“A patient man will eat ripe fruit.” – African proverb

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

14 April

A few decades after the Civil War Secretary of State Eliju Root gave the following astute assessment of Lincoln’s contribution to the United States. Lincoln, he wrote, "won by infinite patience and sagacity. During those terrible years of the Rebellion he was not disturbing himself about what principles he ought to maintain or what end he ought to seek. He was struggling with the weaknesses and perversities of human nature at home. He was smoothing away obstacles and converting enemies and strengthening friends, and bending all possible motives and desires and prejudices into the direction of his steady purpose. Many people thought, while he was doing this, that he was trifling, that he was yielding where he ought to have been splendidly courageous and peremptory. He understood as they did not how to bend his material without breaking it; he understood as they did not how many a jest bridged over a difficult situation, and made it possible to avoid a quarrel injurious to the Union cause."