Jeniffer electronic book

Lincoln had abandoned the illusion of his own peculiar personal
importance. He had become profoundly and sincerely humble, and his
humility was as far as possible from being either a conventional pose or
a matter of nervous self-distrust. It did not impair the firmness of his
will. It did not betray him into shirking responsibilities. Although
only a country lawyer without executive experience, he did not flinch
from assuming the leadership of a great nation in one of the gravest
crises of its national history, from becoming commander-in-chief of an
army of a million men, and from spending $3,000,000,000 in the
prosecution of a war. His humility, that is, was precisely an example of
moral vitality and insight rather than of moral awkwardness and
enfeeblement. It was the fruit of reflection on his own personal
experience--the supreme instance of his ability to attain moral truth
both in discipline and in idea; and in its aspect of a moral truth it
obtained a more explicit expression than did some other of his finer
personal attributes.


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