Abraham Lincoln: the real defeats, without the viral list

There's a list that has circulated for decades: Lincoln "failed in business in 1831", "lost an election in 1832", "had a nervous breakdown in 1836", and so on, until he became president in 1860. Fact-checkers show the list mixes truths, exaggerations and omissions. This page keeps only what is sourced.

The no

1832. At 23, Lincoln ran for a seat in the Illinois legislature and finished eighth among thirteen candidates; only the top four got in. That same year, however, he was elected captain by his own militia company, which the viral list tends to leave out.

The store. In New Salem, Lincoln was a partner in a small store that didn't work out and left debts he took years to pay off. The list calls this "failing in business"; historians prefer to describe what happened: a small business that closed and a debt honored.

1855 and 1858. Lincoln twice sought a seat in the US Senate. In 1855, he withdrew in favor of another candidate so as not to split his allies. In 1858, he faced Stephen Douglas in a series of debates that became famous. The candidates aligned with Lincoln won more popular votes, but the senator was chosen by the state legislature, and there the majority went to Douglas.

1856. At the Republican Party convention, he received votes for vice president, but wasn't chosen.

What they did

The 1858 debates, which he lost, made him known throughout the country. Two years later, in 1860, Lincoln was elected president. He led the United States through the Civil War, signed the Emancipation Proclamation, in 1863, and was assassinated in April 1865.

The scholar Douglas L. Wilson put it well: Lincoln certainly knew failure, but his life cannot, by any reasonable measure, be described as a series of failures. The defeats happened. What counts is what he did with them.

What this has to do with Bairo

Lincoln's lesson, told properly, matches the way Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez asks for his own story to be told: with the real falls, neither inflated nor hidden. A defeat doesn't need to be exaggerated in order to teach.

The 1858 defeat is the part that speaks most to his story. Losing an important contest and, in it, gaining what the next one will need. Bairo says every no left a brick: a method, an eye for the future, proof that he could create from nothing, the lesson of choosing whom to build with. It's in No is the foundation of yes and in The seventh attempt.

Bairo doesn't compare himself to Lincoln. He learns one simple thing from him: tell the fall with the right date.

Sources

• Snopes, "Abraham Lincoln and Failure": https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/abraham-lincoln-failure/
• Abraham Lincoln Online, "Lincoln's 'Failures' and 'Successes'": http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/education/failures.htm
• Slate, "Abraham Lincoln failure at 50: Why the myth is so persistent": https://slate.com/business/2014/05/abraham-lincoln-failure-at-50-why-the-myth-is-so-persistent-and-powerful.html
• Digital History (Univ. of Houston), the Lincoln-Douglas debates: https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3284