How to Win Friends and Influence People Read Online Free PDF Page A

was furious, “ What does this mean?” Lincoln
    cried to his son Robert. “Great God! What does this
    mean? We had them within our grasp, and had only to
    stretch forth our hands and they were ours; yet nothing
    that I could say or do could make the army move. Under
    the circumstances, almost any general could have defeated
    Lee. If I had gone up there, I could have whipped
    him myself.”

    In bitter disappointment, Lincoln sat down and wrote
    Meade this letter. And remember, at this period of his
    life Lincoln was extremely conservative and restrained
    in his phraseology. So this letter coming from Lincoln in
    1863 was tantamount to the severest rebuke.

    My dear General,

    I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune
    involved in Lee’s escape. He was within our easy
    grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection
    With our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is,
    the war will be prolonged indefinitely. If you could not
    safely attack Lee last Monday, how can you possibly do so
    south of the river, when you can take with you very few-
    no more than two-thirds of the force you then had in hand?
    It would be unreasonable to expect and I do not expect that
    you can now effect much. Your golden opportunity is gone,
    and I am distressed immeasurably because of it.

    What do you suppose Meade did when he read the
    letter?

    Meade never saw that letter. Lincoln never mailed it.
    It was found among his papers after his death.

    My guess is - and this is only a guess - that after writing
    that letter, Lincoln looked out of the window and
    said to himself, “Just a minute. Maybe I ought not to be
    so hasty. It is easy enough for me to sit here in the quiet
    of the White House and order Meade to attack; but if I
    had been up at Gettysburg, and if I had seen as much
    blood as Meade has seen during the last week, and if my
    ears had been pierced with the screams and shrieks of
    the wounded and dying, maybe I wouldn’t be so anxious
    to attack either. If I had Meade’s timid temperament,
    perhaps I would have done just what he had done. Anyhow,
    it is water under the bridge now. If I send this
    letter, it will relieve my feelings, but it will make Meade
    try to justify himself. It will make him condemn me. It
    will arouse hard feelings, impair all his further usefulness
    as a commander, and perhaps force him to resign
    from the army.”

    So, as I have already said, Lincoln put the letter aside,
    for he had learned by bitter experience that sharp criticisms
    and rebukes almost invariably end in futility.

    Theodore Roosevelt said that when he, as President,
    was confronted with a perplexing problem, he used to
    lean back and look up at a large painting of Lincoln
    which hung above his desk in the White House and ask
    himself, “What would Lincoln do if he were in my
    shoes? How would he solve this problem?”

    The next time we are tempted to admonish somebody,
    / let’s pull a five-dollar bill out of our pocket, look at Lincoln’s
    picture on the bill, and ask. “How would Lincoln
    handle this problem if he had it?”

    Mark Twain lost his temper occasionally and wrote
    letters that turned the Paper brown. For example, he
    once wrote to a man who had aroused his ire: “The thing
    for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak and I
    will see that you get it.” On another occasion he wrote
    to an editor about a proofreader’s attempts to “improve
    my spelling and punctuation.” He ordered: “Set the
    matter according to my copy hereafter and see that the
    proofreader retains his suggestions in the mush of his
    decayed brain.”

    The writing of these stinging letters made Mark Twain
    feel better. They allowed him to blow off steam, and the
    letters didn’t do any real harm, because Mark’s wife
    secretly lifted them out of the mail. They were never
    sent.

    Do you know someone you would like to change and
    regulate and improve? Good! That is fine. I am all in
    favor of it,