The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln throug… - Doris Kearns Goodwin

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The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to educate himself, his string of political failures, and a depression so profound that he declared himself more than willing to die, except that “he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived.