In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.
The unique political genius of Abraham Lincoln was to navigate carefully and at times conservatively between abolition and the Southern cause until he knew the time was right for radical justice.
The World Trade Center attack wasn’t the first time New York was brutally assaulted — 225 years before, George Washington watched the city burn from his headquarters in northern Manhattan after painful military defeats.
Fierce debate among early political factions led to many allegations of misdeeds and abuse of power in Washington's administration, but there was no serious misconduct.
Abraham Lincoln learned much of what made him a great president — honesty, sincerity, toughness, and humility — from his early reading and from studying the lives of Washington and Franklin.