Encounters
''magnanimous'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜_encounter｜ENC｜20260904134559-43-•
Butler had also rebuked the less forbearing Edward D. Baker, who responded heatedly, calling Butler “a fool.” Acting as peacemaker, Lincoln explained to Butler that Baker had been “writhing under a severe tooth-ache,” hence “at that time was incapable of exercising that patience and reflection which the case required.” He counseled that it “is always magnanamous to recant whatever we may have said in passion; and when you and Baker shall have done this, I am sure there will no difficulty be left between you.” Lincoln practiced what he preached, exercising over the years an almost superhuman magnanimity.
Source: Abraham Lincoln∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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''contingency'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜_encounter｜ENC｜20260904172645-58-•
The president’s message contained a stern ultimatum. As one journalist noted, “Mr. Lincoln has at last determined to tender peaceable and friendly emancipation to the slaveholders if they will have it, and forcible emancipation if they will not.” This reporter thought that “Mr. Lincoln has determined to shake off the Kentucky nightmare and be himself again” now that the Border States seemed unlikely to secede. Many believed that the president “has been reserving this shot for the contingency which had now been brought about and that it was his intention from the beginning, after securing so much ground, to put his views of the incompatibility of slavery and freedom into practical operation.” The Chicago Tribune’s editors calculated that “the Free States are unanimous in adhering to the emancipation idea” and that “the President has struck the key-note with which full twenty millions of people will accord.” In Massachusetts, the Springfield Republican called the message “a coup d’etat, in fact, displaying much sagacity in its inception, significant in its aim and purpose, and likely to be most important in its effects.” An antislavery militant in Connecticut, Elihu Burritt, wrote Lincoln that the “whole civilized world is honoring you with its sincere homage, as the first of all the list of American Presidents that ever had the moral courage to propose a plan for the extinction of Slavery, so just, generous and noble as to be hailed with admiration in both hemispheres. No earthly potentate ought to aspire to a higher glory than that which this magnanimous overture will forever attach to your name.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln∶ A Life ▫𓂃
Link to original