"When the conduct of people is designed to be influenced, kind, unassuming persuasion should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall. So with people. If you would win them to your cause, first convince them that you are their sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches hearts, which is the great high road to their reason, and which, once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing their judgment of the justice of your cause; but that cause must really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to their judgment, or to command their actions, or to mark them as people to be shunned and despised, and they will retreat within themselves and close all the avenues to their heads and their hearts. This must be understood by those who would be leaders."
Lincoln is remembered as one of the most respected Presidents in the history of the United States and perhaps its greatest leader.
Early in his political career he wrote, "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. I have no other as great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem".
His success in achieving his goal of "preserving the Union" during the Civil War remains a memorial to his personal attributes and professional skills.
Many intimations of his feelings about people and his recognition of their need for meanings in the presence of chaos, suffering and bereavement were revealed in the comments he made when dedicating the war cemetery at Gettysburg on 19 November, 1863. He regarded that speech as a failure. It has become an outstanding tribute to a leader's vision, wisdom and empathy .
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
The commanding general of the Confederate Armies, Robert E. Lee, surrendered on 9th April, 1865. Five days later, on the night of Good Friday, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.