It’s often tempting to surround ourselves with people who will tell us what we want to hear. Lincoln demonstrated courage and concern for country over his own sense of self-importance when he incorporated into his cabinet the very men against whom he’d run—all of whom had more political experience than Lincoln at the time of his election. This is the story of Lincoln’s ability to win unlikely hearts and minds to his cause, to mediate conflicts, and assuage the concerns of a torn and anxious nation.

Historians have a difficult time understanding how Lincoln managed to secure the Republican nomination in Chicago on May 18, 1860. Some chalk it up to pure luck. Lincoln’s exposure to national-level politics consisted of two failed runs for Senate and a term in Congress over a decade earlier. The majority of his modest career had been serving as an itinerant lawyer in Illinois with a circuit judge. When he won the presidential nomination, many newspapers called him Abram. Lincoln wrote to the Republican chairman of the acceptance committee about the matter: “It seems as if the question of whether my first name is ‘Abraham’ or ‘Abram’ will never be settled. It is ‘Abraham.’

In contrast to Lincoln’s relative obscurity, his three competitors were seasoned politicians. William Henry Seward had been a New York senator for over ten years and served as governor for eight. He had a penchant for adjusting his position depending on public opinion, which led to the common critique that he was an opportunist. Despite the challenges to nomination, he was confident that the presidency was the natural next step for an already robust political career. His home state was the nation’s most populous, and his close friend and veteran organizer, Thurlow Weed, was next to none.

Salmon Chase had also served as a senator and governor for Ohio, and played a pivotal (and arguably the foremost) role in the establishment of the Republican Party. His biographer writes that, while there were abler politicians and more congenial colleagues, Chase did more than any of them to add to the storehouse of American political thought.

Edward Bates had been a judge and congressmen for many years. He was also part of the committee that drafted the Missouri Constitution. He dearly loved his family and left public service to enjoy time with them. It was almost half-heartedly that he entered the race for nomination, but his enthusiasm grew as support for one of St. Louis’ most beloved sons became evident.

Seward was favored to win, but all three were strong contenders. Yet, somehow, a humble, self-effacing rail-splitter quietly garnered enough support to astound competitors and the public with an eleventh-hour victory.

Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson recounts receiving the news of Lincoln’s candidacy “coldly and sadly.” So how was an obscure Lincoln able to outmaneuver such formidable rivals? Is there no light that can be shed on the event?

It was Lincoln’s shrewdness that accounts for the unexpected victory, coupled with glaring oversights in the campaigns of Seward, Chase, and Bates. On the singularly misguided advice of Thurlow Weed, Seward went abroad eight months to avoid getting needlessly embroiled in squabbles. He and Weed both considered the nomination well in hand, and so Seward toured Europe and the Middle East instead of campaigning. Chase, perhaps a bit self-absorbed, believed that he deserved that nomination by virtue of his tireless abolitionist efforts. So strongly did he believe this that he made no significant effort to campaign. A groundswell of support would be one of “spontaneous growth.” Finally, Edward Bates’ hiatus from public life left him unfamiliar with the new factions and tensions within the Republican Party. He had not adapted his rhetoric to resonate with a changing climate, particularly on the question of slavery, which had become rancorous.

Lincoln did not have a savvy, seasoned campaign organizer to lay out a path, but he did have a loyal band of colleagues committed to see him get the nomination. He decided it would be best to keep a low profile. Instead of announcing his interest in the presidency early on and attracting unwanted attention and attacks from his rivals, he made a name for himself as an orator and a firmly anti-slavery Republican. His humor and gift for storytelling and compelling imagery spellbound audiences across the country. In the mid-1800s, people would listen to orators with rapt attention from dawn to dusk, and a politician’s ability to articulate his position well greatly impacted his chances of election. Lincoln’s debates with Stephen Douglas  were all-day affairs. Lincoln decided to publish and circulate a transcript of the debate. His abolitionist sentiments were widely read and resonated with Republicans. It got the public’s attention without arousing suspicion of the candidates.

His goal was to slide into second place in as many states as possible, and maybe even tempt people “away from their first loves.” Beyond his home state of Illinois, he needed more attention. Lincoln began to speak around the country, addressing tens of thousands of people from Kentucky to New York. His speeches were published in newspapers and he received a steady stream of invitations to speaking engagements.

More than luck, it was Lincoln’s shrewdness and ambition that led to his nomination. He was a master of timing, and did everything right that his candidates got wrong. He stayed before the public, held a moderate position but refused to pander to constituents. When Lincoln did make his interest in nomination public, those who knew of him—whether through the published debates or hearing him speak—thought of him favorably. He had winsomely made connections with Republicans across the country while also having far fewer adversaries than Seward, Chase, or Bates.

When vying for the Republican nomination and then candidacy, Lincoln spoke in terms of containing slavery. He saw slavery as a horrible thing, but also that its days as an institution were numbered. It would not have been shrewd to hasten slavery’s demise at the expense of  the States dividing. If the country fell apart, the abolitionist cause would be lost along with the nation, and the world would watch it go to hell.

Ever the moderate and harmonizer, Lincoln faced criticism for not taking a firm enough stance against slavery by some, and too hard a line by others. Unbeknownst to even his closest advisors, Lincoln had more ambitious slavery-ending designs than many of the most fervent abolitionists.

In the spring of 1862, the slavery debate reignited, as Congress debated various proposals. Lincoln himself proposed a resolution that would allow the federal government to offer remuneration to Southern states that gradually released their slaves at a certain age or by a certain date, but this was shot down by conservative Republicans and Democrats. In July of that same year, a Republican majority Congress passed a bill that expanded the government’s ability to confiscate and free slaves. If Lincoln signed off on the bill, the government would not only be able to protect escaped slaves, but could free any slaves owned by people participating in the secession from the Union.

Chase thought it would end Lincoln’s credibility if he vetoed the bill, but it was more a moment of testing: could Lincoln rein in the radicals and abolitionists or would he let them control the agenda? Though sympathetic with the bill, Lincoln considered the Second Confiscation Act ill-conceived. He sent it back to its writers with suggestions that would make the bill more palatable and constitutional. The acrimony of the slavery debate tainted debate in the Houses, and overshadowed milestone legislation like the Homestead Act, Morrill Act, and the Pacific Railroad Act.

It was during these summer months of 1862 that Lincoln intimated to his cabinet that he had drafted a document that would emancipate the 3.5 million slaves on grounds of the president’s powers of war. It was his intention to release a formal proclamation five months from then, January 1, 1863. He said he could not be dissuaded of this, but wanted the cabinet to weigh in on the particular provisions, like enlisting blacks to fight for the Union, awarding compensation for military service, and the legality of Union forces commandeering property in Confederate states for military purposes.

Using the president’s constitution-backed powers of war, Lincoln planned to prosecute the seceding states for their ongoing rebellion. This gambit allowed Lincoln to take an aggressively abolitionist stance without transgressing constitutional limits.

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would overturn almost a century of laws and policies concerning the institution of slavery. Naturally, this raised questions for some cabinet members.

Lincoln had kept his own counsel on the question of emancipation, and had thoughtfully anticipated most of the objections raised. Seward, however, had raised questions that Lincoln had never thought of, like whether France and England would intervene to protect their trade interests in the South. Seward also underscored the importance of a Union victory to accompany such a proclamation. Lincoln recalls that these arguments “struck [him] with great force.” He realized Union victories would mean the difference between his declaration carrying weight or dismissed as the last ditch effort of a floundering Union to assert control.

Another question was where the emancipated slaves would go. Bates, for instance, did not believe that blacks and whites would be able to coexist. He advocated colonization, sending the emancipated blacks to Central America. Lincoln invited a coalition of freedmen to the White House to discuss the soon-to-be-public Emancipation Proclamation, to see if the delegation of educated blacks would be willing to spearhead a voluntary relocation and resettlement process in Central America. Those present relayed the proposal to their fellow freedmen, who responded to the colonization prospect with indignation and a litany of reasons against it. They argued that they were just as native to the United States as any white man born here. As such, they had a right to every dignity and justice that whites already possessed. So much for the United States being a refuge for the oppressed! Frederick Douglass acknowledged that the delegation’s coming to the White House at all was historic, but that the president’s proposal for post-emancipation policy smacked of “pride of race and blood.”

Lincoln had sorely underestimated the blacks’ desire to stay in the United States. He was trying to attract political flies with honey instead of vinegar, trying to broaden its appeal. Instead, he caught flack for the suggestion from blacks and more radical abolitionists like Chase. As Lincoln continued to become closer friends with Frederick Douglas and got to know hundreds of young black soldiers, the feasibility of removal and resettlement grew dimmer in Lincoln’s mind.

Lincoln had two bouts of deep depression as a young man. At his lowest moments, he considered suicide. The thought that convinced him to press on was that he still had to do something worthy of remembrance. When the Emancipation Proclamation had been proclaimed, he reminded an old friend, Joshua Speed, of that critical dissuasion two decades earlier that kept him alive. Lincoln confided, “I believe that in this measure…my fondest hopes will be realized.”

General Ulysses S. Grant said of Abraham Lincoln that he was “incontestably the greatest man I ever knew.” Poet Walt Whitman remarked that, “Abraham Lincoln seems to me the greatest figure yet on the crowded canvas of the nineteenth century.”

Effusive as their praise was, perhaps even Grant and Whitman would be surprised to learn the extent to which Lincoln’s fame went before him. In 1908, renowned writer Leo Tolstoy described an encounter with villagers in an isolated corner of the North Caucasus (the region that bridges Eastern Europe and Western Asia).

Tolstoy was the village chieftain’s guest of honor. There, in the mountainous hinterlands, Tolstoy regaled the chieftain’s friends and neighbors with stories of the great men of history: Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon. When he was done, the chief interjected that Tolstoy had failed to breathe so much as a word about “the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world,” a man with “a voice of thunder,” who “laughed like the sunrise,” and whose deeds were “strong as a rock.”

The chieftain went on about this fearless leader from America, a land so remote that it would take a lifetime to reach. Lincoln had already become a legend among the villagers, and Tolstoy’s stay in the village revealed that praise for Lincoln’s leadership and personality had spread the world over. Tolstoy told them what he knew of Lincoln’s upbringing, habits, his influence, and strength. In a lavish display of gratitude for the tales, they gave Tolstoy an Arabian horse.

Tolstoy wrote of Lincoln that, “Washington was a typical American, Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country, bigger than all the presidents together.” Tolstoy went on to say that posterity will be a better judge of Lincoln’s impact than his own generation could be: “His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.”