After his death Abraham Lincoln became a global figure who spoke
- and continues to speak - to peoples across the world. As the
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George put it, Lincoln 'lost
his nationality in death.' His political principles, his record
of successful executive leadership in wartime, his role as the
'Great Emancipator', his resolute defence of popular government,
and the perception of him as an exemplar of human brotherhood
made him an international cult figure. Karl Marx judged him 'the
single-minded son of the working class'; Cuban rebels invoked
his name in support of their struggle for emancipation and self-
government; Tolstoy reported his fame in the Caucasus; Tomas
Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, drew strength as
'the Lincoln of Central Europe'; racially-mixed, republican
'Lincoln brigades' fought in the Spanish Civil War; more
recently, Gordon Brown and Pervez Musharaf invoked Lincoln in
support of their respective domestic agendas. By 1900, works on
Lincoln had been p