Team of Rivals

The short analysis

Abraham Lincoln arrived at the 1860 Republican National Convention as the least famous man seriously contending for the nomination. William Seward of New York was the favourite; Salmon Chase of Ohio and Edward Bates of Missouri each commanded substantial support. Yet Lincoln outmanoeuvred all three, and within months of taking office he had appointed every one of them to his cabinet. Doris Kearns Goodwin's 'Team of Rivals' uses this striking fact as the foundation for a group portrait of Lincoln and his principal rivals, reading their relationships as a master class in political management. Goodwin's central contention is that Lincoln's decision to surround himself with strong, ambitious, and often difficult men was not reckless but deliberate. He understood that the country's survival depended on assembling the best available talent regardless of personal rivalry, and he was confident enough in his own authority to tolerate subordinates who privately doubted him. Over time, most of them revised their initial low opinion of him upward, sometimes dramatically. The book's deeper argument is about the kind of intelligence Lincoln possessed. It was less a matter of formal learning or administrative system than of emotional attunement: the ability to read people accurately, to absorb criticism without resentment, and to time decisions so that political conditions had ripened enough for them to hold. That combination of qualities, Goodwin suggests, made Lincoln not merely an effective wartime executive but one of the most consequential leaders in American history.