“He was so Simple, so Child-like, so Sincere”
He was so simple, so child-like, so sincere, that it seemed to me that that was the chief reason why he was so little appreciated during his Presidency by his compeers in public life. He exhibited a degree of wisdom and firmness of purpose, a sagacity and soundness of judgment absolutely without parallel among the statesmen of his day ; while his toleration of difference of opinion, his sagacity in harmonizing discordant elements and his politic treatment of envious and ambitious rivals, exceeded anything I have ever seen in any other of our statesmen. In illustration of this I may say, that he had in his Cabinet several rivals in whose judgment or fitness he had but little confidence. Yet he managed to make them and the country believe that he was on the most excellent terms with each and all of them.
Quoted in John B. Alley, in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Rice (1886 edn.), pp. 576.