Team of Rivals

Doris Kearns Goodwin examines Abraham Lincoln’s political leadership through the men who became his principal cabinet colleagues: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates and Edwin M. Stanton. Several had competed against Lincoln for the Republican presidential nomination in 1860 and entered the administration with greater national reputations, independent ambitions and sharply different views of how the Union should respond to secession.

The book follows Lincoln’s management of those rival personalities through the Civil War, emancipation and the crises of military command. Rather than presenting the cabinet as naturally united, Goodwin shows how disagreement, patronage and personal resentment were contained within a government facing rebellion. Lincoln’s ability to listen, delay, persuade and redistribute responsibility becomes central to the study of wartime leadership.