U S Presidents Books : Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

£10.36


Good but suffocating - This is a super book. The research is out of the top drawer - very impressive indeed. One is left with the vivid images of what it must have been like to be a politican at this time and the sorts of skills required. From that perspective, it was excellent. However, there is so much information and detail that one has to study the book rather than read the book. It stifles the flow of the attractive story as all details that can be tied into the narrative are introduced. I am not sure that I would like to recommend this book as something to read, but as a text for historical research I suspect it will become required reading.

Lincoln as a political animal - Of all the American Presidents, I admire Abraham Lincoln the most because he stalwartly endured so much: rebellious states, incompetent Federal generals, a fractious Republican Party, near-treasonous Democrats, a financially irresponsible and mentally unstable wife, and the death of a son. Finishing this thick work, my esteem for him is in no way diminished.TEAM OF RIVALS by Doris Kearns Goodwin is, above all, a political biography of Lincoln as he rose through the ranks from country lawyer to Illinois state legislator to U.S. Congressman to presidential candidate to Chief Executive. As the Republican nominee for President in 1860, he beat out several formidable rivals for the nomination, including Salmon Chase, William Seward, and Edward Bates. Once elected, Lincoln was wily enough to keep his former (and potentially future) adversaries within immediate sight by cajoling them into his Cabinet - Chase at Treasury, Seward at State, and Bates as Attorney General. Thus, TEAM OF RIVALS is necessarily a political biography of each of these three men and, to a lesser degree, also one for each of the other prominent members of the Cabinet - Montgomery Blair as Postmaster General, Edwin Stanton as War Secretary (succeeding Simon Cameron), and Gideon Wells as Navy Secretary. The remarkable teamwork the Cabinet displayed to steer the Union through the darkest days of the Civil War is its, and Lincoln s, great achievement.In her memoir of growing up, WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR, Goodwin is charmingly engaging. At 754 pages with two extensive photographic sections, TEAM OF RIVALS is hardly that but erudite, detailed, and lucid. The author s treatment of her subject is obviously admiring. At no point does Goodwin s narrative slime Abe s reputation with any perception which one normally ascribes to the currently incumbent band of dubious, self-serving, vacillating, and morally compromised public parasites whatever their party affiliation. Perhaps Lincoln was truly a wise and steadfastly principled man, or Goodwin just chose not to notice any blemishes. Or perhaps time itself serves as an airbrush.It took me almost four months to gnaw my way through this lengthy volume, it s not a book I couldn t put down. For that reason, I m knocking off a star, though I freely admit that this is more a deficiency related to my attention span than anything else. Others, not wearied by too much of a good thing, will justifiably award 5 stars.

Timely Lessons in Diplomacy - This massively delicious work is bound to be lapped up by Lincoln enthusiasts and American Civil War buffs like cats to cream. Richly folding in tantalizing detail and authentic accounts of events, conversations, and attitudes, author Goodwin creates a highly delectable feast of historical pleasures all the while educating us to levels rarely encountered in the public venue. Gentle readers are advised, however, that this is less a biopic of Lincoln than a study of the dynamics of his political life, and his relationships to other participants of the age. It is a study of the Team. None-the-less it is a dynamic and personable work. If you seek a look into the drama of Lincoln s marriage to the volatile Mary Todd, or the rigors of his melancholia, you will only find halfway side-glances at those aspects of his complicated life. Instead, you will read of the fealty of Seward, the ambition of Chase, the home loving qualities of Bates, and learn the personalities of other key players in our nation s history, those who understood the concept of `big picture and who put the welfare of the democratic state above any machinations aimed toward personal gain. (Would that we had more of that spirit today.) Grandly, it is driven home that Lincoln, through his life and continuing into his presidency, was a self-educated and self-made man of the highest integrity and attentiveness. Any perceived blunders of the early half of his administration may be attributed to his ignorance of things military, and his reliance on less than worthy advisors until such time as he got his own mind sufficiently schooled to be able to take the reins of power more firmly in hand. The book is also an excellent look at the issue of the political path to the dissolution of the southern slavery institution. Unfortunately less a moral issue than an economic one, attitudes regarding the hideous practice are displayed through direct accounts of the Dred Scott decision, and struggles over proposed laws regarding the permission of slavery in the western territories. The interests of Europe, and Britain in particular, to maintain the slave-based economy are well explained. For the first time I understood, without endorsing, the intellectuality of Lincoln s initial position, one born of sheer economics and military reality rather than any Christian philosophy: that if slavery could be contained in the southern states he would tolerate it. It well mirrors current civil rights and gender rights issues of today - it s not the morality of the situation, folks, it s the money. Finally, the photos, often a postscript to a work of this size, are here magnificent and fascinating. My book club remarked in hen-like clucking on the change that the birth of 17 children wrought in the visage of Julia Bates. We wept at the poignancy of Seward in his garden. This is a fabulous read, and will give the reader many long cozy nights by the fire.

Reaffirming Abraham Lincoln as the greatest president - In Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin confirms my belief that Abraham Lincoln was literally the only man in America who could have preserved the Union in the face of the Civil War. The book offers parallel biographies of Lincoln and the three men who were his chief rivals for the Republican nomination for president in 1860--Willam Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates--as well as the man who would serve as Secretary of War for most of Lincoln s administration, the (War) Democrat Edwin Stanton. The emphasis is on how their personal and political lives shaped their personalities and their destinies, as well as how circumstances compelled them to accept posts in the Lincoln cabinet and (with one notable exception) come to recognize that the president they served was the greatest man of his generation.Goodwin presents Lincoln as the first consummate politician, as indicated by the subtitle, which is to say that in being nominated for president he proved his rivals to be amateurs, making his surprising nomination seem totally inevitable. The parallel biographies lead to a series of incidents in which Lincoln must manage not only these people but issues and events as well. More importantly, she makes it clear that from at least his first defeat for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 1855 that Lincoln had been living by the words of his Second Inaugural address: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. Goodwin also emphasizes Lincoln s driving ambition of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. Otherwise, Team of Rivals reinforces the judgments history has made of these historical figures. I continue to see both Chase and McClelland to be detestable figures, and the book gives me a much better appreciation of Seward (and also of Gideon Welles). Lincoln is such a towering figure that a book like this does serve to remind you that these other men actually did things besides try to act as defacto president. Goodwin also makes an effort to put Mary Lincoln in a better light, and highlights Lincoln s visits to the troops. One of the key recurring elements is the way diverse parties as Frederick Douglass and the Charleston Mercury reversed their opinions about Lincoln as president, explaining why it was the most vilified American of the 19th century when he was first inaugurated would become a secular saint whose death was met with almost universal bereavement. The book ends with all of Washington present for the two-day farewell march of the nearly two hundred thousand Union soldiers past the reviewing stand on Pennsylvania Avenue. All of the members of the cabinet were there, but not Abraham Lincoln. Goodwin privileges a story told by Leo Tolstoy of how the name of Lincoln was known even to a tribal chief in the wild and remote area of the North Caucasus. The epilogue covers the deaths of the principle members of Lincoln s cabinet and of Tad and Mary Lincoln (but not Robert). However, Goodwin s thesis is well and truly proven when Lincoln accepts Chase s resignation, which would make the nomination of Chase as Chief Justice the pertinent epilogue. But Goodwin can hardly be faulted for continuing to play out the rest of the war and Lincoln s life. For me the most poignant moment in the volume comes when Seward, recovering from his own assassination attempt and spared the news of what happened at Ford s Theater, knows the president is dead because he sees a flag at half-mast and knows his friend would have been the first to visit at his bedside.As to being an implicit indictment of the current Cabinet, I suppose there is an attendant irony given that those who served Lincoln were under the mistaken belief they were smarter than the President. But historically only the first cabinet selected by George Washington can measure up to the team Lincoln assembled (having both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson settles that matter, although Henry Knox and Edmund Randolph are not slouches). The Kennedy administration came make claim to having assembled The Best and the Brightest, but that is hardly comparable to bringing together the biggest names in the party. Still, obvious parallels between Stanton and Rumsfeld aside, the thought of John McCain serving in the Bush cabinet would certainly represent the sort of inherent tensions Lincoln faced repeatedly in his day. However, today Cabinet officers clearly function more as administrators and as advisors specific to their responsibilities, than as the general council on all matters political and military that Lincoln enjoyed.Team of Rivals does not break new ground in terms of Lincoln scholarship, but it does try to put Lincoln in a slightly different light, and if there is one figure in American history who deserves to be revisited from time to time, it would be Abraham Lincoln. The crises, both major and minor, come so fast and furious during the Civil War that Goodwin cannot really justify using break them into discrete subjects worthy of individual chapters. Consequently, once the book gets past introducing the primary figures, it sticks to a straightforward chronology. There are close to a hundred contemporary photographs and illustrations throughout the book, but with an eye always turned towards irony, I note that the endpapers consist of a view from Pennsylvania Avenue of the unfinished U.S. Capitol in the 1850s, and a stereoscopic view of the finished building after Lincoln s death when the nation that was torn in two had been reunited.

Master politician and “very near being a perfect man” -       Frankly, until reading this book, I did not fully understand the nature and extent of the circumstances in which Lincoln included in his cabinet those who, prior to his election, were his major political opponents and who, in addition, viewed him with contempt. Specifically, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, William H. Seward, and Edwin M. Stanton. He then worked effectively with each throughout the Civil War. Even more remarkable is the fact that, by the time of Lincoln’s assassination, each of these four had grown to love as well as respect someone whom Stanton had once described as a long armed Ape. Senior-level executives can learn a number of important lessons in leadership by reading this book. They include:1. Surround yourself with whatever talent the given enterprise requires.2. Welcome, indeed strongly encourage principled dissent.3. Timing is not everything but often the difference between success and failure.4. Exercise selective hearing during a contentious group discussion.5. Unless absolutely certain, be willing to grant benefit of the doubt.6. Exhaust opponents by listening to them.7. Appreciate effort but only reward performance.8. Serve “with malice toward none, with charity for all”9. And lead “with firmness in the right.”10. When dealing with forceful personalities, focus on common interests.As Kearns quite correctly asserts, only a “political genius” could have assembled and then worked effectively with cabinet members such as Chase, Bates, Seward, and Stanton, all of whom were independent thinkers, had personal agendas, and (at least initially) considered themselves super to Lincoln in all respects. With all due respect to Lincoln’s leadership and management skills, however, it should also be noted that Bates eventually described Lincoln as very near being a perfect man. His inherent decency and impeccable integrity informed and guided his leadership and management as president.As I read Kearns’s book, I realized that only by preserving the unity of his diverse cabinet could Lincoln have preserved the Union. Had he been able to complete his second term, his “political genius” would have enabled him to fulfill hopes he expressed in his second Inaugural Address: “to bind up the nation s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”




Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln