Doris Goodwin’s ‘Team of Rivals’ was the first presidential biography I ever read. Biography was not among my favorite genres, but I did have a desire to learn more about Abraham Lincoln. He is widely considered the greatest American president. In fact, to many even that title seems an understatement. Tolstoy once wrote that Lincoln ‘was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together…and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives’. Like most people, I’ve heard about the highlights of Lincoln’s remarkable life as I passed through grade schools: the self-made lawyer and politician haunted by family tragedies, the epic struggle to end slavery while forging a truly United States of America, and the ultimate sacrifice for the cause at the zenith of his career. Still, I am not quite sure how to make Tolstoy’s melodramatic assessment. The book partially solved the puzzle for me.
Goodwin’s narrative is constructed around, and often from the perspectives of, Lincoln’s key cabinet members who were once his rivals: Salmon Chase (Secretary of Treasure), Henry Seward (Secretary of State), Edward Bates (Attorney General), and Edwin Stanton (Secretary of War). The first three men ran against him for the nomination of the Republican party, and Stanton, when serving with Lincoln as co-counsel in a lawsuit, not only questioned the then country lawyer’s legal expertise but openly ridiculed him as ‘a gorilla and an imbecile’. As Goodwin follows Lincoln’s footsteps from the humble origins to the poignant end, she recounts many stories of these rivals, often quoting extensively from their public speeches and private letters. This helps unlock the mystery in Lincoln’s persona that ‘led countless men, even old adversaries, to feel bound to him in admiration’.
Lincoln ‘possessed extraordinary empathy’ and a ‘melancholy temperament’, wrote Goodwin. These qualities might be the result of the tragic losses he endured from an early age – at 26, he had already lost three women dearest to his life: his mother, his only sister, and his first love. Empathy can be a curse ‘in a world environed by cruelty and injustice’ because, as Goodwin noted, the fellow-feeling for the misery of others inevitably causes pain and suffering. It also sometimes made him appear weak and lacking the will to do what must be done in difficult situations. His attorney general confided to a friend that Lincoln, despite ‘very near being a perfect man’, was ‘unfit to be entrusted with the pardoning power’, because he too easily succumbed to touching stories and women’s tears. Yet, empathy was a powerful tool for Lincoln to gain the respect, trust, and devotion of others through understanding their motives and desires. It also rendered him a remarkably magnanimous man, demonstrating an incredible capacity to forgive even those who had opposed, wronged, and betrayed him.
Goodwin also lauded Lincoln’s `literary genius’ and his mastery of rhetorical power. His ability to explain intricate concepts through storytelling, coupled with a sharp sense of humor, was unparalleled among his contemporaries. In the strictest sense of the word, Lincoln might not be as great an orator as Seward, who could deliver stirring, completely improvised speeches to a crowd for hours. Lincoln was much more careful with his words, but he perfected ‘a language of enduring clarity and beauty’ that made him an extremely persuasive and effective communicator.
Lincoln believed in ‘the better angels of our nature’, a term coined in his first inaugural address. He once told a friend that he preferred to believe in the possibility of human perfection, when asked about whether George Washington was a perfect man. His entire life may be seen as the pursuit of becoming that perfect, inspiring human being he envisioned. It is the unwavering conviction to ‘engrave his name in history’, Goodwin noted, that underscores Lincoln’s greatness, carrying him through the dreary childhood, the political failures, the personal tragedies, the disintegration of his beloved Union, as well as the devastating military defeats in the early phase of the Civil War.
But Lincoln was also a realist. Unlike Chase and Seward, who had advocated for radical abolitionist policies on moral grounds, Lincoln carefully charted a moderate path confined within the limits set by public opinion on slavery. His famous Emancipation Proclamation was timed and configured to be perceived by the people of the North as an indispensable instrument to win the war and preserve the Union, rather than as a necessary step to end slavery once and for all. Goodwin sees nothing wrong for politicians to go along with public opinion, even if that means they must slightly bend their moral compass. If anything, that expediency made Lincoln ‘the most truly progressive man of the age’, because he neither ‘wasted strength in premature struggles’ with the public nor waited to be ‘dragged by the forces of events’. To be sure, Lincoln did owe much of his success to his exceptional ability to read and follow the will of the people. But that does not make him ‘the most truly progressive’. Based on what I gathered from the book, Lincoln is more of a pragmatist, a shrewd politician, maybe even a ‘political genius’ (As Goodwin likes to call him). Yet, he does not seem to have the burning conviction to reshape the world in the image of his ideology that many a great man of history possesses. That difference, I think, is precisely what sets Lincoln apart from (or above, depending on how much you love him) that league of great men.
I was always curious about Lincoln’s view on race. According to the book, Lincoln was against slavery but did not believe in racial equality. He said the physical difference between whites and blacks would ‘probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality.’ As a result, he was not in favor “of making voters or jurors of n****, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry.” Nor did he just say these things to get the white people’s votes. Lincoln was a passionate advocate for colonization, the idea of aiding freed slaves to establish a colony in Central America. To sell this proposal to the country, he even convened a conference of freed slaves at the White House, where he said in his opening remarks, “you and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races.” By today’s standard, therefore, Lincoln is a textbook racist. Should harboring racism in 19th century diminish his greatness? I imagine Tolstoy and Goodwin would dismiss such a thought as quintessential presentism. But many from today’s political left would probably disagree with them.
‘Team of Rivals’ is a thick book of nearly 1000 pages, of which about a quarter were notes. It was meticulously researched and elegantly written, though at times, the lengthy quotes and extravagant details about the lives of the people in Lincoln’s outer orbit feel a bit excessive. If you don’t want to read the whole book, do not miss the last chapter, in which Goodwin describes how Lincoln met his destiny. I finished that chapter on an airplane – I still remember having tears in my eyes that I had to hastily cover when a flight attendant asked me if I needed a drink. That rarely happened to me. I shall end with a quote taken from the very end of the book.
“With his death, Abraham Lincoln had come to seem the embodiment of his own words—’With malice toward none; with charity for all’. The deathless name he sought from the start had grown far beyond Sangamon County and Illinois, reached across the truly United States, until his legacy, as Stanton had surmised at the moment of his death, belonged not only to America but to the ages—to be revered and sung throughout all time.”
