Monday, May 23, 2011

Abraham Lincoln & Leadership 101

Few leaders had as boundless a capacity to look past personal slights as Abraham Lincoln. In 1855 during the high-profile McCormick-Manny patent infringement case, Lincoln was co-council to the then-famous Edwin Stanton. He got the nod because it was felt that since the case was to be held in what was known as “the West,” a local, and successful trial lawyer from that region might prove useful. However, when Lincoln appeared in Cincinnati at the start of proceedings he was snubbed by Stanton who said he would not work with “such a damned, gawky, long-armed ape as that.”
Seven years later when Lincoln had become President he had to choose a new Secretary of War and went for Stanton – who hadn’t changed a bit: he had even taken to describing the President as “the original gorilla” – [Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species had been published three years earlier]. Lincoln knew what Stanton thought of him, of course, but none of that mattered - holding grudges, he said, just didn’t pay. Besides, Stanton was a Union man through and through, he was a wizard as an administrator, and a prodigious worker. With time the appointment proved to be a stroke of genius. In addition, Lincoln, a Republican, solidified bi-partisan support for the war effort in appointing Stanton, a Democrat, to such a crucial cabinet post.


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