Lincoln’s Greatest Secret – Friendship

In this month of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, much will be said about his leadership, character, and the 272 words in his “Gettysburg Address.”  Often left unsaid …is the value he put on friendship.

Interestingly, Lincoln is often pictured as a solitary figure, and he wrestled with depression, sickness, and countless crises – including the specter of the Civil War – largely by himself. But he also valued the counsel of others, their kindness, and the outward reach to him by friends. He returned it often.

Lincoln seemed to understand that a man is not complete in himself, even with his faith, when there are needs of others around him. Nor are we just the product of ourselves. Friends matter.

He once wrote, looking back on his childhood and the tutoring received from a Kentucky teacher named William Graham, “I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.” Like many good leaders, he carried his obligations forward.

But Lincoln’s views on friendship – the vital nature of it in a good life – were more sophisticated than mere gratitude or obligations imposed by the giving of friendship by others to him. 

In politics, he understood – as people like Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan did – that “the best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.” He strived for that.

On returning from a meeting that did not go well, he once remarked to a cabinet member, “I do not like that man … I shall have to get to know him better.”  Such a view is pure charity and takes patience.

When it came to problem-solving, and who he listened to, there was always room for a friend’s views, someone who was in the fight with him, who cared as much as he did. Wrote Lincoln, “He has a right to criticize who has a heart to help.”  Fair to the end, he was a fighter – but wanted peace.

Famously, in his First Inaugural Address, delivered in March 1861, he sought to teach what life had taught him the hard way – in a few words, with faith and hope in friendship. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Still, the war came on. He had to deal with it, yet never lost hope in God’s mercy, the ability of good people to hold the Union together, and the future of the Nation – premised, as it would have to be, on those “mystic chords of memory” not being lost.

Nor did Lincoln fall to the easy idea of vengeance, the notion that killing those who undermined the Union was compensation for loss of peace. He succinctly stated, “The loss of enemies does not compensate for the loss of friends.”

In the end, Lincoln – the man, even more than the president – valued his friends and valued himself as a friend. He did not reject friends, whatever their foibles. “If friendship is your weakest point, you are the strongest person in the world,” he said.

So, in this month of remembering Lincoln’s birthday – February 12 – we will hear much about his leadership, place in history, and epic stature, but to him friendship was vital.

Asked why, he spoke plainly. “The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.” One wonders if this was not, after all, Lincoln’s greatest secret.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).