Leaders are often drawn in different directions: cost savings versus innovation; excellence versus equity; universal health-care versus a balanced budget. One of the great challenges for understanding Abraham Lincoln is what appears to many a central inconsistency. What was his main priority? Was he a unifier or emancipator?
How did Lincoln make judgments and maneuver through this apparent inconsistency. Lincoln, like all leaders, had a series of embedded complexities. On one hand he had a belief in equality and civil rights on the other hand there’s a sense that he had a conservative tendency that appreciated the importance of state’s rights.
