Team of Rivals
By Doris Kearns Goodwin
Team of Rivals is about Abraham Lincoln's life, presidency, and leadership.
View on AmazonI'm most interested in history when it manages to connect me to people or places from long ago. Team of Rivals connected me to Abraham Lincoln, and to an era which I'd previously read about from a distance, but never understood on a personal level. By the end of this long book, Lincoln felt real as real to me as if he was living in this time, and not almost 200 years ago.
Team of Rivals is full of examples of Lincoln's magnanimity and leadership. There was one moment where Lincoln presented an officer with a military commission, and the officer made it clear to Lincoln that he didn't like him or his policies. He said that if Lincoln ever did something he disagreed with, he would resign his commission immediately. Lincoln's response was:
That is frank, that is fair. But I want to add one thing: When you see me doing anything that for the good of the country ought not to be done, come and tell me so, and why you think so, and then perhaps you won’t have any chance to resign your commission.
The book also contains a lot of examples of writing, and how Lincoln worked to revise his prose. Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Henry Seward, suggested the following conclusion for Lincoln's first inaugural address:
The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battle fields and so many patriot graves pass through all the hearts . . . in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation.
Lincoln took that sentiment and transformed it to something more beautiful-sounding and eternal:
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Reference
Goodwin, D. K. (2006). Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. United States: Simon & Schuster.