55 While most people think of Camp David as a location to which the U. S. president and his spouse or family might retreat for relative isolation and sanctuary, as suggested by the preceding narrative, presidents have also utilized the camp to engage in both low intensity negotiations and extremely difficult discussions. While both Roosevelt and Eisenhower hosted international guests at Camp David in hope that the respite might provide rest for themselves but also for both allies and adversaries, some may know Camp David because of its use by President Jimmy Carter for thirteen days in September 1978 to mediate negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that resulted in the historic peace named the Camp David Accords. The agreement ended forty years of open hostility between the two nations, which began with the creation of the modern Israeli nation and led to four wars between the two countries as well as between Egypt’s allies and Israel. It is important to note, however, that as former special White House advisor Peter G. Bourne, one of Carter’s biographers, writes in his book, Camp David reminded Carter of “the virtues of Plains, [Georgia],” and its “rural ambience” allowed the president to “better recover from adversity and gather his strength psychologically” for the multitude of issues, responsibilities, and problems that any twentieth or twenty-first century president must necessarily face. Indeed, Bourne records that Carter traveled the short distance to Camp David from the White House sixty-seven times in his four years of presidency, and Carter repeated his fondness for the location in his memoirs, including a detailed discussion of the camp in his chapter on the accords.9 Similar to these twentieth century examples, the man often regarded the greatest U. S. president, Abraham Lincoln, sought and found solace both in activities and in locations where he could be somewhat removed from the ongoing stresses of leadership of a dividing and warring nation. Most Lincoln scholars acknowledge that Lincoln dealt with severe depression on more than one occasion in his early life as well as during the travails of his presidency. In fact, an entire book by Joshua Shenk, Lincoln’s Melancholy, deals with this aspect of Lincoln’s life and his overcoming depression. On multiple occasions, Lincoln shared with his closest associates during his presidency what today would be identified as markers for clinical depression. For instance, LEADERS, LEADERSHIP, AND “SANCTUARY”: A FOCUS ON SIX U.S. PRESIDENTS AND THE PROBLEM OF REST
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