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This Reading Group Guide for the History of Us Includes An This reading group guide for Team of Rivals includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Doris Kearns Goodwin. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. Introduction Team of Rivals is a biographical portrait of President Abraham Lincoln and the men who served with him in his cabinet from 1861 to 1865. Three of his cabinet members, Secretary of State William H. Seward, Attorney General Edward Bates, and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, had previously run against Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election. Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals focuses on Lincoln’s mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to the abolition of slavery and victory in the Civil War. Topics & Questions for Discussion 1.Letters and diaries provided the greatest resource for Doris Kearns Goodwin in recreating the emotional lives of Lincoln and his cabinet. What will historians 200 years from now use to recreate our inner lives? 2.What are the leadership lessons that our new president can learn from a study of Lincoln’s emotional intelligence and political skills? 3.How was Abraham Lincoln able to win the Republican nomination in 1860 over his three chief rivals–Seward, Chase, and Bates–all of whom were more experienced, better educated and better known? 4.The night before his election as president, Lincoln made the decision to put each of these three rivals into his cabinet. What led him to this decision? What does it say about his temperament? 5.Lincoln has often been portrayed as suffering from depression all his life. Yet, Goodwin suggests that while he had a melancholy temperament, he developed constructive resources to combat his spells of sorrow. By the time he reached the presidency, Lincoln was the one who could sustain everyone else’s spirits. What were the means he used to shake off his sorrow? 6.How different would the course of the War been if Seward had won the nomination and the presidency? 1 7.President Barack Obama has said he would like to follow Lincoln’s example and surround himself with rivals and people who can question him and argue with him. What are the factors in our modern media and political culture that make it more difficult for a president to create and maintain a true team of rivals? 8.How did Lincoln stay connected with ordinary people during his presidency? 9.How and why did Seward’s attitude toward Lincoln shift? 10.What role did Lincoln’s sense of humor play? Where did he develop his storytelling ability? What are a few of the most memorable stories he liked to tell? 11.How did Lincoln’s thinking about slavery evolve over time? What led him to issue his Emancipation Proclamation? How would he answer complaints that the Proclamation did not free the slaves in the border states? How did Seward contribute to the timing of the Proclamation? 12.How would you characterize the complex relationship between Mary and Abraham Lincoln? When they first met they seemed well suited, yet their relationship deteriorated over time. To what extent did each partner contribute to their troubles; what role did external events play? 13.What role did Lincoln’s debates with Stephen Douglas play in his rise to prominence? How would you describe Lincoln’s attitudes toward the prospect of black equality as revealed in the debates? Why did Lincoln favor the idea of encouraging blacks to emigrate back to Africa? 14.Why did Lincoln put up with Chase for so long, knowing that he was maneuvering against him to win the nomination in 1864? What finally undid Chase? Why did Lincoln appoint him Chief Justice? 15.How would you describe the change in Stanton’s attitudes toward Lincoln from the time they first met as lawyers to the end? How did their opposing styles lead to positive results in the cabinet? 16.What is the picture that emerges of George McClellan? Why did Lincoln not fire him earlier? Compare and contrast McClellan’s style with that of General Grant. 17.Lincoln took great pride in the fact that 9 out of 10 soldiers voted for his reelection, even knowing that a vote for him meant lengthening the War since McClellan was promising a peace compromise. How did he develop such a rapport 2 with the soldiers? 18.How did the women in the story affect the lives and careers of the men surrounding Lincoln–Frances Seward, Kate Chase, and Julia Bates? 19.How would you describe the complex relationship between Lincoln and Frederick Douglass? 20.How might reconstruction have been handled differently if Lincoln had not been killed? 21.Do you agree with Leo Tolstoy’s conclusion that Lincoln will live as long as the world lives? Enhance Your Book Club 1.Lincoln, starring Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis, is based in part on Team of Rivals. This film chronicles the Civil War as it nears its end and the sixteenth president as he clashes with members of his cabinet over the issue of abolishing slavery. Lincoln is directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by Pulitzer Prize- winner Tony Kushner. In addition to Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, the film stars Sally Field as Mary Todd Lincoln, as well as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Hal Holbrook, James Spader and David Strathairn. Discuss each cast member’s role and then have each member select his or her ideal cast for the movie. Watch the full trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv6GRe1ORqo 2.Visit the author’s website, DorisKearnsGoodwin.com and “Like” Doris Kearns Goodwin on Facebook at Doris-Kearns-Goodwin, to learn more, read her comments and view photos. 3.Read one of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s previous bestselling titles such as No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for History for her compelling chronicle of President Franklin Roosevelt. This masterfully written book recounts the fascinating period when modern American was created. How is it similar to Team of Rivals? How is it different? A Conversation with Doris Kearns Goodwin Q: Where did you get the idea for this book? A: While writing No Ordinary Time, I had so loved living with Franklin and Eleanor 3 Roosevelt during World War II that when I wanted to find an equally large subject in an equally dramatic era, Abraham Lincoln was a natural choice. Q: Please describe the evolution of this project. A: I thought at first I would focus on Abraham Lincoln and Mary as I did on Franklin and Eleanor, but I found that during the war Lincoln was married more to the colleagues in his cabinet in terms of time he spent with them and the emotion shared than he was to Mary. Q: Lincoln is one of the most written about figures in this country’s history, let alone the history of the presidency. What sets this biography apart from all the others that have come before it? A: This book places him in the center of his extraordinary team of rivals, each of whom thought they should have been president instead of Lincoln when his term began. But by the end, he had mastered them all. Q: What’s new here that we don’t know about Lincoln? A: We’ve always known him as the great emancipator, a great statesman and a moral giant. This book focuses on his brilliance as a politician. Q. What is it about Lincoln that people are so drawn to today? A: People feel a deeper emotional attachment to Lincoln than they do perhaps to any other president. In part, it is his life story, the trail of losses and failures before he reached the presidency. And, of course, the soaring words that have been memorized by generations of students. Q: Why did you choose to couple Lincoln’s story with the stories of his rivals? A: As an historian, I am always interested in the relationships between people, in their conflicts, emotions, jealousies, angers, and pride. Q: In the past, you’ve written about leaders you knew, such as Lyndon Johnson, and interviewed scores of intimates of the Kennedy family and many who knew FDR. How do you go about researching a book when there’s no one to interview? A: I thought at first that it would be a disadvantage not to be able to interview anyone who actually knew Lincoln or his colleagues. I worried too because their pictures were often off-putting–their wigs and their beards and their non-smiling faces. But as 4 it turned out, this whole generation kept voluminous diaries and wrote thousands of intimate letters that more than compensated for the lack of direct contact. Q: In researching this book, in what ways did your comparative approach lead you to source material not normally used? A. By widening the lens to include Lincoln’s colleagues and their families, all of whom were great letter writers, I found a great deal of material on Lincoln that had not been generally used in Lincoln biographies, allowing the reader to see him in relaxed sessions, late at night, talking of many things besides the war. Q: How did your comparative approach shed new light on Lincoln? A: Lincoln’s barren childhood, his lack of schooling, his intense relationships with male friends, his complicated marriage, the nature of his ambition and his ruminations about death can all be analyzed more clearly when he is placed side by side with his three contemporaries.
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