Abraham Lincoln, America’s most beloved president, was anything but beloved while he was in office. The South hated him. The anti-war activists hated him. Democrats hated him, calling him a widow-maker. The media ridiculed his eyes, looks, and body, calling him a freak of nature. Harpers magazine so much as to call him a host of names in print: filthy story teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.
But Abraham Lincoln would not stoop down to the level of his critics. He won over a lot of his enemies and critics by holding fast to this famous principle encapsulated in his second inaugural address: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right.?
