Strangely, Abraham Lincoln is the president that I've spent more time and work in scholarly research and study. I say strangely because he's not my favorite. Theodore Roosevelt is my personal favorite because of his personality and style. If we're talking about making all the right moves, we have to measure the man against his times, circumstances and challenges. Lincoln seemed to have natural political and interpersonal skills despite being awkward and ill at ease socially and suffering from chronic depression. With only one year of formal education, he wrote some of the finest speeches and letters we've seen come from the presidency. With his shrewd sense of assessing other people's character, he became a masterful manipulator and strategist. During the war, he seemed to have a better understanding of troop movement and strategies than his West Point trained military officers. With Union newspapers calling for a negotiated settlement of the war, he chose to stay the course and pursue total victory. He was pragmatic in his approach to changing the objectives and goals of the war from saving the union to freeing the slaves. That, coupled with military success in the field, insured his re-election bid at the polls in 1864. Until his assassination, public opinion of him was low. He was regarded as a rube, a bumpkin, a frontier clod, uncouth and uneducated. After his death, he was elevated to the nation's pantheon of heroes and assumed the mantle of sainthood.
