President Dwight Eisenhower's press secretary, James Hagerty, [8] and Liz Carpenter, press secretary to First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, [7] both said they felt Lincoln's presence many times.

On the evening of the Confederate capitulation in Virginia, President Lincoln had returned to Washington after a long visit to the war front near Richmond. At the White House, Lincoln spoke briefly to serenaders celebrating the Union victory — postponing his formal comments for two days. Both Lincoln and Churchill urged action. Lincoln wrote General George B. McClellan in April 1862: “And, once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow.” 8 A few weeks later, Lincoln wrote McClellan: “Your call for Parrott guns from Washington alarms me—chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination.” 9 Churchill prided himself on being a “prod.” On 3 June 1940, only three weeks after becoming Prime Minister, Churchill minuted the British chiefs of Staff: “The completely defensive habit of mind, which has ruined the French, must not be allowed to ruin our initiative.” 10 Lewis E. Lehrman was presented the National Humanities Medal at the White House in 2005 for his work in American history. He has been a member of the Advisory Committee of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and the Lincoln Forum. In 2013, Lehrman was named a Distinguished Director of the Abraham Lincoln Association. a b c d Ogden, Tom. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ghosts and Hauntings. New York: Alpha Books, 1999. ISBN 0-02-863659-7Nigel Nicolson, editor, Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1939-1945, p. 438 (February 28, 1945). Charles McMoran Wilson Moran, Churchill, Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran: the Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, p. 5 (May 24, 1940), p. 300. (July 22, 1945). Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Road to Victory 1941-1945, p. 1166 (Letter from Sarah Churchill to Clementine Churchill, February 1, 1945).

The ghost of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, also known as the White House Ghost, is said to have haunted the White House since Lincoln's assassination in 1865. Lincoln's ghost has also been said to haunt many of his former residences in Springfield, Illinois, including his former law office. [1] Both Lincoln and Churchill faced conflicts in which the survival of democracy was at stake. They fought not only for their generation, but for ours. As Lincoln wrote in December 1861, “The struggle of today is not altogether for today; it is for a vast future also.”

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Of the several stories about the ghosts of former presidents of the United States revisiting the White House, Lincoln's ghost is perhaps the most common and popular. First Lady Grace Coolidge, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and President Theodore Roosevelt are among those who claimed to have seen Lincoln's ghost in the White House. On May 8, 1945, Winston Churchill announced the Allied victory on radio — declaring that the British should celebrate “to-day and to-morrow as Victory in Europe days.” The British Prime Minister later told the House of Commons: “We have all of us made our mistakes, but the strength of the Parliamentary institution has been shown to enable it at the same moment to preserve all the title-deeds of democracy while waging war in the most stern and protracted form.”

Mr. Lehrman received his B.A. from Yale and his M.A. in History from Harvard. He was a Carnegie Teaching Fellow in History at Yale and was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in History at Harvard. Mr. Lehrman is widely known for his run for Governor of New York in 1982. In 1983, Mr. Lehrman was the Cardinal Cooke honoree of the Archdiocese of New York for his early work developing scholarships for New York inner-city schools. He has been a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute, the Morgan Library, the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation. He is a former Chairman of the Committee on Humanities of the Yale University Council. Both came to power at a time of war. They had completely different personalities and leadership styles, but were similar in other ways. Charles McMoran Wilson Moran, Winston Churchill: the Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965, p. 18 (December 27, 1941). This book is heavy Churchill since it is so much easier to gather primary resources. In the end I truly appreciate Lincoln's humility. Not to say he wasn't as ambitious as Churchill, he just channeled in a quiet way. Craig Symonds wrote: “Given the absence of either a department of defense or a joint chiefs of staff, Lincoln was the only person in the government or its military establishment who had simultaneous command authority over both the army and the navy, and as a result, he was necessarily drawn into those aspects of the war where the two services had to cooperate: on the western rivers and along the Atlantic seaboard.” 16 Lincoln and Churchill frequently worried that their forces would not be used to their best advantage. Churchill particularly worried about the efficient use of British forces in Cairo. They did not have perfect tools but they must use the tools they had. At one point, Churchill told an aide: “Remember, it isn’t only the good boys who help win the wars. It is the sneaks and stinkers as well.” 17 A Reliable SystemThe last reported sighting of Lincoln's ghost was in the early 1980s, when Tony Savoy, White House operations foreman, came into the White House and saw Lincoln sitting in a chair at the top of some stairs. [3] Willie Lincoln died in the White House during his father's presidency.

Lincoln and Churchill demonstrated that in war, liquor is neither a certain asset nor a certain impediment to effective leadership. Good health, however, a requirement. For Further Reference Most nights, President Abraham Lincoln worked “in his office, though occasionally he remained in the drawing room after dinner, conversing with visitors or listening to music, for which he had an especial liking, though he was not versed in the science and preferred simple ballads to more elaborate compositions,” wrote White House aide John Hay. 1Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume VI, Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), p. 861. Like Churchill, Lincoln was a practical man. Lincoln had a lifelong appreciation for the power and utility of water – having traveled down the Mississippi on a raft twice as a teenager and young man. In an undated manuscript, Lincoln actually recorded some observations about his experience: “Niagara-Falls! By what mysterious power is it that millions and millions, are drawn from all parts of the world, to gaze upon Niagara Falls? There is no mystery about the thing itself. Every effect is just as any intelligent man knowing the causes, would anticipate, without [seeing] it. If the water moving onward in a great river, reaches a point where there is a perpendicular job, of a hundred feet in descent, in the bottom of the river, – it is plain the water will have a violent and continuous plunge at that point. It is also plain the water, thus plunging, will foam, and roar, and send up a mist, continuously, in which last, during sunshine, there will be perpetual rain-bows.” Historian Lewis Lehrman compares the characteristics of two wartime leaders, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, both of whom faced comparable challenges leading their countries through horrible conflagrations, and who both excelled at using language as a strategic weapon to mobilize and inspire their countries.