Book Review: Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Abraham Lincoln is rarely remembered for his political skills. It was not that he was a poor politician. His preservation of the Union and abolition of slavery make him the most consequential president in history. Yet, while most Americans are familiar with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the defeat of the Confederacy, few know of Lincoln’s arduous diplomatic and political maneuverings to make these achievements possible. Today, the 16^th President is known as a sage and an orator, not as a politician. It is this neglected side of Lincoln’s legacy – his extraordinary skill in bargaining to advance an agenda– that is explored in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterpiece, Team of Rivals.

Goodwin’s narrative has two focuses. First, to explain how Lincoln rose to power and outwitted his rivals during the 1860 election; and second, to describe how he unified his wartime cabinet by incorporating these same rivals into his government.

Abraham Lincoln, Salmon Chase, William Seward, and Edwin Bates all contended for the nomination of the infant Republican Party in 1860. Seward, a charismatic senator from New York, was the candidate of the establishment; Chase, the principled but unlikable Governor of Ohio, was the hope of the radical abolitionists. Bates, a respected Missourian jurist, was an outside candidate mainly supported by conservative ex-Whigs. Lincoln remained a non-entity, mostly known for losing a senate race to Democratic statesman Stephen Douglas, the so-called “Little Giant." Most forecasters predicted a showdown between Chase and Seward. Yet both candidates had serious flaws. Chase was paralyzed by inertia, failing to appoint a campaign manager or reach out to key delegates. Seward, though a moderate on policy, had a tendency towards fiery statements and public gaffes. Bates, a possible compromise candidate, lacked the connections and experience to sway the convention.

Here Lincoln seized his chance. Unlike Chase, he did not expect the nomination to naturally drift in his direction and built a sophisticated political team to sway delegates with bargains and promises. Unlike Seward or Chase, he had refrained from hardline positions for or against slavery, making himself acceptable to all Republican factions. Through his political shrewdness, keen social skills and triangulation between opposing positions, Lincoln emerged as a popular compromise candidate from a deadlocked convention, easily beating the fractured Democrats in the fall election.

His first task in office was to appoint a cabinet. While presidents in any age fill offices with their supporters, the nineteenth century possessed a particularly extreme variant of this practice. The “Spoils System” of Andrew Jackson encouraged an astonishing degree of patronage, motivating chief executives to surround themselves with party hacks and cronies. Lincoln not only rejected this system– he formed a coalition out of his ex-rivals. Seward took the State Department, Bates became Attorney General and Chase took the Treasury. Edwin Stanton, an ex-corporate lawyer and former Lincoln opponent, was soon appointed Secretary of War.

Faced with national crisis and the advent of the Civil War, Lincoln skillfully used his cabinet to unify the North’s disparate political factions. Seward, an affable patrician, maintained the loyalty of the ex-Whigs and became Lincoln’s close adviser; Bates, who hailed from divided Missouri, helped retain the loyalties of the border states. Stanton, abrasive but competent, channeled his manic energy into building a renovated War Department. Even Chase – who never reconciled with Lincoln and plotted to run against him in 1864 – became an unwilling player in the president’s adept political game. Despite the Treasurer’s repeated threats to resign, Lincoln convinced him to stay at his post, knowing that the ex-governor was a skilled administrator for the Treasury. But finally, when Chase issued another bluff threat of quitting, Lincoln took him at his word and forced the Treasurer out – just as Chase was beginning his presidential campaign. Embarrassed and outwitted, the ex-Treasurer withdrew his name from contention, allowing Lincoln to win reelection.

From the resolution of a diplomatic crisis with Great Britain to the strategic timing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Team of Rivals charts Lincoln’s skill as a statesman, analyzing the mix of calculations and compromises he employed to preserve the Union. The book’s greatest strength is its biographical nature: the lives of Lincoln and his main cabinet members are traced in converging arcs from early childhood, dissecting the environments and experiences that built each man’s character and political outlook. Goodwin’s history is not without flaws; she is apt to become mired in detail, and her controversies with plagiarism should not be overlooked by the scholarly community. Yet, Team of Rivals remains a majestic work, a sweeping drama on the scale of Parkman or Macaulay. Many books have examined the sixteenth president, but few have succeeded so admirably.