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Reviews
| Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. By Doris Kearns Goodwin (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2005. Pp. xix, 917. Illus., maps, notes, index. Cloth, $35; paper, $19.95.)
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Many of our readers will already know this book, winner of the 2006 Abraham Lincoln Prize awarded by Gettysburg University, on the recommendation of a panel of distinguished scholars. The title sets forth the book's message: Abraham Lincoln demonstrated his political genius in choosing a cabinet that included three eminent men who like himself, had run for president in 1860, and, not surprisingly, thought themselves far better qualified for the presidency than the attorney from Springfield, Illinois. These were Secretary of State William H. Seward of New York, Attorney General Edward Bates of Missouri, and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. None had been political allies, much less cronies of Lincoln. But they did represent important sections and constituencies in the Union, as did Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles of Connecticut, Secretary of War Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, and Postmaster-General Montgomery Blair of Maryland. Chase, Welles, Cameron, and Blair had all been in the anti-slavery wing of the Democratic Party before becoming Republicans. When Thurlow Weed complained that there were more former Democrats than Whigs in his cabinet, Lincoln observed that his own Whig background balanced things nicely. |
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Under Lincoln's leadership, this cabinet was highly effective, but not perfect. Cameron, widely criticized as inept and corrupt, allowed Lincoln to ease him out and replace him with the energetic and contentious Edwin Stanton, also of Pennsylvania and a former Democrat, who soon had the vast War Department under control. Chase proved to be a fine Secretary of the Treasury, but a treacherous cabinet member, conspiring, unsuccessfully, to drive Seward from the government, and, as the election of 1864 drew closer, to replace Lincoln as Republican candidate for president. |
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Doris Kearns Goodwin devotes a full forty-three per cent of her 754 pages of narrative— the rest of the book consists of notes and an index—bringing her parallel biographies up to the beginning of the Lincoln administration in March 1861. She sketches the early years and developing careers of the four politicians, including education, marriages, and families. After the Mexican War, all became caught up in national debates over slavery, though Chase and Seward threw themselves into anti-slavery politics well before Lincoln and Bates. Only with the eighth chapter do we return to the Nominating Convention in Chicago; with Chapter 12 Lincoln is finally inaugurated, officially appoints his cabinet, and begins confronting the secession crisis. |
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How the members of the cabinet interacted with each other and the president becomes more interesting and significant, because all the participants have been fully introduced. Inevitably, Seward and Stanton became, after Lincoln himself, the most active characters in this historical drama. But Salmon P. Chase provided a striking contrast, not only for his own ambition and the mischief to which it drove him, but for the reinforcing ambition, adventures, and final misfortunes of his brilliant daughter Kate. Above all, with reference once more to her very apt title, Goodwin demonstrates the extraordinary ability of Lincoln to manage these formidable talents in the interest of his great goals of reuniting the nation and ending slavery. |
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