Abe Lincoln's 'Team Of Rivals'

Abraham Lincoln is undoubtedly one of this country's most important presidents. Legends abound about the country lawyer turned president who brought this nation through the Civil War.

Now, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin offers a fresh look at his life and political career in her book, "Team Of Rivals: The Political Genius Of Abraham Lincoln." Click here to read an excerpt.

Kearns says she chose to differentiate her biography of Lincoln by not coming at him "straight on, but by coming up with a new understanding of him by showing him with other powerful, important men of his day."

"By showing him with his rivals," she said, "they bring along a lot of interesting women and it makes for a sprawling good story. And because all these people kept diaries and wrote letters, there was material that hasn't been used in other Lincoln biographies."

His genius, then, was to bring together men such as William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase. Seward was a celebrated senator from New York for more than a decade and governor of his state for two terms before going to Washington. Chase was an Ohioan who had been both senator and governor, and had played a central role in the formation of the national Republican Party. Men such as these could have gotten the nomination for president, and the story is told through their eyes.

"What he understood was if he could put these people into his cabinet, they represented conservatives, radicals, moderates — the strongest people in the country," Kearns told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "That takes enormous internal confidence."

Goodwin's favorite story is about Lincoln's first meeting with Edwin M. Stanton when they were both young lawyers. They were in Cincinnati at the "Reaper Trial" in 1855.

"Stanton was very well known. Lincoln less well known; they were thrown together on a case," she said. "Stanton took one look at Lincoln's disheveled hair, trousers ill fitting, and said we can't have that long-armed ape anywhere around us. It will hurt our case. Turned his back on him; never met with him; never read his brief that he had written; humiliated him. And, yet, when Lincoln needing a Secretary of War, Stanton was the man for the job. Stanton ended up loving him more than anyone outside of his family. Who can do that today?"

Lincoln had a longer view of where he was. And Goodwin's argument is that some of his other political rivals couldn't understand that Lincoln had to see beyond the war.

"From the time he was a young man, he was so worried about dying and just becoming dust," she said. "He wanted to believe that if you accomplished something worthy that could stand the test of time, could make a difference in the lives of your generation, you'd be remembered. Your story would be told.

"When he finally signed the Emancipation Proclamation, he told an old friend of his (who had been with him when he had been earlier depressed, at one point he was almost suicidal), he said, 'I wish in a certain sense I could die, but I haven't done anything yet to be remembered by.' It's an incredible thing. It is not just ambition for power. It's not just for office. It's something larger. It was even larger than emancipation. It was to keep this democracy, that was a beacon of hope to the world, alive. If we had split apart, it would have been over. "

As for arguments that Lincoln was gay, Goodwin says, "What you see by looking at the other rivals and him, comparatively, they all stayed in the same bed with one another.

"One of the reasons we think he's gay is because he slept with his friend. When they were on the circuit, they would sleep two to three to a bed. The only man that got a bed to himself was the judge because he weighed 300 pounds. And they wrote articles and letters to one another. That was common. They could say: I love you. I want to be with you. I want to hold hands. They weren't gay. It was a nice time when men could talk to one another like that."