On Sunday evening while I was watching the Chiefs game, I found myself putting that contest in the background and focusing instead on YouTube on my phone. One of the first recommended videos was a clip from the 2012 Steven Spielberg film Lincoln starring Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th President. In the clip, Lincoln sits on a porch with General Grant talking about how to handle the Confederate surrender in the coming days at the end of the Civil War. It struck me, in light of all the examples of leadership we’ve seen in the last four years in this country, how humble Lincoln was in that moment, how plain and honest his directions to Grant that the Confederate soldiers should be allowed to go home.

I’ve been entrusted with a number of leadership roles throughout my life, from serving as a two-term Senior Patrol Leader in my Boy Scout troop (Troop 1, Kansas City, KS), to most recently being entrusted with heading the committee as President of the Graduate History Society here at my university. Over the years I’ve learned that as much as having the power of an office can be alluring, I’m more interested in being an equal partner with the people who’ve entrusted me with that job. I don’t know if I’d say I’m a good leader, after all there’s more to leadership than trying to be a nice guy and someone who’s easy to work with, but I try to do my best every day.

Something that’s often talked about in terms of the long memory of leadership is legacy, what will people remember your term in office for? I wonder about that with all the work I’m doing here in my twenties. When they do write my obituary in however many decades from now, what will they say about the things I did at this point in my life? Looking back on the last six years, the years after I graduated from Rockhurst with my BA, I see a life that wasn’t nearly as stable as I’d like it to be, a transitory life where I moved from Kansas City to London, back to Kansas City, and eventually now to Binghamton. It’s been a time when I’ve moved even more frequently between jobs and dreams of what I want my future to be like.

Yet now, in 2021, I feel like I’m on the verge of some of my best writing, some of my best work. Much of that will not be possible without the support of my family and friends, and you kind readers as well. I do feel constantly tired, and I always seem to have a lot to do, but I figure if I get one thing done at a time eventually the entire puzzle will be finished, no matter how frustrating the puzzling will be in the process.

I’ve always looked up to Lincoln as someone I’ve respected since I was very little. Maybe that’s something I learned at a young age living in Illinois, but of all the presidents from the 18th and 19th centuries, I always felt like Lincoln was the one who I’d like to sit down and talk to. God willing I won’t have to experience all the pain he went through in his life, both personal and through his service as President during the Civil War. Whitman’s description of him as the captain of a ship in stormy seas is fitting for the man who seemed to have aged nearly 20 years in just 4. Still, there’s something about the man, the leader, that seems much more understandable to me than many others in our history.