When I rate a book, my primary question is: What did I gain from it?
I think the greatest gift a biographer can give to a reader is a comprehensive, but not overwhelming portrait of the subject, from flaws to feats. Biographies of great people expose their humanity, and in so doing, justify why they stand towering in the halls of historical memory. Team of Rivals does that and more.
The Abraham Lincoln described by Doris Kearns Goodwin is indeed suffused with the same qualities that are taken as genetic in Lincoln mythology - a magnetic attraction to books, graciousness without equal, a gift for governing with moral authority - but permuted with Lincoln's humanity. If it's true that to be human is to err, then Lincoln, through occasional lapses in judgment, outbursts during the most stressful days of the war, and vulnerability to profound melancholy, is not of heaven but of earth. (I elect here to not consider the fact that Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday) What Goodwin shows the reader is that Lincoln doesn't need to be quasi-divine to have been good; rather, Lincoln's humanity is the wellspring for his deeds. Although Lincoln-as-transcendent is an attractive paradigm, it need not - and indeed is not - true, at least to the degree that Lincoln is any less like you or me.
Neither does Goodwin portray Lincoln's life with a deterministic outlook. Throughout, Lincoln and the Union are mired in uncertainty. Will Maryland secede, completing the encirclement of Washington DC? Can Lee outgeneral Meade at Gettysburg? Will McClellan, not Lincoln, win the election of 1864? History might be frozen, but Goodwin brilliantly traces its contours, revealing what was once a raging torrent.
The cast of characters in Lincoln's orbit, who make cameos throughout but always yield stage center to Lincoln, serve as useful proxies for the war of ideas within the Union, namely, on how to prosecute the war and what to do about slavery. Salmon P. Chase is a stand-in for the Radical Republicans, while Edward Bates represents the border state moderates. Seward tracks with the evolution of the Union's attitude toward Lincoln, from doubts about the political acumen of the "railsplitter" in 1860 to unwavering support of the President by 1865. Cabinet discussions reveal the political evolution of antislavery Republicans, from favoring mere containment of slavery to proclaiming emancipation to developing and ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment.
The horror of Lincoln's death is likewise emblazoned on the supporting cast. Edwin Stanton's deathbed-side declaration that Lincoln "belongs to the ages" stands as particularly evocative, even though the outcome - Lincoln's death - had been known all along. Therein lies Goodwin's most unique literary gift: To spin an entirely original tale out of material the reader thought they knew.
Goodwin's expansive toolkit is on full display in Team of Rivals. She combines research acumen with sparkling rhetoric. Her writing is profoundly insightful, but not pretentious. Team of Rivals is at once complementary to the high school-level pablum to which most Americans have been exposed and an antidote to poisonous culture war skirmishes on Lincoln's legacy.
So what did I gain from Team of Rivals? Among other things, a newfound appreciation for Lincoln's supporting cast, who (mostly) overcome their own doubts about Lincoln's sagacity (a word used commonly in Team of Rivals), and the complexity of the political minefield Lincoln navigated. Above all, though, Team of Rivals leaves the reader with this: What's stopping us from living Lincoln's example?
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