To the Editor:
Re “Lincoln’s School of Management” (Jan. 27), which described the decision-making strategy for the Emancipation Proclamation as a model for today’s executives:
The article’s description of how “Americans reacted strongly to the proclamation” said nothing of how enslaved African-Americans reacted. Instead, it focused only on big political players, who might be considered the other C.E.O.’s in the game: abolitionists, Republican leaders, Union Democrats, Jefferson Davis, and The New York World.
Nor does it mention the major oversight of Lincoln’s management team: its failure to make supportive provisions for the many slaves who predictably embraced the emancipation promise and fled their masters, only to face equally predictable starvation and disease. Perhaps this case study should be rewritten to encourage business leaders to think a little bit less about how much they’re like Lincoln, and a little bit more about how their business decisions affect ordinary people in the real world.
MARK PETERSON
Berkeley, Calif., Jan. 27
The writer is a history professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Letters: Seeing Lincoln as a C.E.O.
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