Lincoln has been viewed in celebratory ways of late, but former Sen. George McGovern D-South Dakota, gave a new, very “honest” angle on the President Friday when discussing his new work, “Abraham Lincoln.”
McGovern focused on the most human aspects of the Civil War president while speaking at the National Press Club, stating, “Lincoln suffered most of his life with what we would now call clinical depression.” Certain to know a little about feeling blue after being defeated by a landslide in his race for president in 1972, McGovern added that Lincoln once told one of his aides “he would no longer carry a knife with him for fear that in a moment of despondency he might cut his wrists or slit his throat.”
McGovern highlighted the way Lincoln laughed and made jokes to cover up the melancholy.
“A group of women once asked Lincoln how he could laugh when so many men were dying during the war to which he replied, ‘After all the terrible things that have occurred, if I did not laugh then my heart would break.’”
-Ryan Freeman contributed to this article
