David Herbert Donald

"The more I have studied Lincoln, the more I have followed his thought processes, the more I am convinced that he understood leadership better than any other American president."

"But I have tried to go over it very carefully, not merely what the evidence is, but with psychoanalysts and psychologists, and I think we're just about all agreed that Lincoln and Speed did not have a homosexual relationship."

"In Lincoln's day a President's religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln's countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs."