Abraham Lincoln was a man who knew how to “overcome evil with good” (Rom 12:21; cp Prov 25:21,22). In 1855, when he was a relatively unknown Illinois backwoods lawyer, he was hired to join a team of lawyers to defend Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the harvester, in a high-profile patent infringement case. His colleagues were led by Edwin Stanton, an eastern attorney — famous, wealthy, and well connected politically. Lincoln prepared his part of the case meticulously, and then met Stanton and the others at the hotel where they would all stay while the case was being organized and argued in court.
On meeting Lincoln for the first time, Stanton took one look at the tall, gangling figure in ill-fitting clothes, and whispered to another attorney, “I won’t have this long-armed ape on my team; he clearly doesn’t know anything and can do us no good.” So it was made known to Lincoln that he ought to withdraw from the case, which he did. He delivered his legal research to Stanton, and resigned, but remained at the hotel and in the courtroom to observe the case. Stanton never took one look at the work Lincoln had done. Though Lincoln had a room and ate all his meals at the same hotel as Stanton and the others, he was never invited to eat with them, never spoken to, and never acknowledged in any way.
In 1861, after an improbable and meteoric rise, Abraham Lincoln was president of the United States. With the country on the brink of civil war, Lincoln set about to include in his cabinet, and among his closest advisers, the men who had been his greatest rivals for the presidency. They were men who, by all accounts, and certainly in their own estimation, were each and every one better qualified to be president. They were in fact what the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin calls “a team of rivals”. In her book of that title, she writes, “The powerful competitors who had originally disdained Lincoln became colleagues who helped him steer the country through its darkest days… Lincoln’s genius revealed itself through an extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; and to repair injured feelings that, left unattended, might have escalated into permanent hostility.”
Returning to Edwin Stanton, Goodwin writes, “Unimaginable as it might seem… in their next encounter six years later [1861], Lincoln would offer Stanton the most powerful civilian post in his administration. Lincoln’s choice of Stanton would reveal… a singular ability to transcend personal vendetta, humiliation, or bitterness… As for Stanton, despite his initial contempt for the ‘ape’, he would not only accept the offer but come to respect and love Lincoln more than any person outside of his immediate family.”
During the next years, their two families would share a summer residence and spend leisure time together, while Stanton became Lincoln’s greatest help and support. Four years later, as the fatally wounded president lay dying, Edwin Stanton sat beside him, holding his hand and weeping.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One