Abraham Lincoln on Character, Leadership and Education

Fred Borch is a lawyer and historian. He served 25 years in the Army as a uniformed attorney. After retiring from active duty, Fred took a job in the U.S. Government as the only career historian whose focus was exclusively on military legal history. He was Professor of Legal History and Leadership for 18 years at The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School located at the University of Virginia.

As we honor the birthday of our 16th president on February 12, it is worth remembering that while Abraham Lincoln was born more than 200 years ago, what he said about character, leadership and education are still timely and relevant.

The American public and professional historians consistently rank Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents. Part of Lincoln’s popularity is certainly due to his truly remarkable rise from poverty to be America’s chief executive. Born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky, Lincoln grew up in Indiana and Illinois. His family was poor, and as a result Lincoln had only one year of formal education. But he loved reading and by the time he was a young man Lincoln had a knack for telling entertaining stories and captivating audiences with humorous anecdotes. Ultimately, he studied enough to become a lawyer, and he had a successful legal practice in Illinois before joining the newly created Republican Party in 1856.

Elected to the presidency in 1860—having campaigned against the expansion of slavery in the United States—Lincoln immediately faced a tremendous crisis: seven southern states had seceded before he was inaugurated in March 1861, and a month later, rebel forces fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter.

In the months and years of war that followed, Lincoln prevented the Union from disintegrating. Part of his success was certainly due to his truly exceptional talents as a public speaker, as his choice of words and how he spoke were always emotive. During his campaign for president, for example, he famously denounced slavery and insisted that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” It was during the Civil War, however, that his eloquence reached new heights. Lincoln’s 272-word Gettysburg Address, delivered in about two to three minutes on November 19, 1863, is considered to be one of the greatest political speeches in American history.

After all these years, what he had to say about character, leadership and education are worth remembering because his observations about all three are still accurate.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Character is like a tree and reputation is its shadow; the shadow is what we think of it, but the tree is the real thing.” By that he meant that character is what is inside a person—his or her core as an individual. What we observe about a person—honesty, integrity, loyalty, morality (or the lack thereof) are a direct manifestation of a man or woman’s true inner self.

No president in history demonstrated more leadership skills than Lincoln, and for him it was all about doing the right thing. Lincoln said, “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm. Important principles may and must be inflexible.” Perhaps the best example of his leadership was his decision to use his authority as commander-in-chief to issue the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Lincoln told his Secretary of State, William Seward, “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper. And my whole soul is in it.” This decision was an important step in the long struggle for racial justice for Black people in America, and Lincoln’s leadership made this first step possible.

While it might seem counterintuitive, given Lincoln’s lack of formal schooling, he loved reading. He told an audience in 1859 that, “A taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing unsolved ones.” In short, reading and education were critical to living and solving life’s problems. No wonder Lincoln apparently also said, “My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”

As we honor the memory of Abraham Lincoln on President’s Day in 2026, knowing what he had to say about character, leadership and education should give one insight into what made him one of our greatest leaders.