Quotes from Harold Holzer

Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. Abraham Lincoln

One writer may speak of something more lasting than Horace Greeley when he writes of that editor that his secular philanthropy drifted into autocratic ambition.

Lincoln had an almost childlike habit of regaling visitors with any sharp saying he'd uttered during the day, taking simple-hearted pleasure in some of his best hits.

Feeling its power, one Civil War paper trumpeted that Milton and Homer were for another age but for this one was the New York Herald.

A writer at the time said, "Lincoln means to sink the man in the public officer.

President-elect Lincoln to his confidants: "The people of the South do not know us. They are not allowed to receive Republican papers down there.

John Hay calls the telegraph reporter, "the natural enemy of the scribe.

In Lincoln's mind, at least as Lamon interpreted the story, "the illusion was a sign." Both the president-elect and his wife believed it meant he would not only survive his term in office, but four years later win reelection to a second one, only to die before it ended.

From "boyhood up," as Lincoln once confided to his old friend Ward Hill Lamon, "my ambition was to be President.

Lincoln gives a lesson in adaptive leadership even to those of us who will never advocate for compensated emancipation. Facing an uproar over the cost of the government paying slaveholders for their slaves, Lincoln showed the COST OF THE STATUS QUO, which is generally overlooked by those who oppose change.

I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley's conversation inevitably becomes a speech.

For a time, Greeley seemed to be following the historic advice he had once given young Josiah Grinnell: "Go West, young man, go West.

We need to know not only what is done but what is purposed and said by those who shape the destines of states and realms." Horace Greeley

I'm the only English thing they can vent their anger on.

Jefferson said he only read the advertisements in the newspaper, because it was there he was most likely to find the truth.

The mid-19th century was noted for a partisan, rather than a consensus press, but this partisanship was able to turn out voters consistently.

Fortunately, even sacred holidays commingled with politics that year. Having lost a wager that Stephen A. Douglas would be elected president, a Democrat from nearby Williamsville announced he would pay off his debt by roasting a Thanksgiving ox and issuing "a general invitation to all comers to…digest it.

Abraham Lincoln

A rival editor in Philadelphia said that the spreading railroad network carried "New York everywhere" in terms of the city's predominant influence.

Public sentiment is everything, said Lincoln. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

The Bible and newspapers, to both Lincoln and Greeley, they represented equally compelling gospel.

Greeley knew no language but his, but of that, he possessed a most extraordinary mastery. An employee

The author says that though the Mexican War wound down, the interpretation of it was just beginning.