Team of Rivals: Lincoln's Genius

By Daniel F. Linsalata | Monday, January 9, 2006

BOOK REVIEW

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Doris Kearns Goodwin, 2005

Abraham Lincoln was never supposed to be elected President. He lacked all the traditional prerequisites, even the simplest ones: executive experience, formal education, and defined positions on the political issues of the day. His fame came from, at best, his ability to entertain tavern guests with his stories while traveling the Illinois law circuit, as he did six months a year after teaching himself to read and practice law. At worst, he was known for a single, disastrous term in Congress during the 1840s when he alienated many in his party and essentially proved himself unfit to hold public office—as two consecutive losses in Illinois Senate races showed.

Nonetheless, Lincoln earned a chance to contend for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. His rivals considered him to be an outsider, a "nullity," and nothing better than a "fourth-rate lecturer." Lincoln himself acknowledged his grim prospects—his best strategy for winning was the hope that, since he was likely not the first choice of any delegate, perhaps he could become the second choice of all. When, on the morning of the Republican nominating convention, Lincoln learned that no nominee had been selected on the first ballot, he knew his chances had just increased immeasurably.

Such is the scene that Doris Kearns Goodwin sets in the opening chapters of her absorbing, insightful biography on our sixteenth president, Team of Rivals. Convinced that nearly everything that could be said or written about Lincoln himself has already been covered, Goodwin instead studies Lincoln by studying those who knew him best: those men with whom he worked and lived, celebrated and worried. Goodwin spent the better part of a decade poring over correspondence and diaries of the men who comprised Lincoln's cabinet in an effort to gain a new impression of the president and the influence he exerted. What is most striking, and also the central focus of the book, is that those who composed his cabinet had been rivals of Lincoln and of each other shortly before the election, or even in the months following it.

Indeed, the men to whom Lincoln was supposed to have a finished a distant fourth in the primary election were the first three appointees to the cabinet. William Seward, the famed Senator from New York, and presumed winner of the nomination, became Lincoln's Secretary of State; Ohio Governor Salmon P. Chase (Dartmouth 1826) was appointed as Secretary of the Treasury and charged with financing the War Between the States; and Missouri's Edwin Bates, a retired judge and former slave owner, became Attorney General.

For two hundred fifty pages, Goodwin focuses upon the background and home life of each of these three gentlemen, in addition to Lincoln, creating vivid sketches of radically different scenarios and forces which drew each man to politics and, ultimately, to Lincoln's administration. The common denominator seemed to be the undying quest for personal gain and political self-advancement inherent in each gentleman. As Goodwin delves into the narrative section of the story—that which begins with Lincoln's election and lasts through the war—the tale becomes largely a matter of how Lincoln copes with each gentleman's unique manifestation of these qualities, and how well they mesh with his own.

Goodwin obviously admires Lincoln greatly, to the point of being overtly partisan towards him. She glosses over history's most common critiques of him, attributing any shortcomings or quirks to a sort of eclectic genius, and comes down harshly upon those with whom Lincoln clashed most openly. Lincoln's defining leadership characteristic was his determination to always have the final say in any situation, and take responsibility for the ensuing consequences. His adversaries, by contrast, universally found ways to disperse the blame, never admitting guilt, nor shouldering responsibility for the fallout. Amongst the cabinet members, Goodwin sheds the fewest tears for Chase, who made no small secret of his belief that he should have been the man to receive the nomination and all along attempts to display his intellectual and political superiority to Lincoln. While the same criticism can be made, in varying degrees, of Lincoln's other secretaries, Chase thrice made the crucial error of trying to use his own position as leverage by tendering his resignation to the president. Lincoln wisely ignored these requests, and put on a happy public face about the turmoil. By the fourth time Chase tried to resign, Lincoln had run out of patience, and, to Chase's shock, accepted the letter of resignation. However, Lincoln summarily appointed Chase as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, reasoning that, whatever his personal qualms with the man, he ought to appoint the best men with whom he could keep the Union intact.

General George McClellan, commander of the Armies of the Potomac, suffers a similar fate in Goodwin's judgment, as he repeatedly ignored Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's commands for offensives against the southern insurgents. Goodwin describes McClellan as being incompetent and worse, suffering from a horrible Napoleon complex. She contrasts McClellan's inaction and superfluous spending on luxury items with U.S. Grant's hardscrabble lifestyle, economic efficiency, and, not coincidentally, his strict adherence to Lincoln's orders. Above all, Team of Rivals is not a recounting of the Civil War in a view-from-the-battlefield sense, but rather a portrait of the political climate in Washington during the time. It depicts a city on edge, at war, and under siege; one could easily find similar circumstances in any other city during wartime.

Goodwin also introduces the reader to a large cast of female characters who, as she explains in her introduction, yield a new perspective of Lincoln and his colleagues. To that end, she portrays each of the wives and daughters in a very sympathetic light, in hopes that they will be the women who stood by their men. Mary Lincoln, often cited as an additional source of duress for her husband, becomes a strong-willed, mentally stable woman and powerful Washington socialite. While these glimpses into personal lives are surely interesting, the female characters all fall by the wayside, becoming mere bit players in the war narrative, despite Goodwin's best efforts.

The animosities and shifting alliances which drive the book forward rightfully receive far more attention and intrigue. In addition to his rivals within the Republican Party, Lincoln also juggles tenuous relationships with a handful of generals, as well as Democrats and southern sympathizers who were appointed to his cabinet. Among them were Edwin Bates, the Attorney General; Giddeon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; and Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General and scion of the powerful Blair political family. Each of these men were crucial for the advice they provided to Lincoln, and each reserved a special contempt for at least one other member of the cabinet.

Lincoln is ultimately revealed to be neither a perfect leader nor a perfect commander, but an excellent diplomat. He was the right man at the right time for the country, able to rise above the petty squabbling amongst his advisors so that he could cull the necessary information from them to achieve his singular purpose: to preserve the Union at all reasonable costs. He finally achieved exactly that, and though he paid the ultimate price in doing so, he earned the profound admiration of his formal rivals and an entire nation at the same time.

Team of Rivals: Lincoln's Genius

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