Here's Talmage and his wife Claire with Pulitzer Prize winning historian James McPherson on Feb. 12, 2009, the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. Talmage introduced Dr. McPherson at an event that day in Dallas commemorating the special occasion.In this bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, most Americans know that he grew up in a log cabin, had little formal education, was honest, trained himself to become a lawyer and lost many elections before becoming president. We know that he gave eloquent speeches, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, managed the Civil War to a successful conclusion for the Union and was assassinated shortly after the war ended.
These are the bones of Lincoln’s life.
Those seeking to identify exactly what it was that led to this man’s exalted status, so as to be able to plug in Lincoln’s experience to today’s challenges, naturally ask, “What exactly is the meat on these bones that made him the greatest president in American history?”
Pulitzer Prize winning Civil War historian James McPherson addresses this question in his book, “Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief” (Penguin 2008), and on Feb. 12 will come to Dallas and provide the answer in person for Lincoln’s 200th birthday party luncheon to be held at the Crescent Court Hotel.
McPherson’s book identifies the following characteristics that allowed our 16th commander-in-chief to preserve the United States and eliminate slavery, presumably in hopes that the information will be useful to our newly inaugurated president and anyone else holding a leadership position:
• Do not delegate critical thinking and decision-making to subordinates, even if they are specialists in a particular field. As president, Lincoln exhaustively schooled himself on military strategy so as to be in a position to direct the Union army, often in contravention of his underachieving West Point-educated military leaders. McPherson confirms the adage, “War is too important to be left to generals.”
• Never lose sight of the big picture. Upon taking office, Lincoln saw his ultimate constitutional responsibility to be restoring the Union, doing what it took to bring back into the fold the southern states that had seceded, and making sure no additional states joined them. To keep the border states in tow, on occasion that required having insurrectionists arrested who were striving for the secession result, and then suspending their constitutionally guaranteed right to the writ of habeas corpus. “I will amputate a limb to save a life. ... A part can’t control the whole to the destruction of the whole.”
• In addressing the enemy on disputed points, be nonnegotiable and willing to fight for key principles. Certainly, the Civil War could have ended quicker if Lincoln had been willing to negotiate a peace that allowed the South to remain an independent nation. And after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation at the war’s midpoint, he could have achieved a more expedited resolution if he had compromised on the issue of slavery. He told Congress in 1864, the Confederacy “can not voluntarily reaccept the Union; we can not voluntarily yield it. Between them and us the issue is distinct, simple and inflexible, and can only be tried by war and decided by victory.” With that uncompromising approach, after winning the war, Lincoln achieved full restoration of the Union and the total elimination of slavery in the terms of the South’s surrender.
• Never lose sight of political realities. Though Lincoln was privately opposed to the institution of slavery in the 1850’s, had he campaigned as an abolitionist during his 1860 campaign, he would not have been elected president. And had he sought to eliminate it in the war’s early years, the border states would have surely seceded and joined the Confederacy. He led the movement to end slavery only when he could present emancipation to his electorate as the best means for achieving a prompt and final means of winning the despised war because it gave his army a greater sense of purpose and allowed former slaves to join his troops at a time when mass reinforcements were needed.
Now, with these timeless meaty leadership lessons in the front of our brains, may we stop on Feb. 12 and join McPherson for lunch (go to www.dfwworld.org for details) in honoring the man who, says McPherson, “more than any other American, gave all people everywhere, reason to remember that he lived.”
Leave a comment