I’ve just finished a great “one-two” punch on Civil War history. The first is Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals, the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.” The Second is the first in Ken Burns’ documentary, “Civil War.”
I was interested in Team of Rivals beforehand, but after seeing Ms. Goodwin speak at book signing in December, I had to read it. As she explained, it was at first not obvious how to take a different approach to Lincoln, who has been written about possibly more than any other President. Her tack on the subject was to approach Lincoln from his cabinet, made up of men who he had outmaneuvered for the Republican nomination.
Team of Rivals is a fascinating analysis of someone who must have been one of the world’s most adroit politicians. Ronald Regan has often been quoted as saying “You can accomplish much if you don’t care who gets credit.” Certainly Lincoln and his deft handling of some very large personalities is one of the best embodiments of this sentiment.
She told a story, which I later reread near the end of her book about Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy, in the wilds (Africa I believe) and speaking to a set of primitive people was pressed into telling all he knew about “the greatest leader ever known,” Abraham Lincoln.
There were so many interesting facts from the two sources (a few mentioned in both), including:
- The last veteran of the Civil war died in 1959, ninety-eight years after the war began! Can you imagine a single life that saw fighting in the Civil war, the transcontinental railroad, manned flight, World War I, Pearl Harbor, World War II, the atomic bomb, and maybe even Elvis?
- Ten states in the south did not even have Abraham Lincoln on the 1860 presidential election ballot!
- Robert E. Lee was offered command of the entire Union army by Lincoln. Lee was against succession and firmly against slavery. However, when forced to chose he had to choose his native land, Virginia.
- Ulysses S. Grant started the war as a “Mustering officer;” basically a recruiter. Here was a man who was a failing businessman at the start of the war, but just seven years later was President of the United States.
- The Confederate constitution was very much like the United States constitution. Two differences of not included a line-item veto (yay!) and curiously, outlawed international slave trading.
- The treatment of John Brown in Burn’s documentary was very interesting. On the one hand Brown was clearly a murderous vigilante. On the other hand, the abolitionist was the “meteor” that more than any other individual precipitated the Civil War, and the eventual end of slavery.
- Team of Rivals reminded me of something I have usually not thought of - that is, Seward's actions as Secretary of State that kept both England and France from recognizing Confederacy, and staying out of the war - events that would certainly have changed its course.
- You always hear how bloody and awful the Civil War was. 600,000 men died in the Civil war, two percent of the American population. In one battle, in the space of TWENTY minutes, 7,000 men died! That’s more than twice all the U.S. Soldiers who have died in Iraq. That is certainly not to diminish that sacrifice at all – it’s more to point out the horrifying scale of the carnage. Horrifying even to imagine. Contrast that with the start of the war, the Union loss of Fort Sumter, a 34 hour cannon barrage – total casualties…one horse.
The two sources together make a great combination. The one is an interesting documentary that gives the background of the war. The other is a great description of Lincoln all of the battling politics that governed the time leading up to the Civil War, and the effort required by the North to see it through to victory.
Reading the one and watching the other, you are reminded just how much the Civil War really defined the United States as it is today.
