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Abraham Lincoln
2007/09/08,08:25

I heard a great deal about how Lincoln faced his adversity. Curious to find the details on what he faced and how he overcame them, I googled for his autobiography and came across the site

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/education/failures.htm

It is a nice tabular representation of his failures and successes. The way information is grouped made the facts look mechanical to me and hence I browsed further to learn more about these set backs.

http://www.reacheverychild.com/feature/lincoln.html

has a long list of all the sites about Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln

From there, I navigated to

http://www.wiprogram.org/leadership/yl02_research_papers/old_papers/ABRAHAM_LINCOLN.htm

Some of the interesting or rather inspiring facts I learnt from the site ( as is - for all the details please visit the website).

Lincoln lost his first job as clerk in Denton Offutt’s store, when Offutss’s business enterprise collapsed.  In 1833, Lincoln and Berry, a successor store, failed leaving the partners in debt.  Lincoln spent the next seventeen years of his life paying off the money he borrowed from friends to start his business.

In 1832, in his first campaign for the state legislature, he finished eight from thirteen candidates.  In a campaign document he stated that if he were to lose, he ‘was too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.’  In 1835 Lincoln was engaged to be married, but his sweetheart died and his heart was broken.  In 1836 he had a nervous breakdown and spent six months confined to his bed.

He broke off his engagement to Mary Todd and, as a result experienced a profound depression.  However a year later he reconnected with Mary and he went on to marry her in November of 1842.

In 1836, Lincoln won election to Congress.  After his term ended, Lincoln spent the next five years focusing on his law practice.  In 1854, he came back to the political arena and one of the first things he did was to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threatened to extend slavery to other states. 

 In 1855 Lincoln ran for the Senate but was defeated.  The next year he ran for vice President and was also defeated. 

Lincoln’s years of persistence and hard work, eventually paid off in 1860 when he was elected as the sixteenth President of the United States of America.  However, failure characterised the first two years of Lincoln’s Presidency.  The radicals pushed him to declare emancipation a war aim while conservatives tried to pull him away from making it a ‘a war about the Negro.’  His party suffered losses in the mid-term elections.

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In the same site there is an article about Lincoln's leadership. It says

Lincoln practiced what he preached.

 “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power” 

is his quote. I learnt that Lincoln was known , famous for his accessibility. The site also pours information on several of his leadership traits with examples from his life line.

Definitely, an interesting read. Thanks to all the websites for the information. Thanks to http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/lincpix/b63.jpg for the image.

Salute to Abraham Lincoln!

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