Ten years in the making, this engaging work reveals why "Lincoln's road to success was longer, more tortuous, and far less likely" than the other men, and why, when opportunity beckoned, Lincoln was "the best prepared to answer the call." This multiple biography further provides valuable background and insights into the contributions and talents of Seward, Chase, and Bates. Lincoln may have been "the indispensable ingredient of the Civil War," but these three men were invaluable to Lincoln and they played key roles in keeping the nation intact. --Shawn Carkonen

The Team of Rivals

Team of Rivals doesn't just tell the story of Abraham Lincoln. It is a multiple biography of the entire team of personal and political competitors that he put together to lead the country through its greatest crisis. Here, Doris Kearns Goodwin profiles five of the key players in her book, four of whom contended for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination and all of whom later worked together in Lincoln's cabinet.

1. Edwin M. Stanton Stanton treated Lincoln with utter contempt at their initial acquaintance when the two men were involved in a celebrated law case in the summer of 1855. Unimaginable as it might seem after Stanton's demeaning behavior, Lincoln offered him "the most powerful civilian post within his gift"--the post of secretary of war--at their next encounter six years later. On his first day in office as Simon Cameron's replacement, the energetic, hardworking Stanton instituted "an entirely new regime" in the War Department. After nearly a year of disappointment with Cameron, Lincoln had found in Stanton the leader the War Department desperately needed. Lincoln's choice of Stanton revealed his singular ability to transcend personal vendetta, humiliation, or bitterness. As for Stanton, despite his initial contempt for the man he once described as a "long armed Ape," he not only accepted the offer but came to respect and love Lincoln more than any person outside of his immediate family. He was beside himself with grief for weeks after the president's death. 2. Salmon P. Chase Chase, an Ohioan, had been both senator and governor, had played a central role in the formation of the national Republican Party, and had shown an unflagging commitment to the cause of the black man. No individual felt he deserved the presidency as a natural result of his past contributions more than Chase himself, but he refused to engage in the practical methods by which nominations are won. He had virtually no campaign and he failed to conciliate his many enemies in Ohio itself. As a result, he alone among the candidates came to the convention without the united support of his own state. Chase never ceased to underestimate Lincoln, nor to resent the fact that he had lost the presidency to a man he considered his inferior. His frustration with his position as secretary of the treasury was alleviated only by his his dogged hope that he, rather than Lincoln, would be the Republican nominee in 1864, and he steadfastly worked to that end. The president put up with Chase's machinations and haughty yet fundamentally insecure nature because he recognized his superlative accomplishments at treasury. Eventually, however, Chase threatened to split the Republican Party by continuing to fill key positions with partisans who supported his presidential hopes. When Lincoln stepped in, Chase tendered his resignation as he had three times before, but this time Lincoln stunned Chase by calling his bluff and accepting the offer. 3. Abraham Lincoln When Lincoln won the Republican presidential nomination in 1860 he seemed to have come from nowhere--a backwoods lawyer who had served one undistinguished term in the House of Representatives and lost two consecutive contests for the U.S. Senate. Contemporaries attributed his surprising nomination to chance, to his moderate position on slavery, and to the fact that he hailed from the battleground state of Illinois. But Lincoln's triumph, particularly when viewed against the efforts of his rivals, owed much to a remarkable, unsuspected political acuity and an emotional strength forged in the crucible of hardship and defeat. That Lincoln, after winning the presidency, made the unprecedented decision to incorporate his eminent rivals into his political family, the cabinet, was evidence of an uncanny self-confidence and an indication of what would prove to others a most unexpected greatness. 4. William H. Seward A celebrated senator from New York for more than a decade and governor of his state for two terms before going to Washington, Seward was certain he was going to receive his party's nomination for president in 1860. The weekend before the convention in Chicago opened he had already composed a first draft of the valedictory speech he expected to make to the Senate, assuming that he would resign his position as soon as the decision in Chicago was made. His mortification at not having received the nomination never fully abated, and when he was offered his cabinet post as secretary of state he intended to have a major role in choosing the remaining cabinet members, conferring upon himself a position in the new government more commanding than that of Lincoln himself. He quickly realized the futility of his plan to relegate the president to a figurehead role. Though the feisty New Yorker would continue to debate numerous issues with Lincoln in the years ahead, exactly as Lincoln had hoped and needed him to do, Seward would become his closest friend, advisor, and ally in the administration. More than any other cabinet member Seward appreciated Lincoln's peerless skill in balancing factions both within his administration and in the country at large. 5. Edward Bates A widely respected elder statesman, a delegate to the convention that framed the Missouri Constitution, and a former Missouri congressman whose opinions on national matters were still widely sought, Bates's ambitions for political success were gradually displaced by love for his wife and large family, and he withdrew from public life in the late 1840s. For the next 20 years he was asked repeatedly to run or once again accept high government posts but he consistently declined. However in early 1860, with letters and newspaper editorials advocating his candidacy crowding in upon him, he decided to try for the highest office in the land. After losing to Lincoln he vowed, in his diary, to decline a cabinet position if one were to be offered, but with the country "in trouble and danger" he felt it was his duty to accept when Lincoln asked him to be attorney general. Though Bates initially viewed Lincoln as a well-meaning but incompetent administrator, he eventually concluded that the president was an unmatched leader, "very near being a 'perfect man.'"

The Essential Doris Kearns Goodwin

Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream

More New Reading on the Civil War

Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk

Grant and Sherman: The Friendship That Won the Civil War by Charles Bracelen Flood

The March: A Novel by E.L. Doctorow

From Publishers Weekly
Pulitzer Prize–winner Goodwin (No Ordinary Time) seeks to illuminate what she interprets as a miraculous event: Lincoln's smooth (and, in her view, rather sudden) transition from underwhelming one-term congressman and prairie lawyer to robust chief executive during a time of crisis. Goodwin marvels at Lincoln's ability to co-opt three better-born, better-educated rivals—each of whom had challenged Lincoln for the 1860 Republican nomination. The three were New York senator William H. Seward, who became secretary of state; Ohio senator Salmon P. Chase, who signed on as secretary of the treasury and later was nominated by Lincoln to be chief justice of the Supreme Court; and Missouri's "distinguished elder statesman" Edward Bates, who served as attorney general. This is the "team of rivals" Goodwin's title refers to.The problem with this interpretation is that the metamorphosis of Lincoln to Machiavellian master of men that Goodwin presupposes did not in fact occur overnight only as he approached the grim reality of his presidency. The press had labeled candidate Lincoln "a fourth-rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar." But East Coast railroad executives, who had long employed Lincoln at huge prices to defend their interests as attorney and lobbyist, knew better. Lincoln was a shrewd political operator and insider long before he entered the White House—a fact Goodwin underplays. On another front, Goodwin's spotlighting of the president's three former rivals tends to undercut that Lincoln's most essential Cabinet-level contacts were not with Seward, Chase and Bates, but rather with secretaries of war Simon Cameron and Edwin Stanton, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. These criticisms aside, Goodwin supplies capable biographies of the gentlemen on whom she has chosen to focus, and ably highlights the sometimes tangled dynamics of their "team" within the larger assemblage of Lincoln's full war cabinet.
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment focuses on this brief period, but also ranges backward and forward in time to set the stage and assess the consequences. A Newsweek columnist, Alter has given us a "journalistic" take, in both the good and not-so-good aspects of that adjective. His narrative moves along well but will disappoint readers who expect new facts or interpretations. Neither a history of the New Deal nor a biography of FDR, the work is strongest when it focuses on personalities and political tactics, weakest when it describes policies. Alter has a reporter's eye for the good story but at times dwells on the sensational rather than the significant.

Those who know the extensive literature on Roosevelt will recognize familiar stories long since delivered by other authors -- the machine-gun emplacements on Inauguration Day and FDR's fear of house fires, to name two. More problematic is Alter's claim to an original discovery -- an unused sentence in a draft of an address to the American Legion: "As new commander-in-chief under the oath to which you are still bound I reserve to myself the right to command you in any phase of the situation which now confronts us." He takes this as evidence that FDR, or one of his speechwriters, was considering the establishment of "a makeshift force of veterans to enforce some kind of martial law." This, Alter writes, "was dictator talk -- an explicit power grab." Come now.

It only shows that the author is not quite at home in the world of the 1930s. One finds numerous misconceptions, mangled names and flubbed dates; for example, he moves Sen. Bennett Champ Clark from Missouri to Pennsylvania and refers to Eleanor Roosevelt's cherished cooperative community project, Arthurdale, as "Allandale." None of these errors is fatal, but the accumulation is unsettling.

Also unsettling are the present-day similes that create more confusion than understanding. We learn that Roosevelt's closest political adviser in the pre-presidential days, Louis McHenry Howe, was "FDR's Theodore Sorensen, Michael Deaver, and Karl Rove rolled into one." Roosevelt's success in forcing the rapid establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps inspires an assurance that if FDR had been president after 9/11, he would have needed only four months, not four years, to secure U.S. ports and make the FBI fix its computer system.

Alter recalls that at the age of 11 he wrote in a school essay that FDR "was not physically strong but his spirit was," and then declares "That's all you need to know." His biographical chapters give us no easy answers to the riddles of Roosevelt's complex personality, but they are absorbing and filled with plausible judgments. He excels in detailing how FDR played the Washington press corps and intelligently analyzes his radio appeal. Alter is spot-on when he declares that action was more important to Roosevelt than policy substance: Activism that attacked the Depression's symptoms was as effective politically as finding a cure.

His Roosevelt is not always attractive. In the days before that first inauguration, Alter writes, "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that he intentionally allowed the economy to sink lower so that he could enter the presidency in a more dramatic fashion." This is too harsh, but over the next several years FDR failed badly in his efforts to end the Depression and pursued some policies that surely made things worse. The author concedes that if World War II had not intervened, Roosevelt would be remembered as a much lesser chief executive. He also thinks there is no reason to believe any of the possible alternatives would have done better, and he may well be right.

Most Americans believe Roosevelt was a great man and a great president. Alter shows us that in the end magnificent rhetoric and action do not always bring concrete results. The historian Richard Hofstadter once described FDR's distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt as a "master therapist" whose "hectic action" preserved an existing order with the illusion of change. Did the talent run in the family?

Reviewed by Alonzo L. Hamby
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.