"… But I with mournful tread,

walk the deck my captain lies,

fallen cold and dead."

So wrote Walt Whitman, one of the most illustrious American poets on the death of Abraham Lincoln. The man who is till date considered the greatest President of all, attended school less than 12 months in his entire life ! He failed as a businessman – as a storekeeper. He failed as a farmer. He despised this work. He failed in his first attempt to obtain political office and when elected to the legislature, he failed when he sought the office of Speaker. He failed in his first attempt to go to Congress, when he ran for the United States Senate and when his friends sought for him the nomination for the vice-presidency in 1866.

In spite of these failures, Abraham Lincoln also called "Honest Abe"; "The Rail Splitter" and "The Great Emancipator" became the 16th President of the United States. He preserved the union during the civil war and brought about the emancipation of the slaves.

Among American heroes, Lincoln continues to have a unique appeal for his fellow countrymen and also for people of other lands. This charm derives from his remarkable life story – the rise from humble origins, the dramatic death – and from his distinctively humane personality as well as from his historical role as Savior of the Union and emancipator of the slaves. His relevance endures and grows especially because of his eloquence as a spokesman for democracy. In his view, the union was worth saving not only for its own sake but because it embodied an ideal, the ideal of Self-Government. This probably accounts for the universality of his appeal.

Lincoln learned by his disappointments. He fulfilled in his own career the old Latin proverb that it is lawful to learn from the enemy. He was educated by his defeats. After he suffered humiliation at the hands of Stanton in the Reaper Case, he returned from Cincinnati to Illinois "to study law". He had learned something from a cruel disappointment, and he did not fail to make use of what he had learned. He returned from his one term in Congress and mastered Euclid. He disciplined himself through his disappointments and grew through his successes. His mind was growing retentive, and a truly great one.