In this February no-man’s land between Lincoln’s birthday, once universally celebrated, and the bastard holiday of President’s Day, which blurs Abraham Lincoln with the likes of Chester A. Arthur and Warren G. Harding, it’s still a good idea to ponder Lincoln. It’s always a good idea to ponder Lincoln.

For Americans, the 16th president has been a bit like Saint Paul – all things to all men. Liberal Democrats have revered him no less than conservative Republicans, godless heathens no less than foam-flecked bible thumpers.

Indeed, a glance at the ways in which Lincoln has been used by Americans offers a fair survey of the ways in which Americans have seen themselves.

Though not a religious man in any conventional sense – when he ran for president, most of the pastors in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois, pointedly declined to endorse him – Lincoln was appropriated after his death by every conceivable denomination, from Unitarians to Christian Scientists.

In 1891, a then-famous psychic published a bestselling book called “Was Lincoln a Spiritualist?” The answer, supported by a thrilling account of the president levitating atop a grand piano, was an emphatic “Of course!”

Lincoln’s wily defense of capital and of capitalism didn’t deter the American Communist Party from celebrating “Lincoln-Lenin Day” in the 1920s and 1930s. Perhaps more amazingly, the vilest segregationist of the early 20th century claimed ideological kinship with the Great Emancipator.

“My views and his views,” said Mississippi Senator James K. Vardaman in a speech on Lincoln’s centennial, “are substantially identical.” Who would have guessed?

The appropriation of Lincoln continues into the present, even as studies reveal that the average college graduate thinks “Mary Todd” is a Jello shooter made with Sambuca. A recent History Channel documentary, perfectly attuned to our therapeutic obsessions, depicted an Abe designed for the mental health industry, “tragically abused by his father.”

Only one thing is more popular these days than therapy, and that’s making money (therapy is expensive). It’s no surprise, then, that “Lincoln on Leadership: Executive Strategies for Tough Times,” by Donald T. Phillips (Warner Books, 1992), became one of the best-selling business books of the last decade – and one of the best-selling Lincoln books ever.

What is surprising, especially for anyone familiar with the soul-crushing banality of business books, is how good Phillips’s book is, both as an historical survey and as a charming guide to the way an effective executive treats the people he hopes to lead.

In fact, Phillips conceived “Lincoln on Leadership” as a reaction against the typical business books of the 1980s and early 1990s, particularly their emphasis on “management” over leadership.

“Lincoln was the last great pre-industrial leader before the revolutionary period of industrial change,” Phillips said in an interview. “When Henry Ford came up with the assembly line and workers had to be dealt with in large numbers, a ‘management’ ideology began and people were thought of as objects or units.”

Before he published the book, Phillips was a manager for an oil-exploration company in Texas. But he also read a lot of American history, and in Lincoln he found a wholly different approach from what he saw in his fellow executives.

“I started reading about his presidency, and I realized I had a hard time placing him,” he said. “I assumed he was in the White House all the time. But he wasn’t. I studied some more and discovered he was moving around constantly – visiting troops, conferring with generals, studying battlefields. He went where his people were.”

Lincoln, Phillips saw, was the early prototype of what became a business buzz phrase of the 1990s – “management by walking around,” prompting managers to leave their executive suites and study their businesses first-hand.

So that’s what Phillips did. “I thought, ‘If Lincoln was out in the field all the time, maybe I should be, too.’ So I started getting out of the office more. And it worked. I started seeing results.”

Once he became better acquainted with subordinates, Phillips looked to Lincoln to learn how to cultivate them.

“I started reading about all the stories he would tell,” he said. “That’s how he was influencing people – how he got them to do what he wanted them to do. He would use a funny story to clinch an argument or break tension or maneuver a conversation to his advantage. I started collecting stories myself and trying his technique on the job, and it worked.

“I began to think, maybe these leadership concepts aren’t so new after all. Maybe Lincoln understood it long before there were MBAs,” Phillips said.

“Lincoln on Leadership” took off slowly, but sales accelerated until it’s now a staple of business education and, especially, military officer training. The success enabled Phillips to quit the oil business and write full time.

Lincoln failed at several businesses as a young man. He would surely be tickled to find himself held up as a paragon of the successful business executive – though probably not as surprised as he would be to learn he could levitate.

But the very adaptability of the Lincoln story is a measure of his greatness.

“You know the old saying, ‘Familiarity breeds contempt,'” Phillips said. “That just doesn’t happen with Lincoln. The more you know about him, the more you study him, the more fascinating he becomes.”

It’s a good thing to remember, especially now, as we try to rescue Lincoln from his February no man’s land.

Mr. Ferguson is a columnist for Bloomberg News.