Abraham Lincoln
In the autumn of 1958, Abraham Lincoln was feeling down. His dreams of following up a career in law with a seat in the U.S Senate had been dashed thanks to his election defeat to Stephen Douglas. He was almost 50 years old and, to the outside observer, it might have appeared that Lincoln had come to the end of the road. After all, many people who had seen him campaigning for the Senate seat had come to see him as dark, brooding and unapproachable. But far from giving up, Lincoln learned from this setback and before long he was on the comeback trail.
The defeat to Douglas was a major blow to Lincoln’s ambitions. The pre-election debates between the pair had really captured the imagination and huge crowds turned out to see them spar. So when he lost, Lincoln was really devastated. According to some historians, it hit him hard on a personal level, not just a professional level. Nevertheless, by 1860, he had secured the Republican Party presidential nomination for that year’s election. But right up until polling day, many people, including those within his own party, felt Lincoln had next to no chance of winning.
Some historians and Lincoln biographers have credited the man himself as being the main driving force behind his great comeback. Lincoln learned lessons from his debates with Douglas and honed his public persona accordingly. He learned to be more approachable and less aloof, presenting himself as a real man of the people. By the spring of 1860, he had become a genuine celebrity when politicians were usually grey, anonymous figures. So much so, in fact, that he opted against campaigning in the immediate build-up to the 1860 election, preferring to stay at home and strategize instead. Nevertheless, he proved his many critics wrong and won, earning the office of President of the United States.
As well as being regarded as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – American President of all time, Lincoln’s rise from political near-death to the White House has also been touted as the ultimate comeback story. While his failures have often been greatly exaggerated (with the ‘Abraham Lincoln Didn’t Quit lists that are posted far and wide on the internet especially guilty of this), there’s no doubt that he was not always destined for greatness. He might have thrown in the towel on several occasions, most notably after one of several election defeats, but he kept going and driving himself all the way to the top.