mutual admiration society
Earlier, I wrote about Seward, and how early in Lincoln’s presidency he thought he was the real leader in Lincoln’s administration. He had been a popular politician almost his whole life, he was a very intelligent man, and he had a healthy ego — he thought he had deserved the presidency and initially had a very low opinion of Lincoln and it showed. But Lincoln saw the intelligence and so wanted him around for the good advice he could give. And Lincoln was genius enough to be able to deal with the ego and keep him around, and Seward shone. Not as much as Lincoln, of course, but he shone.
Lincoln spent a lot of time with Seward, enough time to get Mary jealous of the time her husband spent away from her. Seward was Lincoln’s main confidant and advisor, but in the end he was the first to say that Lincoln was the one who drove the decisions. He ended up being satisfied in the trusted advisor/second fiddle position (I think) because he admired Lincoln so much. And my guess is that Lincoln probably wouldn’t have been as great as he was if he didn’t have Seward right next to him helping him consider the difficult questions. Seward was indispensible.
Chase, on the other hand, thought that he could only be a great man if he put Lincoln down. The last year of his tenure as secretary of the treasury, he spent an inordinate amount of time telling his supporters how terrible Lincoln was doing, the bad decisions he was making, etc. In the end it was his undoing since everyone could see Lincoln was doing a superb job and it just made Chase look petty. Lincoln appreciated Chase’s treasury abilities and never ever put Chase down [publicly or otherwise], even when he was aware of Chase’s machinations.
The point of this is not hard to see - admiring others [even those who don’t admire you] does not detract from one’s own greatness, and in fact the opposite is true. But application is harder than observation, and once more, Lincoln thought about the best way to proceed and applied it, and that is what made him a great man.
Posted by Marie on February 11th, 2007 under Uncategorized
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