Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln » (Reprint)

Doris Kearns Goodwin won the Pulitzer Prize in history for No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, which was a bestseller in hardcover and trade paperback. She is also the author of the bestsellers Wait Till Next Year, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. She lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, Richard Goodwin.

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president.

On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry.

Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires.

It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through.

This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

… Ms. Goodwin's narrative abilities, demonstrated in her earlier books, are on full display here, and she does an enthralling job of dramatizing such crucial moments in Lincoln's life as his nomination as the Republican Party's presidential candidate, his delivery of the Gettysburg address, his shepherding of the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) through Congress, and his assassination, days after General Lee's surrender. She shows how Lincoln's friendships with Seward and his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, indelibly shaped his presidency, and how his masterly ability to balance factions within his own administration helped him to keep radicals and moderates, abolitionists and northern Democrats behind the Union cause.

Maps and Diagrams

Introduction

Part I THE RIVALS

1 Four Men Waiting

2 The "Longing to Rise"

3 The Lure of Politics

4 "Plunder & Conquest"

5 The Turbulent Fifties

6 The Gathering Storm

7 Countdown to the Nomination

8 Showdown in Chicago

9 "A Man Knows His Own Name"

10 "An Intensified Crossword Puzzle"

11 "I Am Now Public Property"

Part II MASTER AMONG MEN

12 "Mystic Chords of Memory": Spring 1861

13 "The Ball Has Opened": Summer 1861

14 "I Do Not Intend to Be Sacrificed": Fall 1861

15 "My Boy Is Gone": Winter 1862

16 "He Was Simply Out-Generaled": Spring 1862

17 "We Are in the Depths": Summer 1862

18 "My Word Is Out": Fall 1862

19 "Fire in the Rear": Winter-Spring 1863

20 "The Tycoon Is in Fine Whack": Summer 1863

21 "I Feel Trouble in the Air": Summer-Fall 1863

22 "Still in Wild Water": Fall 1863

23 "There's a Man in It!": Winter-Spring 1864

24 "Atlanta Is Ours": Summer-Fall 1864

25 "A Sacred Effort": Winter 1864-1865

26 The Final Weeks: Spring 1865

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Illustration Credits

Index