59 pages • 1 hour read
Doris Kearns GoodwinTeam of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Rivals”
Introduction Summary
Kearns Goodwin begins with a brief overview of Abraham Lincoln’s political genius and personal qualities. She presents Lincoln as a man of great “decency and morality” who with “a profound self-awareness that enabled him to find constructive ways to alleviate sadness and stress” (xvii). She notes:
Without the march of events that led to the Civil War, Lincoln still would have been a good man, but most likely would never have been publicly recognized as a great man. It was history that gave him the opportunity to manifest his greatness, providing the stage that allowed him to shape and transform our national life. (xix)
Kearns Goodwin also discusses her methodology, noting that by expanding her study to include Lincoln’s contemporaries and their families she was able to make use of a broader set of primary sources than have previously been used in biographies of Lincoln.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Four Men Waiting”
Chapter 1 begins at the Republican National Convention in Chicago in 1860, where the newly formed political party is getting ready to choose its presidential candidate. The time is tense, as the country is embroiled in a battle over whether to allow slavery to expand into its new territories.
The contenders for the nomination are Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer from Illinois who unsuccessfully ran for the US Senate two years prior; William Henry Seward, governor of New York State and a major figure in Republican politics; Salmon P. Chase, the favorite son of Ohio whose commanding physical presence gives him the aura of a statesman; and the elder stateman, Judge Edward Bates, who came out of retirement to pursue the nomination.
The nomination is believed to be Seward’s to lose. Lincoln, however, is seen as a compromise candidate who can unify the party and take on the strong Democratic machine that dominates a large part of Northern and nearly all of Southern politics. Lincoln’s disadvantage is also his greatest advantage: he is relatively unknown. Thus, he is more palatable to the moderate wings of the party that view both Seward and Chase as too radical to win in a nationwide election.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The ‘Longing to Rise’”
Kearns Goodwin situates the candidates for the nomination within the broader political climate: Lincoln, Seward, Chase, and Bates were “members of a restless generation of Americans, destined to leave behind the eighteenth-century world of their fathers” (28). The nation is trying to find its footing as its founders pass into retirement and death. The new generation of leaders must continue to build the nation based on their understanding and interpretations of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence. One of the most pressing issues is the expansion of slavery into newly acquired territories in the West.
Chapter 2 also provides more background on the four candidates. Seward, described as “affectionate and outgoing,” had a privileged childhood and a charmed life, including “a brilliant marriage and excellent prospects in his chosen profession” (34). Chase rose from his family’s bankruptcy to become a member of high society and the political scene in Ohio. Bates grew up in the Southern aristocracy in Virginia, but moved West to Missouri to “grow up with the country” (43).
Kearns Goodwin writes, “Abraham Lincoln faced obstacles unimaginable to the other candidates [...] His road to success was longer, more tortuous, and far less likely” (46). He was born to a poor family in Kentucky and moved throughout the West. Kearns Goodwin argues that his difficult childhood enabled Lincoln to have great empathy and to communicate with the common person. Moreover, “what Lincoln lacked in preparation and guidance, he made up for with his daunting concentration, phenomenal memory, acute reasoning facilities, and interpretive penetration” (54).
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Lure of Politics”
Goodwin Kearns examines why each of the candidates entered politics. Bates became involved in politics during the 1820 campaign for Missouri statehood. He opposed anti-slavery legislation as a “price of admission to the Union” (61) on the grounds that it violated the Constitutional principle of individual rights.
Seward, no longer fulfilled by practicing law, successfully ran for New York governor in 1838. While governor, he backed legislation that advanced the rights of African Americans. After leaving the governorship, he became nationally known for his defense of William Freeman, a black man accused of murder in Seward’s hometown of Auburn, New York.
Kearns Goodwin notes that Lincoln was “drawn to politics in his early years” (87), though he was not as successful as Seward and Bates. He served in the Illinois State Assembly, but lost his seat due to a restructuring of districts. His subsequent political efforts largely failed. Lincoln’s luck changed when he was introduced to Mary Todd, a young woman from a prominent family in Kentucky. The two wed, and Mary helped foster Lincoln’s political ambitions.
Like the other three candidates, Chase began his career as a lawyer. Unlike the others, he was reluctant to enter elective politics. However, an experience in which Chase physically defended an abolitionist newspaper against an angry mob deeply impact him, and he became a leader in Ohio’s antislavery community. His work defending escaped slaves against the Fugitive Slave Law earned him a national reputation, and he decided to run for public office. He had uneven success and struggled to find a political party with which to affiliate.
Introduction-Part 1, Chapter 3 Analysis
These first chapters introduce the four main characters in the book: Lincoln, Bates, Seward, and Chase. Kearns Goodwin describes their various backgrounds and paths to candidacy for the Republican nomination in 1860. Although Kearns Goodwin discusses their professional accomplishments, much of her analysis focuses on the men’s personal lives, personalities, and relationships. Of particular note is the attention that Kearns Goodwin gives to the women behind the men. Mary Todd Lincoln, especially, is credited with providing “a protected harbor” (104) from which Abraham Lincoln could pursue his ambitions.
Kearns Goodwin also engages in some psychological analysis in attributing the men’s childhoods with a great deal of influence on their political careers and in considering the effects of their mental states, particularly the role of depression in Lincoln’s life. For example, she notes that Lincoln’s “early intimacy with tragic loss [...] his familiarity with pain and personal disappointment imbued him with a strength and understanding of human frailty unavailable to a man of Seward’s buoyant disposition” (49). Similarly, Kearns Goodwin speculates that Chase’s childhood at boarding school left him with the desire for acknowledgment and success, while Bates may have sacrificed his political ambitions in order to secure the happy family he lacked as a child.
Through her examination of the four men’s lives, Kearns Goodwin also paints a broader picture of the United States in the early to mid-1800s. The four men represented America’s own imagination of itself at the time: “all four aspirants for the Republican nomination left home, journeyed West, studied law, dedicated themselves to public service” (28). These four men sought to “preserve and expand the great experiment [...] the only barriers to success [...] discipline and the extent of one’s talent” (28), just as
Thousands of young men [broke] away from the small towns and limited opportunities their fathers had known. These ambitious youngsters ventured forth to test their luck in new careers [...] In the process, hundreds of new towns and cities were born, and with the rapid expansion of roads, bridges, and canals, a modern market economy emerged. (29)
At the same time, each of the men represented a different slice of America: Lincoln was a country lawyer, raised in poverty and still living a hard-scrabble life, barely earning enough to cover living expenses but confident that he could improve his lot through education. Edward Bates was raised in the Southern aristocracy and, as a judge, continued to live comfortably. Seward was part of the affluent, educated Northern elite. Chase was an ambitious social climber determined to overcome his family’s bankruptcy.
Threading through the stories of these four men are two crucial issues: slavery and shifting political power. By the mid-1800s, the states had reached an uncomfortable compromise on the issue of the slavery; Western expansion threatened the fragile agreement as pro- and antislavery factions fought over whether slavery would be legal in the new territories.
As Republicans, the four candidates for the nomination were all nominally antislavery, albeit to varying degrees. Bates was a staunch advocate of states’ rights and had fought against a federal law that would have made antislavery restrictions a requirement for territories to be admitted into the Union. Seward and Chase used their law degrees to fight against slavery and for the rights of black citizens. Lincoln, in his early years, took an apolitical stance on slavery; although he was personally opposed, he believed that the Fugitive Slave Law should be upheld, and he defended both slaveholders and fugitive slaves in court.
Closely entwined with the issue of slavery were tectonic shifts in political power and party allegiances. As Kearns Goodwin notes, “It was a country for young men” (28), with seemingly limitless opportunity for those with enough ambition. Almost a century into America’s “great experiment,” the Founding Fathers and their successors had passed on, leaving a void in power. At the same time, the question of slavery was re-creating and dividing political allegiances. The Whigs, once one of the two major political parties, fractured into such factions as the Free Soilers, the Know Nothings, and the Republicans. These new parties and their constantly shifting coalitions provided openings for political aspirants, such as Lincoln and Chase, who had failed to rise in the ranks of the traditional parties.
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