Lincoln to Grant: “You were right, and I was wrong.”

My longtime collaborator and partner in crime, Kris White, paid a visit to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia recently. Among the documents in their collection is one of my favorite pieces of writing by Abraham Lincoln. Kris came across it during his visit and sent me a picture.

Wow.

My thanks to Kris for sharing this awesome piece of history. You can find it online for yourself here.

You might be familiar with this letter, written on July 13, 1863, following Ulysses S. Grant’s capture of Vicksburg nine days earlier:

Major General Grant
My dear General

I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do, what you finally did — march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port-Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join Gen. Banks; and when you turned Northward East of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right, and I was wrong.

Yours very truly
A. Lincoln

I love Lincoln as a writer because he understands the concept of “audience.” He knows just what to write for any given audience—often multiple audiences at once, as the Emancipation Proclamation demonstrates. As a result, he managed to produce some of the most memorable flourishes of rhetoric in American history. As a writer, he soars.

I like Lincoln’s letter to Grant for a different reason, though. It’s not Lincoln’s felicity of expression here but his humility. “You were right, and I was wrong,” he admits in language as plain as it gets.

Lincoln didn’t need to send this letter to Grant. He didn’t know Grant. He didn’t really owe anything to Grant, who was only doing his job, after all. Took him long enough, right? Or Lincoln could’ve easily been excused for being too busy or for forgetting to write, considering the events unfolding in Pennsylvania simultaneous to those in Mississippi.  Grant was far enough away, physically, that he might have been an abstraction.

And yet Lincoln took the time not only to write but to say, “You were right, and I was wrong.” This is the commander in chief admitting he was no armchair general.

What did it take for the president of the United States to make such an admission? What did it cost him?

I love this letter because was a quiet show of character and integrity. It was a sincere show of gratitude. It was an astounding show of humility. Imagine the confidence, the grace, the consideration.

This was Lincoln, as a leader and as a human being, at his finest.