Tag: Team of Rivals

Impossible, after reading this book, not to wonder what our nation would look like had Lincoln survived his second term.

[from October 2008] I heard Goodwin talk about this book on NPR, and she sounded like she’d been an eyewitness to the events. Sold me the book. On June 17th–I’ve been a hundred pages from the end for ten days. I don’t want Abe to die. July 17th — Okay, I finally made myself finish.…

Read more Impossible, after reading this book, not to wonder what our nation would look like had Lincoln survived his second term.

Clearly this upward mobility, the possibility of self-realization so central to the idea of America, was closed to the slave unless and until he became a free man.

Goodwin puts Abraham Lincoln in the context of his peers, many of whom ran against him for the first Republican nomination for president (remember they’d just invented that party) and one of whom, Stanton, had treated him with outright contempt in a law case years before. Seward accepted the job of Secretary of State thinking…

Read more Clearly this upward mobility, the possibility of self-realization so central to the idea of America, was closed to the slave unless and until he became a free man.