Volume 53, Number 17 · November 2, 2006
Lincoln at War
By David Bromwich
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
by Richard Carwardine
Knopf, 394 pp., $27.50
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Simon and Schuster, 916 pp., $35.00
The first part of this review dealt with Abraham Lincoln's gift for collaborating with his cabinet. But a cabinet chosen by a politically canny and well-informed leader will develop its own routine; and in periods of relative tranquillity, a policy can be executed by any of a number of agents. War, which crushes, tears up, and redirects government with a ferocity the most sanguine leaders can never predict, makes for a different kind of test. No routine can be looked for here. The diligence and the capacity for responsive change in a leader are on the line at every moment. The joke sometimes attributed to Lincoln, that if he knew what brand of whiskey Grant used he would send it to his other generals, may be apocryphal but it catches an appropriate mood of gallows humor. The Union's greatest impediment from the start of the war had been its lack of military competence at the top.
Review, 5539 words
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