Uncategorized
Dale Carnegie
HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN AND WHY
One spring day, some years ago, I was breakfasting in the Hotel Dysart, London; and, as usual, I was trying to winnow a bit of American news from the columns of the “Morning Post.” Ordinarily I found none, but on that fortunate morning I made a strike rich and unexpected.
The late T. P. O’Connor, reputed “Father of the House of Commons,” conducted in those days a column in the “Morning Post” entitled “Men and Memories.” On that particular morning, and for several mornings following, “Tay Pay’s” column was devoted to Abraham Lincoln not to his political activi- ties but to the personal side of his career: to his sorrows, his repeated failures, his poverty, his great love for Ann Rutledge, and his tragic marriage to Mary Todd. I read the series with profound interest-and surprise. I had spent the first twenty years of my life in the Middle West, not far from the Lincoln country; and, in addition to that, I had always been keenly interested in United States history. I should have said that of course I knew Lincoln’s life-story; but I soon discovered that I didn’t. The fact is that I, an American, had had to come to London and read a series of articles written by an Irishman, in an English newspaper, before I realized that the story of Lincoln’s career was one of the most fascinating tales in all the annals of mankind.
Was this lamentable ignorance peculiar to me? I wondered. But I didn’t wonder long, for I soon discussed the subject with a number of my fellow-countrymen, and I discovered that they were in the same boat, that about all they knew about Lincoln was this: that he had been born in a log cabin, had walked miles to borrow books and then read them at night, stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace; that he split rails, be- came a lawyer, told funny stories, said that a man’s legs ought to be long enough to reach the ground, was called “Honest Abe,” debated with Judge Douglas, was elected President of the United States, wore a silk hat, freed the slaves, spoke at Gettysburg, declared that he wished he knew what brand of whisky Grant drank so he could send a barrel of it to his other generals, and was shot by Booth in a theater in Washington.
Aroused by these articles in the “Morning Post,”I went over to the British Museum library and read a number of Lincoln books; and the more I read, the more fascinated I became. Finally I caught on fire and I determined to write a book about Lincoln, myself. I knew that I had not the urge, temperament, training, or ability necessary to produce a learned treatise for the benefit of scholars and historians. Besides, I felt there was little need for another book of that kind, for many excellent ones are already in existence. However, after reading many Lincoln volumes, I did feel that there was a genuine need for a short biography that would tell the most interesting facts about his career briefly and tersely for the average busy and hurried citizen of today. I have tried to write such a book.
I began the work in Europe, and labored over it for a year there and then for two years in New York. Finally I tore up all that I had written and tossed it into the wastebasket. I then went out to Illinois, to write of Lincoln on the very ground where he himself had dreamed and toiled. For months I lived among people whose fathers had helped Lincoln survey land and build fences and drive hogs to market. For months I delved among old books and letters and speeches and half-forgotten newspapers and musty court records, trying to understand Lincoln. I spent one summer in the little town of Petersburg. I went there because it is only a mile away from the restored village of New Salem, where Lincoln spent the happiest and most formative years of his life. There he ran a mill and a grocery store, studied law, worked as a blacksmith, refereed cock-fights and horse-races, fell in love, and had his heart broken. Even in the heydey of its glory New Salem never had more than a hundred inhabitants, and its entire existence covered a span of about ten years. Shortly after Lincoln left the village it was abandoned; bats and swallows nested in the decaying cabins, and for more than half a century cows grazed over the spot. A few years ago, however, the State of Illinois secured the site, made it a public park, and built replicas of the log cabins that had stood there a hundred years before. So today the deserted village of New Salem looks much as it did in Lincoln’s tims. The same white oaks under which Lincoln studied and wrestled and made love are still standing. Every morning I used to take my typewriter and motor up there from Petersburg, and half of the chapters of this book were written under those trees. What a lovely spot in which to work! In front of me flowed the winding Sangamon, and all about me the woods and the hay-fields were musical with the call of the bob-white; and through the trees flashed the color of the blue jay, the yellowhammer, and the redbird. I felt Lincoln there. I often used to go there alone on summer nights when the whip-poor-wills were crying in the woods along the banks of the Sangamon, when the moonlight outlined Rutledge’s tavern against the sky; and it stirred me to realize that on just such nights, about a hundred years ago, young Abe Lincoln and Ann Rutledge had walked over this same ground arm in arm in the moonlight, listening to the night-birds and dreaming ec- static dreams that were destined never to come true. Yet I am convinced that Lincoln found here at New Salem the only su- preme happiness that he ever knew. When I came to write the chapter dealing with the death of Lincoln’s sweetheart, I put a little folding table and a typewriter in a car and drove out over country roads and through a hog lot and a cow pasture until I reached the quiet, secluded spot where Ann Rutledge lies buried. It is utterly abandoned now, and overgrown. To get near her grave, it was necessary to mow down the weeds and brush and vines. And there, where Lincoln came to weep, was set down the story of his grief. Many of the chapters were written in Springfield. Some in the sitting-room of the old home where Lincoln lived for sixteen unhappy years, some at the desk where he composed his first inaugural address, and others above the spot where he came to court and quarrel with Mary Todd.
By Dale Carnegie，“Lincoln, the Unknown”
This book truly is a testament to old-style writing, hard work, exceptional research, and a smooth writing style. While some might find the book too short, lacking in detail, or difficult to read because of the 1930’s writing, you will find the book enrapturing, well-researched, interesting, and a quick, enthralling read. Dale Carnegie knew his facts nearly impeccably, and he wrote a very informative story. For anyone interested in the life of Abraham Lincoln, this will provide you with an excellent sketch of most of the main details of his life, in an easy-to-read manner.
Copyright 1932
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adorers
Dale Carnegie
Emil Ludwig
Carl Sandburg
Benjamin P. Thomas
David Herbert Donald
Brian R. Dirck
Thomas Keneally
“If They Do Kill Me I Shall Never Die Again”
Before removing to the turmoil of Washington, Lincoln is drawn to the quiet places of his early youth. He rides about in that old country, meets the surviving members of the Hanks and Johnston families, orders the neglected grave of his father to be cared for.They laugh when they see him, recalling his funny stories; the graybeards remember the stalwart young fellow who drove oxen. Only his good stepmother is silent and at parting seems to have warned him of his enemies. Also old Hannah Armstrong. He reassured her with a jest, “Hannah, if they do kill me I shall never die again.”
Ludwig-244-06
“His Prevailing Mood Is One Of Depression”
He spends ten days on this journey through the Northern States, for everywhere people wish to see him and to listen to him. A good many are disappointed, for his prevailing mood is one of depression, but sometimes he amazes adversaries whom curiosity has brought to his meetings. On the whole, he is pale and sad throughout this journey, and only cheers up when Hill plays the banjo and sings coon songs to him. He feels, as a great many others doubtless feel, that torchlight processions and serenades are out of keeping with the conditions of the time. He has, moreover, to be extremely careful in what he says ; and sometimes, after preparing a speech, he has to modify it at the last moment because of telegraphic news from Alabama, where the Southerners are holding a congress at this very moment. That is why the speeches made during this journey are so unequal. Nevertheless, they are one and all adorned by the way in which they are addressed to the heart of the people, and by their conciliatory tone.
By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul” , Ludwig-244-19
Words : Generous
Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron
To the Senate and House of Representatives
May 26, 1862
“Cameron Gratefully Remembered”
By John G. Nicolay and John Hay
“I have never Served a President”
By John G. Nicolay and John Hay, July 24, 1861
Lincoln and Mary Lincoln
“He Bore it as Christ Might have Done”
By Adam Badeau，March 26, 1865
“Do Good To Them Who Hate You”
By Mary Lincoln
“He Offered the Hand of Friendship to those”
By Carl Schurz , November 10, 1864
“He Took Them All With The Utmost Innocence And Good-nature”
1849
McClellan
“Lincoln Tolerated Such Flagrant Breaches Of Protocol”
1861
“Not To Be Making Points Of Etiquette Personal Dignity”
November 13, 1861
“He Defends McClellan Against The Supervision”
“Lincoln Took Upon Himself The Whole Blame”
April 5, 1861. Welles diary, Vol. I (1960 edn.), pp. 23–25.
“Lincoln, Once More, Assumed The Blame”
Gustavus V. Fox ，May 1, 1861
“Lincoln Had Stood By Him”
Blairs，1864
“In This Matter Lincoln Is Too Easy-going”
John C. Fremont September 2, 1861
“Despite A Blizzard Of Such Indictments”
July 29, 1861
“Are Not These Criticisms Already Acrimonious Enough”
1861
Letter to James Hackett (November 2, 1863)
November 2, 1863
“Patient Tolerance”
Portrait painter Albert Jasper Conant，August 1860
“He Was Constantly Out With The Common People”
“A Breeze Had Sprung Up Over The Domestic Sea”
Mary Lincoln
“I Have Had As My Daily Portion”
“Keep Up Your Courage”
“What Did Mrs. Lincoln Say”
“Always Criticizing Her Husband”
Magnanimity
“If He Could Do So ‘unbeknown’ to Him”
By William T. Sherman, March 28, 1865
“Let them Have their Horses to Plow With”
By David D. Porter, March 28, 1865
“Leave them their Guns to Shoot Crows With”
By David D. Porter, April 5, 1865
“Tell the Folks He Got Away from me”
By William Henry Crook, April 10, 1865
“He Shook his Hands as if Scaring Sheep”
By Gideon Welles, April 14, 1865
“It’s Best to Let him Run”
By Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, April 14, 1865
“Enemies! We Must Never Speak of that”
By Marquis de Chambrun, April 9, 1865
“I Insisted Yesterday that We Fairly Captured it”
By Marquis de Chambrun, By William Henry Crook, April 10, 1865
“Spoke Very Kindly of General Lee and Others”
By Edwin M. Stanton , April 14, 1865
“There Was No Hatred in Lincoln’s Heart”
By Dale Carnegie
“Do Good To Them Who Hate You”
By Mary Lincoln
Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton
“He is the Rock on the Beach of Our National Ocean”
By George W. Julian, By Owen Lovejoy
“If Stanton Said I was a Damned Fool”
By George W. Julian, By Owen Lovejoy
“Act From a Favorite Child”
By Leonard Grover
Lincoln Appointed Stanton as Secretary of War
By George F. Harding, January 13, 1862
Lincoln and Secretary of Treasury Salmon P. Chase
By Henry Wilson, By John G. Nicolay, By John Hay, December 1864
“I Would Not Hesitate a Moment”
By Noah Brooks, December 1864
“I Know Meaner Things About Governor Chase”
By John B. Alley, December 1864
“I Should Have Been Recreant to My Convictions of Duty”
By Augustus Frank, By Francis B. Carpenter, December 1864
“I Should Despise Myself”
By Gideon Welles,By Zachariah T. Chandler, December 1864
“Would Rather Have Swallowed His Buckhorn Chair”
Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward
By John G. Nicolay, April 1, 1861
“Mr. Lincoln’s unselfish magnanimity”
Lincoln and Secretary of War Simon Cameron
May 26, 1862
To the Senate and House of Representatives
By John G. Nicolay and John Hay
“Cameron Gratefully Remembered”
“I have never Served a President”
By John G. Nicolay and John Hay, July 24, 1861
Lincoln and Mary Lincoln
“He Bore it as Christ Might have Done”
By Adam Badeau，March 26, 1865
“Especially If it be a Black Sheep”
Address at Sanitary Fair, Baltimore, Maryland
April 18, 1864
Ladies and Gentlemen—Calling to mind that we are in Baltimore, we can not fail to note that the world moves. Looking upon these many people, assembled here, to serve, as they best may, the soldiers of the Union, it occurs at once that three years ago, the same soldiers could not so much as pass through Baltimore. The change from then till now, is both great, and gratifying. Blessings on the brave men who have wrought the change, and the fair women who strive to reward them for it.
But Baltimore suggests more than could happen within Baltimore. The change within Baltimore is part only of a far wider change. When the war began, three years ago, neither party, nor any man, expected it would last till now. Each looked for the end, in some way, long ere to-day. Neither did any anticipate that domestic slavery would be much affected by the war. But here we are; the war has not ended, and slavery has been much affected—how much needs not now to be recounted. So true is it that man proposes, and God disposes.
But we can see the past, though we may not claim to have directed it; and seeing it, in this case, we feel more hopeful and confident for the future.
The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names—liberty and tyranny.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated.
It is not very becoming for one in my position to make speeches at great length; but there is another subject upon which I feel that I ought to say a word. A painful rumor, true I fear, has reached us of the massacre, by the rebel forces, at Fort Pillow, in the West end of Tennessee, on the Mississippi river, of some three hundred colored soldiers and white officers, who had just been overpowered by their assailants. There seems to be some anxiety in the public mind whether the government is doing it’s duty to the colored soldier, and to the service, at this point. At the beginning of the war, and for some time, the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought, I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the christian world, to history, and on my final account to God. Having determined to use the negro as a soldier, there is no way but to give him all the protection given to any other soldier. The difficulty is not in stating the principle, but in practically applying it. It is a mistake to suppose the government is indiffe[re]nt to this matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it. We do not to-day know that a colored soldier, or white officer commanding colored soldiers, has been massacred by the rebels when made a prisoner. We fear it, believe it, I may say, but we do not know it. To take the life of one of their prisoners, on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel a mistake. We are having the Fort-Pillow affair thoroughly investigated; and such investigation will probably show conclusively how the truth is. If, after all that has been said, it shall turn out that there has been no massacre at Fort-Pillow, it will be almost safe to say there has been none, and will be none elsewhere. If there has been the massacre of three hundred there, or even the tenth part of three hundred, it will be conclusively proved; and being so proved, the retribution shall as surely come. It will be matter of grave consideration in what exact course to apply the retribution; but in the supposed case, it must come.
–Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 7.
Living though he was under the pressure of daily cares, of petty successes and failures, in the midst of party struggles, earthbound, he never lost sight of the guiding star of his endeavor, but, directing his gaze more and more fervently upward, realized the need, among concrete figures and positions, for stressing ever more insistently the moral law of the struggle.
In a speech delivered toward the close of the war, he said : “The world is in want of a good definition of the word liberty. We all declare ourselves to be for liberty, but we do not all mean the same thing. Some mean that a man can do as he pleases with himself and his property. With others it means that some men can do as they please with other men and other men’s labor. Each of these things is called liberty, although they are entirely different. To give an illustration : A shepherd drives the wolf from the throat of his sheep when attacked by him, and the sheep of course thanks the shepherd for the protection of his life; but the wolf denounces him as despoiling the sheep of his liberty — especially if it be a black sheep.”
Here, once more, we have one of those images in which the farmer becomes a logician, while the statesman enters into the outlook of the farmer, and thus is able to create immemorable parables for the people.
By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul” , Ludwig-390-02 1864-04-18
“There’s One Of My Children That Isn’t Dead Yet”
Again, when he is in a condition of tense anxiety because Burn- side has been hemmed in, has been unable to send news for a long time, and may have had to surrender, there comes a telegram saying that gunfire has been heard from the direction of Knoxville. “Glad of it,” says Lincoln. “It reminds me of Mrs. Sally Ward, a neighbor of mine. She had a very large family. Occasionally one of her very numerous progeny would be heard crying in some out-of-the-way place, and she would exclaim, ‘ There’s one of my children that isn’t dead yet ‘ ”
Ludwig-416-09
“Lincoln Was In Every Respect Moderate”
But Lincoln was in every respect moderate, whereas in one point Grant was the reverse. By his inclination, from time to time, to put his reserved and comparatively passive nature under the influ- ence of liquor, he showed that his character was not so well balanced as Lincoln’s, and he thus ruined his youth, while later this weakness postponed the public recognition of his successes. In Lincoln, who much excelled Grant in culture, force of mind, and philosophical grasp, the excess of unutilized energies manifested itself as spiritual preeminence, which brought him forth out of obscurity, and enforced recognition. For Lincoln, too, imagination, which Grant lacked, provided an infallible key to the understanding of his fellows, and became a guiding force. That was why, while Grant was only able to get into touch with Lincoln through personal contact, Lincoln was able to discern Grant’s abilities from afar, and, in the decisive year now beginning, to single him out from among all the other generals. Had it not been for Lincoln’s powers of imagination and judgment, Grant would never have gone forward to victory, and would never have become a popular hero.
By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul” ,Ludwig-373-14
“With Him Justice And Truth Were Paramount”
With him justice and truth were paramount. If to him a thing seemed untrue he could not in his nature simulate truth. His retention by a man to defend a lawsuit did not prevent him from throwing it up in its most critical stage if he believed he was espousing an unjust cause. This extreme conscientiousness and disregard of the alleged sacredness of the professional cloak robbed him of much so-called success at the bar. He once wrote to one of our clients: “I do not think there is the least use of doing anything more with your lawsuit. I not only do not think you are sure to gain it, but I do think you are sure to lose it. Therefore the sooner it ends the better.”*
* Letter to H. Keeling, Esq., March 3, 1858, MS. By William H. Herndon，Jesse W. Weik “Herndon’s Lincoln: A True Story of a Great Life” , Herndon-295-181-10-35
“I have not a Single Nail on which to Hang your Claim”
In the simplest and most natural way in the world, there are fused in his character the lineaments of the poet with those of the righteous man, and those of the logician with those of the moralist. Lincoln would have been an ideal judge. In the end, he became judge for the nation. The result of his peculiarities was, as all his colleagues declare, that he made a very poor advocate when, during the course of the proceedings, he came to feel that his client was in the wrong. Should he be sure of this when first approached, he would refuse to undertake the case. A lady sent him a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, asking him to act for her. He returned it with the remark: “I have not a single nail on which to hang your claim.”
By Emil Ludwig,”Abraham Lincoln: And the Times that Tried His Soul” Ludwig-131-10