Team of Rivals:The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Doris Kearns Goodwin

"Where did the long-armed baboon come from?"
In 1855 Abraham Lincoln was then a forty-six year old former one-term Congressman and long-time Illinois state legislator. He was also the senior attorney in a two-lawyer firm. He had worked his way into the profession by self-learning and clerking in a law office. The former dry goods store clerk, mailman and day laborer had a strong reputation around the Illinois circuit courts, and had even worked for some railroad companies and been effective.

But when he travelled by train to Cincinnati, Ohio, to serve as adjoining counsel on a patents case involving the agricultural technological wonder of the time, the McCormick Reaper, he was in for a professional embarrassment so bad he told a friend there that he would never come to Cincinnati again, period. (The case, known as "Manny vs. McCormick" was originally to be tried in Chicago but there was a last minute change of venue.)

The future President arrived from his long train trip from Springfield in a disheveled and dusty state. (Not unusual for Lincoln, a man who was never one for sartorial splendor in the best of times.) He managed to get to the hotel where he was staying, change into his best suit, and head for the law office representing his client. Soon, he ran into Edwin M. Stanton, considered by many the best attorney in the region. Stanton had also been retained by a certain Mr. Harding, who was representing the McCormick interest in the infringement case. It was then that, after snubbing Lincoln on the sidewalk in front of the law office when the taller man tried to speak to him courteously, turned to a colleague and compared the lanky Lincoln to a baboon. During the trial, in which Lincoln was not invited to join the other lawyers at the bench, it only got worse.

"Stanton was even heard to speak contemptuously of Lincoln as a backwoods bumpkin. Lincoln was hurt by the snub but stayed to watch the trial and was impressed by Stanton's courtroom brilliance. Six years later Stanton, a Democrat, was practicing in Washington during the wars first year and referred disdainfully to Lincoln in conversations with friends. Lincoln was aware of Stanton's opinions, but when he decided to get rid of the incompetent Simon Cameron, who had made a hash of military mobilization, he appointed none other than Stanton as secretary of war."--New York Tiimes Review, 2005.

Why Lincoln set aside the natural animosity against Stanton, as he did with his other political rivals like the brilliant former front-runner for President, New York Governor William Seward, the power-grasping Salmon P. Chase (who tried to get the 1864 Republican Party Presidential nomination in a covert and overt campaign against Lincoln), and Edward Bates of Missouri, is the subject of Ms. Kearns-Goodwin's book. Unlike the other Lincoln biographies I'm come across this one brings much more focus to the men around Lincoln and how he handled them.
The three gentlemen mentioned above all wanted to be President and Lincoln brought all of them, including Stanton, into his cabinet not because of what they thought initially of Abraham Lincoln as a man but because they were the best men for the job--a job of vital importance since the nation was split apart and literally fighting for the notion that the Republic itself could survive.

There are dozens of interesting stories in this amazing book, which has gathered a lot of attention because of Barack Obama's interest in the work and his own gathering of former rivals in his presumptive cabinet. If you are interested in how the seemingly out-of-his-depth Lincoln could maneuver his way to political, moral and military success, this is a good book to pick up and savour.

Goodwin's writing style is brisk and refreshingly devoid of the overly-psychological bent that characterizes many Lincoln biographies.

Stanton by the way later said he had completely misjudged Lincoln in their initial meeting. It was Lincoln, "the long-armed baboon", whom he later spoke of after his assassination in the 16th President's most famous epitaph:

"Now he belongs to the ages."