21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence (40 page)

“I am grateful, Mr. Lincoln!” Private Scott said. “If there is some way to pay you, I will find it!”

The president said, “My boy, my bill is a very large one. There is only one way to pay this debt. If from this day William Scott does his duty as a soldier, then the debt be paid. Will you make that promise and try to keep it?”

Private Scott gave his word. Then he rejoined his comrades.

Sometime later, Private William Scott was seriously wounded in battle. He didn’t know if he would survive or not. He asked his friends to get word to President Lincoln: Private William Scott remembered his promise and he tried to be a good soldier. He was grateful to President Lincoln for the chance to fall in battle like a soldier instead of dying in front of a firing squad.

Lincoln spared many young soldiers from the firing squad. His generals protested that these acts of executive clemency interfered with army discipline. But Lincoln looked at each case individually, and historians have concluded that his instincts were almost always right.

During one week, twenty-four deserters were sentenced to death, and their death warrants were sent to the president for his signature. Lincoln refused to sign them. A general met personally with President Lincoln and said, “Mr. President, unless these men are made an example of, the army itself is in danger. Mercy to the few is cruelty to the many.”

“General,” Lincoln said, “there are already too many weeping widows in the United States. Don’t ask me to add to the number, for I won’t do it.”
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President Lincoln was also a servant to children. Whenever children came to the White House, Lincoln was delighted, and he always made them feel welcome.

During a Saturday afternoon reception at the White House, three young girls wandered in. They were shabbily dressed and looked completely out of place. They had probably walked into the White House out of curiosity. They attracted stares as they went from room to room.

President Lincoln noticed them and said, “Little girls, are you going to pass by me without shaking hands?”

Then he bent down to their level, shook each girl’s hand, and chatted with each one. All who witnessed the incident were moved by his compassion.

On another occasion, a little girl accompanied her father to the White House for a visit with the president. The girl’s father had warned her not to mention the president’s appearance, because he was a very homely man. When she met the president, he picked her up, put her on his knee, and chatted with her in his cheerful way.

The girl turned to her father and said, “Oh, Pa! He isn’t ugly at all! He’s beautiful!”
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In November 1863, President Lincoln traveled by rail to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to dedicate the National Cemetery and deliver the Gettysburg Address. At one stop, Lincoln saw that someone had lifted a little girl to the open window of his railway car. The child held a small bunch of rosebuds in her hand. “Floweth for the Prethident,” she lisped.

Lincoln leaned out the window and took the rosebuds then kissed the child and said, “You are a sweet little rosebud yourself. I hope your life will open into beauty like these flowers.”

We glimpse the depth of Lincoln’s serving heart in his difficult relationship with his secretary of war, Edwin Stanton. Lincoln and Stanton first became acquainted in 1857 when they served together on the same legal team. Stanton despised Lincoln, and referred to him as “a low, cunning clown,” a “gorilla,” and a person of “painful imbecility.”

When Lincoln became president, he chose Simon Cameron as his secretary of war, but Cameron was forced to resign due to charges of corruption. Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, recommended Edwin Stanton for the job. Lincoln invited Stanton to the White House for a chat. Throughout their talk, Stanton was unaware that his visit was a job interview.

Near the end of the conversation, Lincoln said, “I called you here to offer you the portfolio of War.” Stanton thought the president was joking.

Lincoln insisted he was serious. “The nation is in danger,” he said. “I need the best counsellors around me. I have every confidence in your judgment.”

Stanton accepted and went to work, reforming the War Department. Lincoln visited the War Office daily, conferring with Stanton, and gathering reports from the front.

For a long time, Stanton continued to be rude and abrasive toward Lincoln. President Lincoln, aware that Stanton had restored public faith in the War Department, endured Stanton’s disrespect. He never doubted that he had chosen the right man as his secretary of war.

On one occasion, Congressman Lovejoy from Illinois (who was also an abolitionist minister) approached President Lincoln with some ideas regarding the war effort. Lincoln said, “Explain your ideas to the secretary of war,” and sent him to Stanton’s office.

Congressman Lovejoy met with Secretary Stanton and explained his ideas. Stanton was not impressed. “Did Lincoln tell you to come to me with these ideas?”

“He did, sir.”

“Then he is a fool.”

Lovejoy was startled. “Do you mean to say, sir, that the president is a fool?”

“Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that.”

Congressman Lovejoy went back to the White House and related that conversation to the president. Lincoln asked, “Did Stanton say I was a fool?”

“He did, sir, and repeated it.”

“Well,” the president said, rising, “if Stanton said I was a fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I will slip over and see him.”

Over time, Stanton softened in his opinion of President Lincoln, and the two men became friends. On November 8, 1864, Lincoln was re-elected in a landslide. He delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. A little more than a month later, on April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia. Upon hearing the news of the surrender, the former adversaries, Lincoln and Stanton, embraced each other.

With hostilities ended, Secretary Stanton submitted his letter of resignation as secretary of war. The war was over, his work was done, and he felt it was his duty to resign.

President Lincoln, with tears in his eyes, ripped up the letter, put his arms around Stanton, and said, “You have been a good friend and a faithful public servant. It is not for you to say when you are no longer needed.”

In early 1865, President Lincoln had a dream that disturbed him. In the dream, he entered the East Room of the White House and found it full of sobbing mourners. A catafalque bore the body of a dead man, decked out for his funeral. A pair of soldiers stood guard.

Lincoln asked one of the soldiers, “Who is dead in the White House?”

“The president,” the soldier replied. “He was killed by an assassin.”

Lincoln told his wife about the dream. She said, “I wish you hadn’t told me.”

“It was only a dream,” he said. “Let’s say no more about it.”

On the afternoon of April 14, 1865, President Lincoln performed his last official acts as president—acts that flowed from a serving heart. He pardoned a Union soldier who was to be shot for desertion (“I think this boy can do us more good above ground than underground,” he said). And he repatriated a Confederate prisoner who had taken the oath of allegiance, restoring him as a citizen of the United States.

That evening, Ford’s Theater was packed. The president, Mrs. Lincoln, and two of their friends arrived a little after 8:30. The audience gave the president a standing ovation as he entered.

President Lincoln enjoyed the plays of Shakespeare but had little interest in this new play, “Our American Cousin.” He went only as a favor to Mrs. Lincoln.

A little after ten, John Wilkes Booth entered the president’s box, saw the president in his armchair, leaning on one hand, smiling and engaged in the play. Other members of the president’s party were also intent on the play. Booth raised his derringer and pointed it behind the president’s left ear. He fired one shot at point-blank range, mortally wounding President Lincoln.

One of the president’s guests, Major Henry Rathbone, leaped up and grappled with Booth, but the assassin broke free, leaped over the railing, and made his escape.

Mrs. Lincoln saw that her husband was shot and cried, “His dream was prophetic!”

The wounded president was taken across the street to the Peterson House, where he lingered through the night in a coma. A grief-stricken Edwin Stanton was present throughout the vigil. At one point, he said, “There lies the most perfect ruler of men who ever lived.”

President Lincoln died at 7:22 a.m. on April 15. A minister led in prayer; then Mr. Stanton said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert, was twenty-one when his father died. For days after Lincoln’s death, Edwin Stanton would come to Robert’s room every morning and sit with him. Stanton wouldn’t say a word—he would just sit beside Robert and weep.
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Edwin Stanton had once been Abraham Lincoln’s most bitter political enemy and cruelest critic. In the end, he mourned Lincoln as few others did. He had been won over by Abraham Lincoln’s serving heart.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said, “Lincoln’s presidency is a big, well-lit classroom for business leaders seeking to build successful, enduring organizations…. [Lincoln] always looked upward and always called American citizens to a higher road and to a purpose bigger than themselves.”
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Here are some key leadership lessons we can draw from the life of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln:

1.
Great leaders must be lifelong learners
. Abraham Lincoln had one year of formal education. From school, he learned how to “read, write, and cipher.” Everything he needed to know in order to be a fine lawyer and a great president, he learned from reading books. He was a student of history, military strategy, political science, law, literature, and mathematics (he taught himself trigonometry and surveying out of books). There’s no limit to what you can achieve through a devotion to lifelong learning.

2.
Great leaders care about individuals
. From his earliest years to the final day of his life, Abraham Lincoln thought about others. As a five-year-old, he cared about a soldier he met on the road. As president, he cared about every soldier under his leadership.

Lincoln took time for individuals. He took time to encourage his soldiers, to comfort the wounded, to pardon the guilty, and to bless the children. That’s what complete leaders do. They lead from a serving heart. Authentic leadership is servanthood. Leaders who don’t understand how to serve do not understand how to lead.

3.
A serving leader answers the call
. Abraham Lincoln served a single term in the House of Representatives then retired from politics—or so he thought. He had planned to devote the rest of his career to the practice of law. But the repeal of the Missouri Compromise summoned him back to public service. Lincoln didn’t need politics, but the nation needed Lincoln. He understood what was happening to his country. He had answered the call. Do you hear the call upon your life today? Have you answered the call?

4.
A leader with a serving heart looks beyond labels and sees people
. To Abraham Lincoln, Confederate soldiers were not “rebels;” they were Americans. His goal was to heal the divisions caused by the war, to erase distinctions between North and South, between black and white, and to make America one nation again. In his Second Inaugural Address a month before he was assassinated, Lincoln said, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Lincoln dreamed of healing not just the North, but the South as well. What a tragedy that he was murdered before he could turn that vision into a reality.

5.
Serving leaders are more interested in restoration and redemption than in retribution
. Again and again, Abraham Lincoln looked for ways to redeem prisoners from their failures and restore them to active service. He never minimized the seriousness of a young soldier’s dereliction. He held the young man accountable. Then he restored the young man to active duty.

Whenever you have to deal with a disciplinary issue, ask yourself, “What is the redemptive, restorative solution to this problem?”

6.
Serving leaders turn enemies into friends
. Lincoln could not have had a more stubborn, insulting, derisive critic than Edwin Stanton. To hear Stanton call Lincoln a “guerrilla” or a person of “painful imbecility,” you would never imagine Stanton would one day eulogize Lincoln as “the most perfect ruler of men who ever lived.”

Stanton didn’t change his opinion of Lincoln overnight. Lincoln won him over by slow increments. But it began when Lincoln looked at Stanton in a new way and saw qualities in him he had never noticed before. Lincoln was willing to put up with Stanton’s abrasive personality in order to win the war. And in the process of winning the war, Lincoln won a friend.

Who is the “Edwin Stanton” in your leadership life? What are you doing to win that person over as a friend?

Throughout this book, we have seen the Seven Sides of Leadership as they are exemplified in the lives of twenty-one great leaders. These seven facets of leadership are all learnable skills:

If you lack any of these skills, you can acquire them. Once you possess all seven, you can’t help but become an outstanding leader.