Abraham Lincoln would have been 208 years old today. The 16th president is seen by many as probably one of this nation’s greatest presidents. What made him remarkable was his empathy. In all his biographies, it seems to be the running theme.
In a piece for Time magazine, the historian and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote:
“Perhaps the most important of his emotional abilities was empathy–the gift of putting himself in the place of others, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.”
In 1916, Lord Charnwood, a British aristocrat and admirer of Abraham Lincoln published a bio of the great leader. Among other things, he wrote this about Lincoln:
“For perhaps not many conquerors, and certainly few successful statesmen, have escaped the tendency of power to harden or at least to narrow their human sympathies; but in this man a natural wealth of tender compassion became richer and more tender while in the stress of deadly conflict he developed an astounding strength.”
In his day, he recognized the evil of slavery, yet sought to understand the position of the slaveholder. He mourned the loss of his soldiers and gave speeches that comforted a nation at war.
His empathy is often attributed to his bouts of depression and the losses he suffered – the loss of his mum when he was 9, the loss of his first sweetheart, the 22-year-old Ann Rutledge when he was 24 and the loss of his 11-year-old son Willie when he was 53.
As a young man in Illinois, he often had to write letters for people in the community who couldn’t write. Hearing the stories of these people may also have helped him developed the ability to walk in others’ shoes.
Nowhere is this empathy more demonstrated than the letter he wrote to the daughter of his friend, William McCullough, who was killed during a night charge near Coffeeville, Mississippi during the civil war.
Below is the letter he wrote to the then 22 year-old Fanny McCullough who was near a nervous breakdown after hearing of her father’s death. Remember Lincoln had lost his own son 10 months earlier:
Executive Mansion,
Washington, December 23, 1862.
Dear Fanny
It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend
A. Lincoln
Fanny found inspiration in that letter and went on with her life. She fell in love with a soldier who unfortunately, died in action too. She held up though and finally married, dying at the age of 80. That letter from Lincoln was found among her possessions.
On this day like every other day, I pray this country would be touched by the Spirit of Empathy that possessed our 16th president and made him such a tower of humanity.