There are three things that makes me worship Abraham Lincoln.
One, the fact that he was self taught and used to study & read books in street light!
Two, persistence personfied. Most than ten electoral failures before he became the President.
and Three, the perfect Letter to Mrs. Bixby!
Yeah, I know there are claims that his secretary wrote it but my feeling is that Lincoln had the calibre anyway.
[In the fall of 1864, Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew wrote to President Lincoln asking him to express condolences to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow who was believed to have lost five sons during the Civil War. Lincoln's letter to her was printed by the Boston Evening Transcript.]
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,--
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
One is petrified by the enormity of the task before Mr. Lincoln here.Imagine you are asked to represent the state and console somebody who has lost everything. All her children. And to do it without overdoing it, without losing your self esteem but with all the sensitivity you can muster.
Ah! I am stunned by the beauty and brevity of the it.
I wish .. I only wish.. that I could write something even remotely similar in my lifetime.
One, the fact that he was self taught and used to study & read books in street light!
Two, persistence personfied. Most than ten electoral failures before he became the President.
and Three, the perfect Letter to Mrs. Bixby!
Yeah, I know there are claims that his secretary wrote it but my feeling is that Lincoln had the calibre anyway.
[In the fall of 1864, Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew wrote to President Lincoln asking him to express condolences to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a widow who was believed to have lost five sons during the Civil War. Lincoln's letter to her was printed by the Boston Evening Transcript.]
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,--
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln
One is petrified by the enormity of the task before Mr. Lincoln here.Imagine you are asked to represent the state and console somebody who has lost everything. All her children. And to do it without overdoing it, without losing your self esteem but with all the sensitivity you can muster.
Ah! I am stunned by the beauty and brevity of the it.
I wish .. I only wish.. that I could write something even remotely similar in my lifetime.
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