Team of Rivals| Thoughts About It

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearn Goodwin

Over a thousand pages long, I am convinced that this will be amongst the most important books I’ve ever read! For the most part of the past two weeks, I’ve been reading this thing without losing interest in any way! Before now, I had thought I knew Lincoln the man! How wrong I was. So wrong. Doris Kearn Goodwin does an excellent job of bringing forth the man in a remarkable way! My respect for her and female historians has just shot off the scale! Incredible. This is incredible work! Incredible.

Her ambition in this work was not only to tell about Lincolna but to tell us about the people around him and the world he lived in. Doris could be describing landscape in this paragraph and in the next paragraph, she is describing the emotions of Mary Lincoln or Salmon Chase. With such scenarios, Doris helps us to see Lincoln in a very distinct way. And for her, and even for me, that is what makes Lincoln a great man! At his nomination as the Presidential Candidate for the Republican Party, he was the least known of all the men! In fact, everyone knew that he was not a first candidate! Surprised? That’s not all! Lincoln himself knew this and that’s where he went to work. He intentionally worked and placed himself as the second choice of all the three major candidates! Brilliant. And that’s how he won the nomination. He will go on to win the Presidency with the same tactic! Stephen Douglas was more popular than him and was a national figure than Lincoln. Lincoln was so less popular and less important that when he was asked for information for a biography of himself, he warned that there will not be so much in his life that will be worth writing about!

If Lincoln had simply won the Presidency alone, that would be laudable in itself. But no, he went further. His cabinet was comprised of all the three people who contested against him in the primaries. You need to know that all of them were far better qualified in terms of experience and national stature than him, furthermore, all of them underrated him. They treated him with contempt and all of them felt they deserved the Presidency more than him! But these are the men Lincoln chose for his cabinet! And he stayed with them for 3 years! His cabinet was indeed a “Team of Rivals”. They were all highly opinionated, intelligent, and qualified. They were bigger than him in the sense of reputation. But he was not afraid that they would elude him, he was not afraid that they would steal the shine from him, and in many cases, he was the adult in the room when dealing with them! By the end of the day, all of them held him in deep regard and admiration. Some of them even loved him as they would their family. No wonder he helped the Union win the war.

What Doris does for us readers is to allow us to see the intrigue of history in a slow, progressive developing manner, not in a big and wide manner, but rather to see it develop in the individual lives of people and then the nation. She delves into the diaries of several of Lincoln’s contemporaries to help us see what each was thinking at that time. She also showed the behind-the-scenes emotions of each person. And she points all of this to how Lincoln had to deal with such flying human emotions. Take, for instance, Lincoln had a general, General McClan who treated Lincoln badly that even his cabinet members took it upon themselves to warn the General, but rather than take offense Lincoln kept visiting the general. One day, Lincoln visited the General and the general wasn’t home, Lincoln said he would wait. He sat in the room waiting for General McClan to return only for McClan to return and pass to his room without even saying a word to the President. Few minutes later, someone came to inform the President that the General is asleep. Lincoln’s aides were infuriated and wanted to revenge for Lincoln but Lincoln stopped them and quietly went him. Only to return the next day! Another instance comes to mind. A particular cabinet member, Salmon Chase was interested in becoming President, but he couldn’t take Lincoln straight up, he had to do it discreetly. He started campaign moves by discrediting Lincoln in several instances. Many of Lincoln’s friends met him to inform him of what Chase was doing. Lincoln told them he was aware, they shouldn’t bother. His wife was totally pissed off with him over this, but Lincoln would not react. Things got ugly when a certain committee created by Chase and his friends for campaign made a bad public move that eventually smeared Chase image. Rather than simply fire Chase, Lincoln kept him in the cabinet. It was Chase himself who resigned personally, Lincoln accepted the resignation letter after the third letter. He had refused to allow Chase to resign twice earlier. Rather than to let it be at that, when the opportunity to nominate the Chief Justice, Lincoln nominated him! In all these cases, Lincoln was focused on the big picture. Another story comes to mind, there was this election for US Senate that Lincoln had contested. He was leading with more votes, but to win he needed the votes of another man who was having less votes. In fact, Lincoln was having nearly 4 times his votes, but the man would not budge. Lincoln asked his supporters to vote for that man. The man. Lincoln went back home. When asked, he said the vision of the party was more important than his agenda! Damn! His Secretary of War, Edward Stanton was a man who had abandoned him midway after giving him a job. Stanton had invited Lincoln to partner on a case, few days before the case, the case was moved to another state, rather than inform Lincoln, Stanton found another partner who was better qualified than Lincoln. Lincoln stayed up late making up his arguments and preparing evidence, only to travel to the place of the case and realize Stanton had employed another lawyer. Many years later, Lincoln nominated Stanton to be his Secretary of War.

These stories and many more show us what kind of man this was. He was above many of us. He thought differently from many of us. He saw the world in a different way. That Lincoln could rise above hate, rivalry, personal vendetta, etc in the world of politics is remarkable, considering that these are the things that keep the political machinery running! Lincoln invites us to a higher kind of leadership.

You will think this book is all about leadership, no, as the man himself. It was a humorous book! I read several excerpts to my Baby. We laughed over them and in so many cases, I will be sitting amongst people and then burst out laughing, it was Lincoln who was making me laugh.

………………………………… this rant will never finish, for Lincoln has carved his name in stone with his lifestyle, leadership, and legacy!

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There is a movie based on the book, “Lincoln”. Classic movie. Watch it.