Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Every member of this administration was better known, better educated, and more experienced in public life than Lincoln.

form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to

learn from mistakes.

He wanted to leave the delegates “in a mood to come to us, if they shall be compelled to give up their first love.”

Ambition is a passion, at once strong and insidious, and is very apt to cheet a man out of his happiness and his true respectability of character.”

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly,” Leo Tolstoy wrote, “can also suffer great sorrow; but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them.”