Ida Tarbell on Abraham Lincoln

“The four years I put in on "The Life of Abraham Lincoln" did more than provide me with a continuing interest. They aroused my flagging sense that I had a country, that its problems were my problems. This sense had been strong in my years on The Chautauquan, but the period following had dimmed it. Now I was beginning to ask myself why we had gone the way we had since the Civil War. Was there not enough of suffering and of nobility in that calamity to quiet the greed and ambitions of men, to soften their hates, to arouse in them the will to follow Lincoln's last counsels-"With malice toward none; with charity for all... let us ... do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." But greed and hate and indifference to the sufferings and rights of others had been rampant since the war.”

“The completion of the Life of Lincoln did not end my interest in the man. He had come to mean more to me as a human being than anybody I had studied. I never doubted his motives, and he never bored me. Still, whenever I have the opportunity I pick him up. The greatest regret of my professional life is that I shall not live to write another life of him. There is so much of him I never touched.”

“My chief consolation in what I looked on as the manhandling of democratic ideals and processes in all ranks of society, public and private, was Abraham Lincoln. In spite of his obvious limitations and mistakes he had won the biggest battle for freedom we have yet had to fight. He had done it by taking time to figure things out, by sticking to the conclusions he had reached so long as, and no longer than, they seemed to him sound, by squaring his conduct always with what he conceived to be just, moral principles. The more I knew of him, the better I liked him and the more strongly I felt we ought as a people to know about how he did things, not ask how he would solve a problem tormenting us, but how he would go to work to solve it.”