In fact, Lincoln and Stanton had already heard similar complaints. After dispatching investigators to look into General Grant’s behavior, however, th… - Doris Kearns Goodwin

After ministering each day to the hundreds of young men who had endured ghastly wounds, submitted to amputations without anesthesia, and often died without the comfort of family or friends, Whitman wrote, “nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it used to.

The experience of this campaign vindicated his belief that politics was essentially personal relations. In a twenty-minute appearance, he limited his speeches to five minutes so that he could spend the remaining fifteen minutes “touching” his audience. “A five-minute speech,” he later said, “with fifteen minutes spent afterward is much more effective than a fifteen-minute speech, no matter how inspiring, that leaves only five minutes for handshaking.

When asked years later why Lincoln had won, he said: “The leader of a political party in a country like ours is so exposed that his enemies become as numerous and formidable as his friends.