rush in, I take that bull by the horns.
—Reply to Stephen Douglas; October 16, 1854
If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work you cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good.
—Letter J. D. Johnston; November 4, 1851
There may be some inequalities in the practical application of our system ….There may be mistakes made sometimes; and things may be done wrong, while the officers of the Government do all they can to prevent mistakes. But I beg of you, as citizens of this great Republic, not to let your minds be carried off from the great work we have before us. This struggle is too large for you to be diverted from it by any small matter.
—Address to the 164th Ohio Regiment;
August 18, 1864
The advice of a father to his son “Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware thee” is good, and yet not best. Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control.
—Letter to Capt. James M. Cutts;
October 26, 1863
Cultivating a Successful Work Ethic and Mentality
Important principles may and must be inflexible.
—Lincoln's last public address;
April 11, 1865
Happy day, when, all appetites controlled, all poisons subdued, all matter subjected, mind, all conquering mind, shall live and move the monarch of the world. Glorious consummation! Hail fall of Fury! Reign of Reason, all hail!
—Address to the Washington Temperance Society;
February 22, 1842
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.
—Letter to Isham Reavis; November 5, 1855
Of course I would have preferred success; but failing in that, I have no regrets for having rejected all advice to the contrary, and resolutely made the struggle.
—Letter to Judge S. P. Chase; April 30, 1859
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.
—Letter to W. H. Herndon; July 10, 1848
All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.
—Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions;
April 6, 1858
Now, as to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men.
—Letter to W. H. Herndon; June 22, 1848
Determination and Self–Control
You can not fail in any laudable object, unless you allow your mind to be improperly directed.
—Letter to W. H. Herndon; July 10, 1848
But yet it is folly to undertake works of this or any kind, without first knowing that we are able to finish them, as half-finished work generally proves to be labor lost.
—Open letter to the People of Sangamo County; March 9, 1832
Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing.
—Address to the Wisconsin State Fair;
September 30, 1859
Work, work, work, is the main thing.
—Letter to John M. Brockman;
September 25, 1860
If anyone, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.
—Fragment; written circa July 1850
Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.
—Speech given in reaction to the
Dred Scott decision; June 26, 1857
It behooves you to be wide awake and actively working.
—Letter to Joseph Gillespie;
July 16, 1858
Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden on to the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.
—Fragment; written circa July 1854
You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm.
—Letter to Maj. Gen. Hooker;
January 26, 1863
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
—Speech to the Young Men's Lyceum;
January 27, 1838
Work and Labor
I am always for the man who wishes to work.
—Endorsement for employment application;
August 15, 1864
Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn.
—Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio;
September 17, 1859
The world is agreed that labor is the source from which human wants are mainly supplied. There is no dispute upon this point. From this point, however, men immediately diverge.
—Address at the Wisconsin State Fair;
September 30, 1859
The old general rule was that educated people did not perform manual labor.… But now, especially in these free states, nearly all are educated—quite too nearly all, to leave the labor of the uneducated, in any wise adequate to the support of the whole. It follows from this that henceforth educated people must labor.
—Address at the Wisconsin State Fair;
September 30, 1859
The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds.
—Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic
Republican Association; March 21, 1864
The prudent, penniless beginner in the world labors for wages a while, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself, then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This is the just andgenerous and prosperous system which opens the way to all, gives hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and improvement of condition to all.
—Message to Congress; December 3, 1861
Property is the fruit of labor … property is de-sirable … is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
—Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic
Republican Association; March 21, 1864
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
—Message to Congress; December 3, 1861
Labor is like any other commodity in the market—increase the demand for it, and you increase the price for it.
—Message to Congress; December 1, 1862
When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor, for his whole life.
—Speech at New Haven, Connecticut;
March 6, 1860
No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty, none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned.
—Message to Congress; December 3, 1861
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.
—Letter to Henry L. Pierce, & Others;
April 6, 1859
I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.
—Speech at New Haven, Connecticut;
March 6, 1860
The Labor of Learning
Thoughtful men must feel that the fate of civilization upon this continent is involved in the issue of our contest. Among the most satisfying proofs of this conviction is the hearty devotion everywhere exhibited by our schools and colleges to the national cause.
—Letter to John Maclean; December 27, 1864
In all this, book-learning is available. A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the yet unsolved ones.
—Address at the Wisconsin State Fair;
September 30, 1859
Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.
—Open letter to the People of Sangamo County;
March 9, 1832
Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.
—Speech to the Young Men's Lyceum;
January 27, 1838
Mr. Clay's lack of a more perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally, teaches at least one profitable lesson; it teaches that in this country, one can scarcely be so poor, but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably.
—Eulogy for Henry Clay; July 6, 1852
Lincoln as a Working Man
In law it is good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not.
—Letter to Usher F. Linder; February 20, 1848
I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful. The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.
—Fragment; written circa July 1850
If you wish to be a lawyer, attach no consequence to the place you are in, or the person you are with; but get books, sit down anywhere, and go to reading for yourself. That will make a lawyer of you quicker than any other way.
—Letter to William H. Grigsby; August 3, 1858
Let no man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief—resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer.
—Fragment; written circa July 1850