Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

By Doris Kearns Goodwin (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003).  Pp 944, $35, ISBN 0-684-82490-6

Review written for lincolnstudies.com, but may be re-printed with reviewer's consent

Popular and scholarly audiences take notice when a book is awarded the prestigious Lincoln Prize.  Book sales inevitably spike as new readers scramble to find out what all the fuss is about, just as those who had previously read the book but dismissed it, scan the pages again in search of the luster they somehow overlooked.  Last year’s recipient of the most generous award in American history did not need the Lincoln Prize to gain attention.  The award merely confirmed what tens of thousands of pleasure readers and scores of scholars already knew.  Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is not only a good read, but it is also an important book. 

Team of Rivals is not a biography of the sixteenth president, though Goodwin certainly takes a biographical approach.  She traces Lincoln’s evolution from prairie lawyer to president by comparing his path with those blazed by his three main Republican competitors for the 1860 presidential nomination, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates.  Goodwin is at her biographical best throughout the first third of the book, as she plods her way through the antebellum period, alternating between the experiences of each of her four characters. 

One begins to understand why it took her a decade to complete this book.  Goodwin believes that the private lives of public men are incredibly important because they reveal character; therefore, her methodology is two-fold.  To get at the essence of Lincoln’s “political genius,” she employs the power of intimate biography to examine his character, but at the same time, she is not interested in examining his life in a vacuum.  She takes her observations a step further and contextualizes his experiences by placing them against those of his three political rivals. 

Her approach yields more than a few interesting insights.  For instance, strong, ambitious women stood behind each of these men and, in many cases, added fuel to their already blazing ambitions.  Second, Goodwin’s empathy allows her to demonstrate how Lincoln’s well-known personal tragedies were not unique to him; instead, they were disturbingly commonplace in the nineteenth century.  However, Goodwin argues that the ways in which Lincoln responded to life's painful tests not only distinguished him from his peers, but ultimately, they propelled him toward his now exalted place among American political leaders. 

Of course, the challenges Lincoln faced as president are widely known.  The menacing shadow of civil war was enough to paralyze his predecessor, James Buchanan, but Lincoln’s presidency had to be different.  As he took the oath of office, he knew seven states had already seceded from the Union, just as his first days as chief executive were consumed by the brewing crisis at Fort Sumter.  Remarkably, Lincoln did not surround himself with loyal advisors who saw the coming war the same way he did.  Instead, Lincoln selected a cabinet made up of his former political rivals.  Seward became Secretary of State, Chase became Secretary of the Treasury, and Bates became Attorney General.  Therein rests some of the stuff Goodwin calls “political genius.”  Not only was Lincoln self-confident enough to hear opposing viewpoints, but his leadership style actually required behind-the-scenes political debate. After weighing multiple sides of crucial issues, Lincoln made the decisions that not only helped the Union prevail, but ultimately, his leadership allowed the nation to undergo “a new birth of freedom.”  In the end, Team of Rivals is not only a book about politics and war, but it is also a study in the importance of personal character, humility, and leadership.

However, no book is without its limitations.  Though Goodwin is certainly a skillful writer and a historian with an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the past, it is important to acknowledge that Team of Rivals does not break new ground in terms of adding new facts or characters to the historical landscape.  I also worry that such intense focus on the Lincoln Administration tends to obscure other factions such as the Radical Republicans, peace Democrats, or the Confederacy itself.  I would encourage readers unfamiliar with the American Civil War to also pick up books with a larger scope, such as James McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Battle Cry of Freedom.  Similarly, I also wondered how many people picked up Team of Rivals and expected a standard cradle-to-the-grave biography of the sixteenth president.  For those readers I would recommend Stephen B. Oates’ With Malice Toward None or David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln. Finally, Team of Rivals comes in at over 900 pages.  For those readers who do not want to make such a long-term commitment to a single book, I have a suggestion.  Team of Rivals is available on tape and CD.  Goodwin reads the brief forward, but actor Richard Thomas marvelously handles the text in just over nine hours. If you’re going to take a trip or you just want something to listen to on the way to work, I highly recommend this option. 

-  Samuel P. Wheeler, Southern Illinois University