The Media has been getting itself into a
twist over
Doris Kearns Goodwin's Book:
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. I'm happy. I'm a fan of the book, and I've been a big fan of Doris's since her appearance in Ken Burns's Baseball Miniseries. I'm glad that the attention has gotten her a couple more sales.
Now, if these same people would only
read what she wrote...
...and I mean read
past the cover.
Granted the book tells how a relatively unknown and untried Lawmaker from Illinois rises up and wins the Presidency against a well known, well regarded Senator from New York who was supposed to take the thing in a cakewalk. The Lawmaker from Illinois turns around and hires that rival from New York to be his Secretary of State.
Stop me if this sounds familiar.
This makes for nice media soundbites, and it certainly
makes it look as though you've read the book.
...but it also reveals that you
haven't.
We've even had some
pushback from rival historians, kinda sorta
pissing on the book for missing key details and simplifying things.
"Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his Cabinet," is the way Obama has summarized Goodwin's thesis, adding, "Whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was how can we get this country through this time of crisis."
That's true enough, but the problem is, it didn't work that well for Lincoln. There were painful trade-offs with the "team of rivals" approach that are never fully addressed in the book, or by others that offer happy-sounding descriptions of the Lincoln presidency.
True enough, but the problem is...that paragraph's
not quite true either.
While it takes a Lincoln Historian to write a paragraph like that, as
Matthew Pinsker did in the Los Angeles Times of November 18th, 2008; the fact that Mr. Pinsker has
his own Lincoln book out on the market (and not doing as well as Team of Rivals) should be noted in the interests of accuracy.
Team of Rivals is all about the Cabinet clashes, disagreements, hirings, firings and arguments that helped Lincoln lead the Country during its darkest hour. The reason that the book carries the subtitle of
"The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln" isn't the fact that he
hired these people in the first place, it's the way he
manipulated them after.
Sorry, the way he
handled them after...
The Press would have you believe that Lincoln hired his rivals, the White House became an early version of the Algonquin Round Table, and together in patriotic lockstep shepherded the Country through the Civil War.
Not so. Not remotely.
The Cabinet was contentious, sniping, backbiting and certainly argumentative, but the trick of it was
that's kinda the way Lincoln wanted it.
In a deviation from current Republican practice, Lincoln
wanted a
balance of opinion. He
wanted opinions that
diverged from his own. He
wanted a
debate over what to do, and how to do it happening in front of him. He picked people he knew would light that spark.
Of course,
he made a mistake or two. Lincoln's first Secretary of War comes right to mind. He was so corrupt, he had to be shipped off to be Ambassador to Russia.
If only the current (temporary) occupant of the White House had read the book.
Even Bill Richardson dumped on the comparison a little bit during his press conference this morning. "Former competitors, yes. But Rivals suggests something harder edged."
Bill Richardson, I think, read the book.
When the President-Elect dropped that now-famous line, that the change "will come from me," I was certain he had too. In thinking about
Christopher Hitchens' recent Hillary panic attack, a passage from the book immediately came to mind, from pages 363-364.
With more than enough troubles to occupy him at home, Lincoln faced a tangled situation abroad. A member of the British Parliament had introduced a resolution urging England to accord the Southern Confederacy belligerent status. If passed, the resolution would give Confederate ships the same rights in neutral ports enjoyed by Federal ships. Britain's textile economy depended on cotton furnished by Southern plantations. Unless the British broke the Union blockade to ensure a continuing supply of cotton, the great textile mills in Manchester and Leeds would be forced to cut back or come to a halt. Merchants would lose money, and thousands of workers would lose their jobs.
[Secretary of State William] Seward feared that England would back the South simply to feed its own factories. While the "younger branch of the British stock" might support freedom, he told his wife, the aristocrats, concerned more with economics than morality, would become "the ally of the traitors." To prevent this from happening, he was "trying to get a bold remonstrance through the Cabinet, before it is too late." He hoped not only to halt further thoughts of recognition of the Confederacy but to ensure that the British would respect the Union blockade and refuse, even informally, to meet with the three Southern commissioners who had been sent to London to negotiate for the Confederacy. To achieve these goals, Seward was willing to wage war. "God damn' em, I'll give' em hell," he told Sumner, thrusting his foot in the air as he spoke.
On May 21, Seward brought Lincoln a surly letter drafted for [our Ambassador to the English Court] Charles Francis Adams to read verbatim to Lord John Russell, Britain's Foreign Secretary. Lincoln recognized immediately that the tone was too abrasive for a diplomatic communication. While decisive action might be necessary to prevent Britain from any form of overt sympathy with the South, Lincoln intention of fighting two wars at once. All his life, he had taken care not to send letters written in anger. Now, to mitigate the harshness of the draft he altered the tone of the letter at numerous points. Where Seward had claimed that the president was "surprised and grieved" that no protest had been made against unofficial meetings with the Southern commissioners, Lincoln wrote simply that the "President regrets." Where Seward threatened that "no one of these proceedings [informal or formal recognition, or breaking the blockade] will be borne," Lincoln shifted the phrase to "will pass unnoticed."
Most important, where Seward had indicated that the letter be read directly to the British foreign secretary, Lincoln insisted that it serve merely for Adams's guidance and should not "be read, or shown to any one. " Still, the central message remained clear: a warning to Britain that if the vexing issues were not resolved, and Britain decided "to fraternize with our domestic enemy," then a war between the United States and Britain "may ensue," caused by "the action of Great Britain, not our own." In that event, Britain would forever lose "the sympathies and the affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and affections she has a natural claim."
Thus, a threatening message that might have embroiled the Union in two wars at the same time became instead the basis for a hard-line policy that effectively interrupted British momentum toward recognizing the Confederacy. Furthermore, France, whose ministers had promised to act in concert with Britain, followed suit. This was a critical victory for the Union, preventing for the time being the recognition that would have conferred legitimacy on the Confederacy in the eyes of the world, weakened Northern morale, and accorded "currency to Southern bonds."
History would later give Secretary of State Seward high marks for his role in preventing Britain and France from intervening in the war. He is considered by some to have been "the ablest American diplomatist of the century." But here, as was so often the case, Lincoln's unseen hand had shaped critical policy. Only three months earlier, the frontier lawyer had confessed to Seward that he knew little of foreign affairs. His revisions of the dispatch, however, exhibit the sophisticated prowess of a veteran statesman: he had analyzed a complex situation and sought the least provocative way to neutralize a potential enemy while making crystal-clear his country's position.
Seward was slowly but inevitably coming to appreciate Lincolns remarkable abilities. "It is due to the President to say, that his magnanimity is almost superhuman," he told his wife in mid-May. "His confidence and sympathy increase every day." As Lincoln began to trust his own abilities, Seward became more confident in him. In early June, he told Frances: "Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us; but he needs constant and assiduous cooperation." Though the feisty New Yorker would continue to debate numerous issues with Lincoln in the years ahead, exactly as Lincoln had hoped and needed him to do, Seward would become his most faithful ally in the cabinet.
We have a President who reads books now. We have a President who is curious about the world, and is unafraid of listening to dissenting opinion.
I think we remain in good hands.
