Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Chicago Press and Tribune pointed out, was “his avoidance of extremes” simply “the result of ambition which measures words or regulates acts.” It was, more accurately, “the natural consequence of an equable nature and a mental constitution that is never off its balance.”

Tolstoy went on to observe, “This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman as G

“the spectator could not fail to be impressed with the idea that a man who could have such a friend must be a noble man indeed.”

As Stanton came to know and understand Lincoln, his initial disdain turned to admiration. When George Harding, his old partner in the Reaper trial, assumed that Stanton was the author of the “remarkable passages” in one of Lincoln’s messages, Stanton set him straight. “Lincoln wrote it—every word of it; and he is capable of more than that, Harding,

When ardent Republicans heard Lincoln speak, they knew that if their beloved Seward could not win, they had in the eloquent orator from Illinois a man of considerable capacity whom they could trust, one who would hold fast on the central issue that had forged the party—the fight against extending slavery into the territories. Though Lincoln had ent

Lincoln’s profound and elevated sense of ambition—“an ambition,” Fehrenbacher observes, “notably free of pettiness, malice, and overindulgence,” shared little common ground with Chase’s blatant obsession with office, Seward’s tendency toward opportunism, or the ambivalent ambition that led Bates to withdraw from public office.

But Ohio would not unite behind Chase, as some delegates held out for Ben Wade or Judge McLean. The many enemies Chase had made and failed to conciliate over the years came back to haunt him at this critical juncture.

This, then, is a story of Lincoln’s political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to

Lincoln’s barren childhood, his lack of schooling, his relationships with male friends, his complicated marriage, the nature of his ambition, and his ruminations about death can be analyzed more clearly when he is placed side by side with his three contemporaries.