Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006 08:24 am
Melancholy genius
Recent Lincoln books look inside his Cabinet and his head
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
By Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster, 2005, 944 pp., $35
With Abraham Lincoln’s 197th birthday just
around the corner, it’s worth taking a look at two noteworthy recent
books about our 16th president. The authors of both will be in Springfield
this weekend to take part in the Abraham Lincoln Association’s
programs for the day.
Doris Kearns Goodwin delves into the Lincoln field
with Team of Rivals. She presents the Lincoln presidency as a stupendous juggling
act, with cabinet members all a-tumble and with Lincoln as the Great
Juggler of men and events.
Does it work? Sure. Here we get a good look at the
lives of William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase — two very different
but ambitious men who get yoked on the Lincoln team. Goodwin adds further
insight into Edwin M. Stanton, bespectacled secretary of war, and Attorney
General Edward Bates. Other cabinet members get only modest mention
throughout the book’s corpus.
(And corpus it is. This is a big doorstop of a book.
A good editor would’ve mercilessly cut out 200 or so pages and saved
us wear and tear.)
We see Lincoln as a political genius. He is able to
strategize and secure the Republican nomination through hard work just
before the party’s national convention in Chicago. The book is
especially noteworthy for its examination of Seward, the man who was
“supposed” to be president in 1860.
After his victory and before he leaves Springfield to
be inaugurated, Lincoln quietly assembles a cabinet comprising dissonant
parts, political rivals who, for the most part, underestimate him. His
administration will be composed of individuals of varying political
beliefs, reflecting the broad spectrum of views within the nascent
Republican Party of that era, as well a few Democrats. That helps give
Lincoln a claim to broader support than his 40 percent of the popular vote
would have naturally granted him.
Much has been made about Abraham Lincoln’s
melancholy. His contemporaries also recognized this trait. In Lincoln’s Melancholy,
Joshua Wolf Shenk raises several thoughtful questions: Given
Lincoln’s tendency toward sadness, how was he so successful? How did
he handle it? How did it affect his political career?
Shenk provides a close analysis of Lincoln’s
two major breakdowns: his agony over Ann Rutledge and his agony over Mary
Todd. He shows how often Lincoln got bust in the dust, how often he lost,
and how he could climb back out of the dirt to fight again.
First, folks back then had a different take on
melancholy and depression. It was sometimes seen as a mark of genius, of
great reflectiveness. Next, oddly enough, this drew people, feeling that
they should help him in some way, to Lincoln. Finally, Lincoln himself
consciously understood the problem and relied on humor to get himself
through. Of course, his humor also attracted people to him and became his
most valued political asset.
Moreover, Shenk asserts that Lincoln created a kind
of realistic worldview because of his melancholy. This realism became
invaluable to Lincoln in prosecuting the war and in dealing with its
emotional burden.
Shenk’s Lincoln is a self-made creature who
deals with mental weakness by recognizing it, then finding ways to deal
with it. His cures? Hard work and humor. With these
“anti-depressants” he manages his political losses, his angst
over marriage, the deaths of his children, and the brutal realities of the
Civil War.
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