"The conduct of the republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of small intellect, growing smaller. They pass over...statesmen and able men, and they take up a fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar."
~ The New York Herald (May 19, 1860), commenting on Abraham Lincoln's nomination for president at the Republican National Convention
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"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Team of Rivals
The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
CONTENTS
PART I THE RIVALS
1 Four Men Waiting
2 The "Longing to Rise"
3 The Lure of Politics
4 "Plunder & Conquest"
5 The Turbulent Fifties
6 The Gathering Storm
7 Countdown to the Nomination
8 Showdown in Chicago
9 "A Man Knows His Own Name"
10 "An Intensified Crossword Puzzle"
11 "I Am Now Public Property"
PART II MASTER AMONG MEN
12 "Mystic Chords of Memory": Spring 1861
13 "The Ball Has Opened": Summer 1861
14 "I Do Not Intend to Be Sacrificed": Fall 1861
15 "My Boy Is Gone": Winter 1862
16 "He Was Simply Out-Generaled": Spring 1862
17 "We Are in the Depths": Summer 1862
18 "My Word Is Out": Fall 1862
19 "Fire in the Rear": Winter-Spring 1863
20 "The Tycoon Is in Fine Whack": Summer 1863
21 "I Feel Trouble in the Air": Summer-Fall 1863
22 "Still in Wild Water": Fall 1863
23 "There's a Man in It!": Winter-Spring 1864
24 "Atlanta Is Ours": Summer-Fall 1864
25 "A Sacred Effort": Winter 1864-1865
26 The Final Weeks: Spring 1865
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Illustration Credits
Index
------------------- [from the INTRODUCTION] ----------------------------------- ...In my...effort to illuminate the character and career of Abraham Lincoln, I have coupled the account of his life with the stories of the remarkable men who were his rivals for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination -- New York senator William H. Seward, Ohio governor Salmon P. Chase, and Missouri's distinguished elder statesman Edward Bates.
Taken together, the lives of these four men give us a picture of the path taken by ambitious young men in the North who came of age in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
All four studied law, became distinguished orators, entered politics, and opposed the spread of slavery.
Their upward climb was one followed by many thousands who left the small towns of their birth to seek opportunity and adventure in the rapidly growing cities of a dynamic, expanding America.
Just as a hologram is created through the interference of light from separate sources, so the lives and impressions of those who companioned Lincoln give us a clearer and more dimensional picture of the president himself.
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.
When Lincoln won the nomination, each of his celebrated rivals believed the wrong man had been chosen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson recalled his first reception of the news that the "comparatively unknown name of Lincoln" had been selected: "we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times."
Lincoln seemed to have come from nowhere.... --------------------------------- [end, excerpt] ---------
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