Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

As early as May of last year, there was widespread discussion of then-Senator Barack Obama's admiration of President Abraham Lincoln and his choice to assemble a cabinet containing his main rivals for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination. Obama made public reference to a "wonderful book" by Doris Kearns Goodwin titled Team of Rivals, which covered just that topic.

In comparing President Obama's cabinet choices to the story Goodwin tells in Team of Rivals, commentators tended to focus on the initial selection of major rivals to key posts. In 1860, the nomination was widely expected to go to a senator from New York, only to have the throne usurped by a dark horse insurgent from Illinois, who then won the presidency and appointed his New York rival as Secretary of State. Sounds familiar, right?

But this is not really the thesis of Goodwin's text. Lincoln is not to be admired simply because he surrounded himself with powerful adversaries, though this distinguished him from his less secure predecessors (and successors). Instead, Lincoln's "political genius was not simply his ability to gather the best men of the country around him, but to impress upon them his own purpose, perception, and resolution at every juncture." The marvel of this accomplishment is that in the years leading up to Lincoln's nomination (and for some time after), each of the men who would serve such vital roles in his administration could point to a more illustrious career than their counterpart from Illinois:

[T]he three other contenders for the nomination were household names in Republican circles. William Henry Seward had been a celebrated senator from New York for more than a decade and governor of his state for two terms before he went to Washington. Ohio's Salmon P. Chase, too, had been both senator and governor, and had played a central role in the formation of the national Republican Party. Edward Bates was a widely respected elder statesman, a delegate to the convention that had framed the Missouri Constitution, and a former congressman whose opinion on national matters were still widely sought.

And yet Lincoln won the nomination. In part this was because he was the common denominator who did not alienate any faction. But even this positioning was attributable to a more important factor: Lincoln was simply the most skilled politician of the group, a trait that would be made manifest in the coming months. First, Lincoln had to unify the nascent Republican Party, which was an amalgamation of anti-slavery Democrats, Whigs, and Know-Nothings. And his reward for succeeding and obtaining the presidency? The imminent dissolution of the Union:

For Lincoln, who would not take office until March 4, it was a time of mounting anxiety and frustration. He strongly believed, he told John Nicolay, that the government possessed "both the authority and the power to maintain its own integrity," but there was little he could do until he held the reins of power. While he was "indefatigable in his efforts to arrive at the fullest comprehension of the present situation of public affair," relying not simply on the newspapers he devoured but on "faithful researches for precedents, analogies, authorities, etc." it was hard to stand by while his country was disintegrating. He declared at one point that he would be willing to reduce his own life span by "a period of years" equal to the anxious months separating his election and the inauguration.

As James McPherson made clear in Battle Cry of Freedom, keeping the border states from seceding was of the utmost importance to the success of the Union war effort. Threading this needle was a task tailor-made for Lincoln. He was uniquely able to balance the radicals in his own party with the conservatives and the northern Democrats, and to assuage the healthy egos of his many generals. Only after suffering the insolence of McLellan (who is just as loathsome in Goodwin's portrayal as in McPherson's) and the incompetence of Burnside and Hooker would Lincoln find, in Ulysses Grant, the general he deserved:

When a visitor asked one day about the prospects of the army under Grant, Lincoln's face lit up "with that peculiar smile which he always puts on when about to tell a good story." The question, he said, "reminds me of a little anecdote about the automaton chessplayer, which many years ago astonished the world by its skill in that game. After a while the automaton was challenged by a celebrated player, who, to hise great chagrin, was beaten twice by the machine. At the end of the second game, the player, significantly pointing his finger at the automaton, exclaimed in a very decided tone. 'There's a man in it!'" That, he explained, referring to Grant, was "the secret" to the army's fortunes.

As if Lincoln did not have enough trouble from those outside his cabinet, he continuously strove to maintain the balance within it. He was given particularly trouble by Chase, who never gave up his obsessive quest for the presidency (including attempts to stoke a grassroots bid for the nomination in 1864), and Montgomery Blair, who, with his family, came into constant conflict with Chase and his allies. In the end, Lincoln would solve the problem by easing both men out of his cabinet. Magnanimous to the last, Lincoln would eventually appoint Chase to the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court.

The book suffers from a bit of a split identity. At first blush, it endeavors to tell the stories of all four of the rivals. The early chapters detail each man's rise to fame, and the back cover even calls it a "multiple biography." One unfortunate similarity amongst the men, reflecting the realities of 19th-century health, is that each suffered tragic family losses: Lincoln lost two children, Chase had survived three daughters and three wives by the age of 44, the eight Bates children who survived to adulthood were outnumbered by the nine who did not, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's grief after losing his wife and daughter "verged on insanity." Beyond the tragedies, Goodwin also covers in substantial detail (too much, perhaps) the social lives and rivalries of the cabinet members and their wives and daughters.

Yet Goodwin's main focus is on Lincoln, and the cabinet is relevant only as part of her effort to demonstrate Lincoln's management prowess. At this she certainly succeeds, but it comes at the cost of giving pretty short shrift to the work done by Lincoln's subordinates. We really only see their efforts insofar as they come into conflict with Lincoln or each other, and do not get a satisfactory sense of each man's performance in the key roles they fulfilled. Nevertheless, Goodwin has added to our sense of Lincoln the political virtuoso, who not only inspired the soldiers and the citizens, but transformed rivalries among the great men of his time into loyal dedication to their leader.