Encounters
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Wead, a fellow delegate to the 1847 Illinois constitutional convention, voiced some other negative feelings people had about Logan. Wead confided to his diary that Logan was clever and skillful but given to “sophistry.” Shallow, even devious, he was “always specious, frequently ingenious and sometimes powerful, but his great forte is in making a skillful use of men’s prejudices.… Sometimes he approaches a subject boldly, probes it to the bottom and handles it like a man of intellect, but such instances are rare, and only occur where the subject itself is not deep or obscure. He has always, an argument calculated to draw the mind from deep and useful investigation—he plays around the true question, raising collateral issues, and deceiving men with straws and chaff, while the grain is not seen.… His mind is limited to a certain sphere, but in that limit he is superior. Quick of apprehension, possessing a happy faculty of compassion, and great knowledge of the prejudices of men, he is calculated to exercise & does exercise a great influence: but with all his influence and all his tact he is utterly unable to comprehend the strength of a powerful intellect or the superiority of a mind which towers immensely above his own.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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