Tolstoy told how he entertained the eager crowd for hours with tales of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. “In 1908, in a wild and remote area of the North Caucasus, Leo Tolstoy, the greatest writer of the age, was the guest of a tribal chief “living far away from civilized life in the mountains.” Gathering his family and neighbors, the chief asked Tolstoy to tell stories about the famous men of history. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when it's light beams directly on us.” We are still too near to his greatness, " Tolstoy concluded, "but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. He was bigger than his country- bigger than all the Presidents t,ogether. Naopoleon was a typical Frenchmen, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character. “Tolstoy went on to observe,"This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become.
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