A Rivalry for the Ages

Not only did Doris Kearns Goodwin earn the Pulitzer Prize for "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" (2005), she secured the interest of Steven Spielberg to make a movie based on her work years before it was finished.  Due later this year, Daniel Day-Lewis is cast as the prairie lawyer.  The book is a fascinating multiple biography not only of Lincoln during his presidency, but of his Secretary of State, William Seward, his Treasury Secretary, Salmon Chase, and his Attorney General, Edwin Bates, all of whom actively sought the Republican Party nomination for President against Lincoln in 1860.  Additionally, considerable treatment is given to Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who, at the outset, was condescendingly dismissive of Lincoln as utterly unfit for the office.  Lincoln emerges supremely confident in his judgment and ability, so much so that partisan fears weighed little in his appointments. He will risk the rivalries for a higher purpose, ultimately succeeding with the same.  Perhaps my favorite parts of the book are quotations from Tolstoy.  In 1908, the novelist was a guest of a tribal chief in the wilds of Russia.  The chief asked Tolstoy to recount the deeds of the great figures of history.  Tolstoy obliged, describing feats of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick the Great and Napoleon.  At the close, the chief stated that Tolstoy had not told of the greatest leader of them all, Lincoln.  Fitting tribute indeed, having been enhanced by Goodwin's scholarship 100 years later.