Reluctance and humility are not terms we associate with the modern presidency and yet they are significant characteristics of the two presidents our nation honors today, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

After serving for eight years as commander of the Continental Army, Washington fervently wished to retire to his home at Mount Vernon.

In April 1789 he wrote to Henry Knox, his former Army comrade and future secretary of war, comparing his feelings about becoming president to “those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution.”

He was reluctant, he suggested, in the “evening” of his life to “quit a peaceful abode for an ocean of difficulties” and believed he was “without that competency of political skill … which is necessary to manage the helm.”

But still, at age 57, he left his beloved Virginian plantation with “the best dispositions to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations.”

Seventy-two years later, Abraham Lincoln showed less reluctance in pursuing our nation’s highest office, believing his newly-formed Republican Party was best equipped to preserve our Union.

As a candidate and as president, however, Lincoln demonstrated his own humble inclinations.

During the campaign, when asked for a sketch of his life, he wrote: “There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If anything be made out of it, I wish to be modest, and not go beyond the material.”

The “material” of his political formation included just one term in Congress, two failed Senate races, no administrative experience, and only one year of formal schooling.

Once elected, Lincoln proved up to the task, famously naming his rivals to his cabinet, realizing they had professional skills and insights that he lacked.

Perhaps one of the most striking examples of his innate modesty was when, in Gettysburg, he suggested “the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here.”

That address has instead become the most eloquent expression of democracy and self-governance the world has ever known — “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Lincoln’s primary task that day was to honor the war dead but in so doing, he poetically observed they “gave the last full measure of devotion” so that “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … shall not perish from the earth.”

It seems paradoxical that at the two times in history when our country was most vulnerable — at its founding and during the Civil War — we elected leaders who, though both highly skilled, were so unassuming. Though perhaps that same humility inspired the respect they received from their fellow citizens, for as Franklin Roosevelt once observed, the presidency is “pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”

We are a more stable nation today, many argue the most powerful in the world, but one facing our own “ocean of difficulties.”

Presidents’ Day offers an opportunity to reflect on our history and be informed by it. Each of us has opinions about the presidencies we’ve experienced in our lifetimes. I encourage readers to pause to consider which modern presidents they most admire.

I consider myself a progressive voter who feels the work of building a functional multi-racial democracy remains unfinished. In that spirit, the presidents I most respect are Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Let me conclude this reflection, however, with an observation from one of our most lauded military heroes, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that seems in keeping with Washington’s and Lincoln’s example and worthy of our consideration.

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head,” Eisenhower noted. “(Leadership) is persuasion — and conciliation — and education — and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know — or believe in — or will practice.”

Tom Putnam, a resident of Cape Porpoise, is the former director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.