Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude

by Raymond M. Kethledge

We do not know exactly what Lincoln did, hour by hour, during those five days of recovery. But we do know that he did two things, both cathartic, and both alone. One was that he retreated to his bedroom and wept. Robert Todd Lincoln went there, later on the fourteenth, and found his father “in tears, with head bowed upon his arms resting on the table at which he sat.” The other was that Lincoln wrote a letter to Meade. It began on a conciliatory note: “I am very—very grateful to you for the magnificent success you gave the cause of the country at Gettysburg, and I am sorry now to be the author of the slightest pain to you.” But only two sentences later, Lincoln put into words his frustrations of the past ten days: I had been oppressed nearly ever since the battles at Gettysburg, by what appeared to be evidences that yourself, and Gen. Couch, and Gen. Smith, were not seeking a collision with the enemy, but were trying to get him across the river without another battle … The case, summarily stated, is this. You fought and beat the enemy at Gettysburg; and, of course, to say the least, his loss was as great as yours. He retreated; and you did not, as it seemed to me, pressingly pursue him; but a flood in the river detained him, till, by slow degrees, you were again upon him. You had at least twenty thousand veteran troops directly with you, and as many more raw ones within supporting distance, all in addition to those who fought with you at Gettysburg; while it was not possib...