A Special Day

From Exeter, N.H., during the 1860 campaign, Abraham Lincoln wrote in exasperation at the rigors of an Eastern speaking tour: “If I had foreseen it, I think I would not have come east at all.” Candidates in New Hampshire today might sympathize. But Lincoln persevered, and a nation survived.

Lincoln was homey, homely, vilified and mocked --even by his friends--as not presidential enough. His nomination was a matter of political strategy and “not for his transcendent merits, which no one yet suspected,” wrote historians Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenburg. Lincoln won in 1860 against a Democratic Party bitterly divided over slavery.

The nation now celebrates a generic Presidents’ Day, but Lincoln deserves a special remembrance on his own birthday, Feb. 12. One of his great, underestimated strengths was his patience and sense of timing. As he said so simply in his first inaugural address: “My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well , upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.”