Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 3 Foundations of Presidential Character Part 2

Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 3 Foundations of Presidential Character Part 2

The aristocrat of old Virginia may have been a muscleman, in the view of biographers, but he was also the model of evenhandedness—an attribute Lincoln aspired to. Another bestselling biography of Washington that Lincoln read was the 1807 book by David Ramsay, who portrayed the Founder as the epitome of equanimity. “He had religion without austerity,” Ramsay wrote, “dignity without pride, modesty without diffidence, courage without rashness, politeness without affectation, affability without familiarity. . . . [He was] a lover of order, systematical and methodical.” 21 Another bonus of Ramsay’s biography was the inclusion of Washington’s will, in which he manumitted his enslaved workers on the decease of his wife—an antislavery gesture on the part of the First American that fed into Lincoln’s view that the Founders desired the eventual extinction of the South’s peculiar institution. Washington’s Farewell Address was also included in Ramsay’s book. In his speech, Washington emphasized the …