Simon and schuster

The Horse Fair 
hung above the bed, and a dismal gas jet flickered yellow light. 
As Lincoln lay dying, Secretary of War Stanton said, “There lies the most perfect ruler of men that the 
world has ever seen.” 
What was the secret of Lincoln’s success in dealing with people? I studied the life of Abraham Lincoln 
for ten years and devoted all of three years to writing and rewriting a book entitled 
Lincoln the Unknown. 
I 
believe I have made as detailed and exhaustive a study of Lincoln’s personality and home life as it is possible 
for any being to make. I made a special study of Lincoln’s method of dealing with people. Did he indulge in 
criticism? Oh, yes. As a young man in the Pigeon Creek Valley of Indiana, he not only criticized but he wrote 
letters and poems ridiculing people and dropped these letters on the country roads where they were sure to be 
found. One of these letters aroused resentments that burned for a lifetime. 
Even after Lincoln had become a practicing lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, he attacked his opponents 
openly in letters published in the newspapers. But he did this just once too often. 
In the autumn of 1842 he ridiculed a vain, pugnacious politician by the name of James Shields. Lincoln 
lambasted him through an anonymous letter published in Springfield 
Journal
. The town roared with laughter. 
Shields, sensitive and proud, boiled with indignation. He found out who wrote the letter, leaped on his horse, 
started after Lincoln, and challenged him to fight a duel. Lincoln didn’t want to fight. He was opposed to 
dueling, but he couldn’t get out of it and save his honor. He was given the choice of weapons. Since he had very 
long arms, he chose cavalry broadswords and took lessons in sword fighting from a West Point graduate; and, 
on the appointed day, he and Shields met on a sandbar in the Mississippi River, prepared to fight to the death; 
but, at the last minute, their seconds interrupted and stopped the duel. 
That was the most lurid personal incident in Lincoln’s life. It taught him an invaluable lesson in the art 
of dealing with people. Never again did he write an insulting letter. Never again did he ridicule anyone. And 
from that time on, he almost never criticized anybody for anything. 
Time after time, during the Civil War, Lincoln put a new general at the head of the Army of the 
Potomac, and each one in turn—McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, Meade—blundered tragically and drove 
Lincoln to pacing the floor in despair. Half the nation savagely condemned these incompetent generals, but 
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Lincoln, “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” held his peace. One of his favorite quotations was 
“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” 
And when Mrs. Lincoln and others spoke harshly of the southern people, Lincoln replied, “Don’t 
criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.” 
Yet if any man ever had occasion to criticize, surely it was Lincoln. Let’s take just one illustration: 
The Battle of Gettysburg was fought during the first three days of July 1863. During the night of July 4, 
Lee began to retreat southward while storm clouds deluged the country with rain. When Lee reached the 
Potomac with his defeated army, he found a swollen, impassable river in front of him, and a victorious Union 
Army behind him. Lee was in a trap. He couldn’t escape. Lincoln saw that. Here was a golden, heaven-sent 
opportunity—the opportunity to capture Lee’s army and end the war immediately. So, with a surge of high 
hope, Lincoln ordered Meade not to call a council of war but to attack Lee immediately. Lincoln telegraphed his 
orders and then sent a special messenger to Meade demanding immediate action. 
And what did General Meade do? He did the very opposite of what he was told to do. He called a 
council of war in direct violation of Lincoln’s orders. He hesitated. He procrastinated. He telegraphed all 
manner of excuses. He refused point-blank to attack Lee. Finally the waters receded and Lee escaped over the 
Potomac with his forces. 
Lincoln was furious, “ What does this mean?” Lincoln cried to his son Robert. “Great God! What does 
this mean? We had them within our grasp, and had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours; yet 
nothing that I could say or do could make the army move. Under the circumstances, almost any general could 
have defeated Lee. If I had gone up there, I could have whipped him myself.” 
In bitter disappointment, Lincoln sat down and wrote Meade this letter. And remember, at this period 
of his life Lincoln was extremely conservative and restrained in his phraseology. So this letter coming from 
Lincoln in 1863 was tantamount to the severest rebuke. 
“My dear General, 
I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was 
within our easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have 
ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not safely attack Lee last Monday, 
how can you possibly do so south of the river, when you can take with you very few—no more than two-thirds 
of the force you then had in hand? It would be unreasonable to expect and I do not expect that you can now 
effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.” 
What do you suppose Meade did when he read the letter? 
Meade never saw that letter. Lincoln never mailed it. It was found among his papers after his death. 
My guess is—and this is only a guess—that after writing that letter, Lincoln looked out of the window 
and said to himself, “Just a minute. Maybe I ought not to be so hasty. It is easy enough for me to sit here in the 
quiet of the White House and order Meade to attack; but if I had been up at Gettysburg, and if I had seen as 
much blood as Meade has seen during the last week, and if my ears had been pierced with the screams and 
shrieks of the wounded and dying, maybe I wouldn’t be so anxious to attack either. If I had Meade’s timid 
temperament, perhaps I would have done just what he had done. Anyhow, it is water under the bridge now. If I 
send this letter, it will relieve my feelings, but it will make Meade try to justify himself. It will make him 
condemn me. It will arouse hard feelings, impair all his further usefulness as a commander, and perhaps force 
him to resign from the army.” 
So, as I have already said, Lincoln put the letter aside, for he had learned by bitter experience that sharp 
criticisms and rebukes almost invariably end in futility. 
Theodore Roosevelt said that when he, as President, was confronted with a perplexing problem, he 
used to lean back and look up at a large painting of Lincoln which hung above his desk in the White House and 
ask himself, “What would Lincoln do if he were in my shoes? How would he solve this problem?” 
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The next time we are tempted to admonish somebody, let’s pull a five-dollar bill out of our pocket, 
look at Lincoln’s picture on the bill, and ask. “How would Lincoln handle this problem if he had it?” 
Mark Twain lost his temper occasionally and wrote letters that turned the Paper brown. For example, 
he once wrote to a man who had aroused his ire: “The thing for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak 
and I will see that you get it.” On another occasion he wrote to an editor about a proofreader’s attempts to 
“improve my spelling and punctuation.” He ordered, “Set the matter according to my copy hereafter and see that 
the proofreader retains his suggestions in the mush of his decayed brain.” 
The writing of these stinging letters made Mark Twain feel better. They allowed him to blow off steam, 
and the letters didn’t do any real harm, because Mark’s wife secretly lifted them out of the mail. They were 
never sent. 
Do you know someone you would like to change and regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am 
all in favor of it, but why not begin on yourself? From a purely selfish standpoint, that is a lot more profitable 
than trying to improve others—yes, and a lot less dangerous. “Don’t complain about the snow on your 
neighbor’s roof,” said Confucius, “when your own doorstep is unclean.” 
When I was still young and trying hard to impress people, I wrote a foolish letter to Richard Harding 
Davis, an author who once loomed large on the literary horizon of America. I was preparing a magazine article 
about authors, and I asked Davis to tell me about his method of work. A few weeks earlier, I had received a 
letter from someone with this notation at the bottom: “Dictated but not read.” I was quite impressed. I felt that 
the writer must be very big and busy and important. I wasn’t the slightest bit busy, but I was eager to make an 
impression on Richard Harding Davis, so I ended my short note with the words: “Dictated but not read.” 
He never troubled to answer the letter. He simply returned it to me with this scribbled across the 
bottom: “Your bad manners are exceeded only by your bad manners.” True, I had blundered, and perhaps I 
deserved this rebuke. But, being human, I resented it. I resented it so sharply that when I read of the death of 
Richard Harding Davis ten years later, the one thought that still persisted in my mind—I am ashamed to admit—
was the hurt he had given me. 
If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until 
death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism, no matter how certain we are that it is justified. 
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing 
with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity. 
Bitter criticism caused the sensitive Thomas Hardy, one of the finest novelists ever to enrich English 
literature, to give up forever the writing of fiction. Criticism drove Thomas Chatterton, the English poet, to 
suicide. 
Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he 
was made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? “I will speak ill of no man,” he said, "and 
speak all the good I know of everybody.” 
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do. 
But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. 
“A great man shows his greatness,” said Carlyle, “by the way he treats little men.” 
Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows, was returning to his home in Los 
Angeles from an air show in San Diego. As described in the magazine