Gautam Mukunda: Abraham Lincoln, Avatar of History

Historian and author Guatam Mukunda believes Abraham Lincoln's humility derived from his unique mind and sense of destiny. Mukunda's latest book is "Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter" --goo.gl Transcript -- Abraham Lincoln's humility comes from a lot of places, but it probably starts with his sense of empathy. We know a remarkable amount about him for someone who was born in the early 19th century. Even when he was a child he demonstrated extraordinary empathy and willingness to reach out to the people around him. Even to animals. And it's hard to imagine what sort of the Old West was like, but this is when everyone sort of... torturing animals for fun and for sports was a casual -- everybody did that. And we have many sort of quite reliable stories that he not only absolutely refused to participate in that but would stop other people from doing it when he saw it -- something that was sort of remarked upon as a strange characteristic from this young boy. So I think it started with empathy and another element would probably be -- that he clearly suffered from chronic clinical depression. At least twice his friends put him on suicide watch. And when you think about what it took to be put on suicide watch in the 19th century, this will give you a sense of just how severe the depression probably was.... He once said, "I am the most miserable man living." So I think these two things were part of it. And there was this sense in him that he was -- Lincoln was not ...