Here you go. I can't give you the name and password requested, but here's a different review of the book, from the Dallas Morning News of Sunday, October 23, 2005. It sounds good to me. (Odd typefaces a result of my OCR software and skill of the operator.)
Team of Rivals[font="] [font="]The Political Genius of [/font][font="]Abraham Lincoln[/font][font="]Doris[/font][font="] Keams Goodwin [/font]
[/font] [font="](Simon and Schuster, $35)
[/font]
By PHILIP SEIB
[font="]Special Contributor
[/font] The brilliance of Abraham Lincoln was rooted in his temperament. He could respond with kindness and patient resolve when petty scheming and truculent ambition flared among those he worked with. He kept a fractious government together as he sought to reunite the nation, and in doing so, he displayed a level of political genius unmatched in American history.
An excellent way to appraise Lincoln’s skill is to study how he worked with his Cabinet, which he had carefully stocked with his most powerful political rivals. Doris Kearns Goodwin takes this approach in her superbly researched and wonderfully written Team of Rivals. Secretary of State William Henry Seward, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, and Attorney General Edward Bates had been frontrunners for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination and were astonished when they were defeated by a relatively obscure Illinois lawyer whom they considered a personable lightweight.
Although Lincoln knew that these men held him in low regard, after the election he brought them into his inner circle, later adding to the mix the volatile Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Their opinion of the president rose dramatically as he used the strengths of each to bolster his wartime government.
Ms. Goodwin presents fascinating portraits of these men whose contributions are largely forgotten today. Mr. Seward became the closest persona]ly to the president, who frequently spent evenings at the Seward home on Lafayette Square where, according to Ms. Goodwin, “warmed by Seward’s fireplace and gregarious personality, Lincoln could unwind.” Lincoln’s relationship with Chase was more complicated. While a Cabinet member, the ever-ambitious Chase plotted to run against Lincoln for the Republican nomination in 1864. Lincoln did not let that bother him and selected Chase to become chief justice of the Supreme Court, saying, “We have stood together in the time of trial, and I should despise myself if I allowed personal differences to affect my judgment of his fitness for the office.”
Team of Rivalsis particularly valuable because it makes clear that this president, who is sometimes thought to have been above politics, was actually a master politician. His timing of the Emancipation Proclamation (he waited until after a solid victory by the Union army) showed that he had an “exceptionally sensitive grasp of the limits set by public opinion,” Ms. Goodwin writes. Lincoln observed that the public would not have supported him had he acted six months earlier, when many in the North were willing to accept the perpetuation of slavery if that would help end the war. After issuing the Proclamation but knowing that it might someday be overturned, Lincoln skillfully lobbied members of Congress to secure passage of the 13th Amendment, making the abolition of slavery part of the Constitution.
Lincoln’s talent, says Ms. Goodwin, “was not simply his ability to gather the best men of the country around him, but to impress upon them his own purpose, perception, and resolution at every juncture.” He was able to do this, she writes, because of “his extraordinary combination of profound, gentle humility and a lifelong ambition to help shape his time.”
Maybe it is too much to hope for another Lincoln, but anyone concerned about the future of American politics can learn much from his example. Ms. Goodwin tells his inspiring story with exceptional skill, and among all the books about Lincoln, this one is not to be missed. [font="]Team of Rivals[font="] is scheduled for release Tuesday. [/font]
[/font] Philip Seib is the Lucius W Nieman Professor of Journalism at Marquette University.