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A brilliant and novel examination of how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership
"Abraham Lincoln had less schooling than all but a couple of other presidents, and more wisdom than every one of them. In this original, insightful book, Michael Gerhardt explains how this came to be." -H.W. Brands, Wall Street Journal
In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished. His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?
As Michael J. Gerhardt reveals, Lincoln's reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory, and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately--Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership, mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and--what would become his most enduring legacy--developing policies and rhetoric to match a constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.
Without these mentors, Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer--and without Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.
About the author
MICHAEL J. GERHARDT is Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2019, he was one of four constitutional scholars called by the House Judiciary Committee during President Trump’s impeachment proceedings. He has testified more than twenty times before Congress, has been special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee for five Supreme Court nominations, and has served twice as CNN’s impeachment expert. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post. He lives with his wife, Deborah, and their three sons in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Summary
A brilliant and novel examination of
how Abraham Lincoln mastered the art of leadership
“Abraham Lincoln had less schooling than all but a couple of other presidents, and more wisdom than every one of them. In this original, insightful book, Michael Gerhardt explains how this came to be." –H.W. Brands, Wall Street Journal
In 1849, when Abraham Lincoln
returned to Springfield, Illinois, after two seemingly uninspiring years in the
U.S. House of Representatives, his political career appeared all but finished.
His sense of failure was so great that friends worried about his sanity. Yet
within a decade, Lincoln would reenter politics, become a leader of the
Republican Party, win the 1860 presidential election, and keep America together
during its most perilous period. What accounted for the turnaround?
As Michael J. Gerhardt
reveals, Lincoln’s reemergence followed the same path he had taken before, in
which he read voraciously and learned from the successes, failures, oratory,
and political maneuvering of a surprisingly diverse handful of men, some of
whom he had never met but others of whom he knew intimately—Henry Clay, Andrew
Jackson, Zachary Taylor, John Todd Stuart, and Orville Browning. From their
experiences and his own, Lincoln learned valuable lessons on leadership,
mastering party politics, campaigning, conventions, understanding and using
executive power, managing a cabinet, speechwriting and oratory, and—what would
become his most enduring legacy—developing policies and rhetoric to match a
constitutional vision that spoke to the monumental challenges of his time.
Without these mentors,
Abraham Lincoln would likely have remained a small-town lawyer—and without
Lincoln, the United States as we know it may not have survived. This book tells
the unique story of how Lincoln emerged from obscurity and learned how to lead.
Additional text
"Gerhardt's Lincoln's Mentors is a remarkably probing examination of what Lincoln read, how he learned and how he was constantly reaching out for friends, mentors and role models. His is an especially valuable analysis of how both Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson influenced the Lincoln presidency. This superb treatment of Lincoln as a political thinker and operative ranks right up there with the prize-winning biographies of David Donald and James MacPherson."
