Today I am going to tell you a incident of Abraham Lincoln's life that changed his methodology of dealing with peoples.This incident is taken from Dale Carnegie's best selling book"How to win friends and influence people".
Abraham Lincoln was in the habit of criticizing and ridiculing people.He used to write letters and poems as anonymous criticizing and ridiculing people and drop these letters on the roads of the city where these would surely be found or publish them in newspapers.
Abraham Lincoln became a practicing lawyer in Springfield and in autumn of 1842 he wrote a letter as a anonymous ridiculing a proud,bellicose politician, James Shields .This letter turned out to be a bone of contention between Lincoln and Shields.Lincoln published that letter in the Springfield journal.After reading that letter in newspaper, peoples of the town laughed their head off.Shields boiled with anger and found out that Lincoln wrote the letter.Shields leaped on his horse started after Lincoln and challenged him to fight a duel. Lincoln was not in the favour of fighting but to save his honour he had to agree for fight.Lincoln was given the choice of weapons ,due to his long arms he chose cavalry broadswords and took training in swords fighting from a west point graduate.On the day of the fight ,they met on the bank of Mississippi river and a death was sure on that day but their colleagues interrupted and stopped the fight.
This was the most frightful incident in Lincoln's life but he learnt an invaluable lesson in the art of dealing with people.After that incident Lincoln never wrote a insulting letter and never criticized ,ridiculed anybody for anything.He removed the word "criticize" from his dictionary.
During the civil war,Lincoln appointed new general from time time for the Potomac army and each one in turn -McClellan,pope,Burnside,Hooker,Meade-blundered tragically and make Lincoln to walk on the floor in despair but he held his peace and didn't criticize any generals.One of his favorite quotations was "judge not,that ye be not judged".
Whenever Lincoln's wife and other people spoke harshly of the other people,Lincoln replied:'don't criticize them,they are just what we would be under similar circumstances'.but Lincoln had every occasion to criticize people ,we can understand this just by one illustration: the battle of Gettysburg was fought during the first 3 days of July 1863. During the night of July 4 general "Lee"begin to move back in southward. Wild storm clouds Deluged the country with rain. When Lee reached the Potomac with his defeated army he found a swollen impossible river in front of him and victorious union army was behind him.Lee was trapped from all sides and there was no way to escape. Lincoln understood that the situation was in his favour and was a golden, heaven- sent opportunity- the opportunity to capture Lee's army and end the war immediately so with this hope Lincoln ordered general "Meade" not to call a council of war and attack lee immediately. Lincoln telegraphed his orders and sent a special messenger to "Meade" demanding immediate action.But general Meade took action just opposite to that he was told. Violating Lincoln's orders general "Meade" called a council of war.He was hesitating to attack Lee and telegraphed Lincoln by making excuses that lee escaped over the river with his army.Lincoln boiled with anger and yelling in-front of his son that" God ,what does it mean?"the ball was in our court ,we had to only stretch our hand to catch them.Still we did not catch him.Under such circumstances,almost any general could have defeated lee.If I had gone up there,I would have whipped him myself.
Desperate Lincoln wrote a letter to general Meade full of criticism in 1863. What do you think that what general Meade felt after reading that letter?Actually Meade did not get this letter because Lincoln did not mail that letter.Lincoln had put that letter aside.This letter was found among Lincoln's papers after his death.
According to Lincoln's past experiences sharp criticism and rebuke are useless and no one is benefited from criticism,that's why he did not mail that letter to Meade because Lincoln's knew that he was writing that letter in bitter disappointment and he did not know that what was the situation in front of Meade even if he was there and if he had seen as much blood as Meade saw and if his ears had been pierced with the screams of the wounded and dying,maybe he would not be so anxious to attack either.
He was the same Lincoln who did not hesitate to criticize and ridicule people some years back but after that fatal incident with pugnacious politician he changed himself and started believe in peace.
If you also criticize,rebuke and ridicule others, don't wait for such a fatal situation to change yourself.
