Team of Rivals

Of all the remarkable stage actors in this golden time, none surpassed Edwin Booth, son of the celebrated tragedian Junius Booth and elder brother to Lincoln’s future assassin, John Wilkes Booth. “Edwin Booth has done more for the stage in America than any other man,” wrote a drama critic in the 1860s. The soulful young actor captivated audiences e

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fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” When a visitor asked one day about the prospects of the army under Grant, Lincoln’s face lit up “with that peculiar smile which he always puts on when about to tell a good story.” The question, he said, “reminds me of a little anecdote about the automaton chessplayer, which many years ago astonishe

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Lincoln’s ability to retain his emotional balance in such difficult situations was rooted in an acute self-awareness and an enormous capacity to dispel anxiety in constructive ways. In the most difficult moments of his presidency, nothing provided Lincoln greater respite and renewal than to immerse himself in a play at either Grover’s or Ford’s. Le

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work in human affairs. The previous year, he had granted an audience to a group of Quakers, including Eliza Gurney. “If I had had my way,” he reportedly said during the meeting, “this war would never have been commenced; if I had been allowed my way this war would have been ended before this, but we find it still continues; and we must believe that

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“Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition,” the twenty-threeyear-old Abraham Lincoln had written in his open letter to the people of Sangamon County during his first bid for public office in the Illinois state legislature. “Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other [ambition] so great as that of being truly esteemed o

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Harper’s Weekly agreed. In an editorial endorsing the president’s reelection, it claimed that “among all the prominent men in our history from the beginning none have ever shown the power of understanding the popular mind so accurately as Mr. Lincoln.” In moving gradually toward emancipation, as he had done, the Harper’s editor observed, Lincoln un

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Crippled by her sadness, Mary was drawn to the relief offered by the spiritualist world. Through Elizabeth Keckley, she was introduced to a celebrated medium who helped her, said Mary, pierce the “veil” that “separates us, from the ‘loved & lost.’ ” During several séances, some conducted at the White House, she believed she was able to see Will

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The editors of the Mercury would have been even more astonished if they had an inkling of the truth recognized by those closer to Lincoln: his political genius was not simply his ability to gather the best men of the country around him, but to impress upon them his own purpose, perception, and resolution at every juncture. With respect to Lincoln’s

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Worried that Lincoln’s adversaries were successfully eclipsing him by appealing to the “radical element,” Leonard Swett recommended that the president call for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. “I told him if he took that stand, it was an outside position and no one could maintain himself upon any measure more radical,” Swett recalled,

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