Life & Wisdom Quote by John George Nicolay

Nicolay is doing something sly here: he deflates the myth without demolishing the man. The phrase "therefore not to be wondered at" wears the calm mask of inevitability, as if history itself has already rendered its verdict and any disappointment is simply the reader's naive expectation. It's not an insult so much as a controlled narrowing of the frame. Lincoln in Congress, Nicolay implies, is the wrong Lincoln to look for.

Context matters. Lincoln served a single term (1847-1849) as a Whig during the Mexican-American War, taking unpopular stands that later opponents would weaponize. It was a period when national politics rewarded partisanship and patronage more than moral clarity; Lincoln, not yet the wartime executive and national symbol, was one ambitious lawyer among many. Nicolay, as Lincoln's longtime secretary and later biographer, writes with an insider's incentive: to explain away the anticlimax without letting it stain the larger arc.

The subtext is curatorial. By saying the term "added practically nothing", Nicolay subtly protects Lincoln's legend from the messy, ordinary reality of legislative life. He shifts the locus of greatness from the arena of speeches and votes to the slower accumulation of character, networks, and self-education that happens offstage. Even the adverb "practically" is doing work: it concedes there may have been minor gains, but not the kind that count toward reputation, that public currency historians spend.

It's also a warning about biography itself. Nicolay is telling readers not to confuse résumé with destiny; some careers only make sense retroactively, when the right crisis finally gives a figure room to become himself.