NewMexiKen recommends Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals to all interested in the American Civil War, 19th century politics and Abraham Lincoln.
Though NewMexiKen has read many other books about Lincoln and long considered him to be the greatest of American presidents, Goodwin has put me even more in awe of this extraordinary human being.
His conviction that we are one nation, indivisible, “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” led to the rebirth of a union free of slavery. And he expressed this conviction in a language of enduring clarity and beauty, exhibiting a literary genius to match his political genius.
But beyond even that, as Tolstoy wrote:
Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together.
Goodwin tells the story convincingly — in 754 pages of text with 121 pages of notes. At times it moves slowly, but ultimately the detail proves valuable. There is much about Lincoln’s political rivals (who become his cabinet) and their families. William Henry Seward is shown as the great politician and gentleman he was. Mary Todd Lincoln comes off in a positive new light.
Caveat: Though it touches on the main battles and a few of the leading military personnel, this is not a military history. A reader looking for military history should look elsewhere. The best general history of the Civil War remains Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson. McPherson reviewed Goodwin’s book for The New York Times.
The best biography of Lincoln is, I think, David Herbert Donald’s Lincoln.