Cliché has it that every new President is said to face a uniquely difficult set of challenges. In Lincoln’s case, they were the most difficult any President before or since has faced. By the time of his inauguration, more than half a dozen southern states had seceded from the Union and more states threatened. The very first decision he faced on his first day in office was one of the hardest: whether an attempt should be made to resupply the US army base at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, which became the catalyst for the civil war. To deal with these extraordinary problems, Lincoln had already taken the bold decision to bring into his Cabinet the men who he had beaten for his party’s nomination. Chase was appointed Treasury Secretary, while Bates became Attorney General. Seward became Secretary of State and, after a presumptuous attempt to become the chief executive of the new administration, settled into the more valued role of Lincoln’s closest ally. You get the impression from this book that Seward too could have been a great President.

This team of erstwhile rivals (hence the title) steered the Union through one of the most brutal civil wars in history, although the book makes clear that Lincoln and some of his initial ill-starred choices of military commanders made major mistakes early on that cost many lives. The political turning point came at the start of 1863, when Lincoln took one of the greatest gambles of American history and published the famous Emancipation Proclamation that declared that all three and a half million slaves in the Confederate states were now freed — a daring break from the previous assumption that the war was being fought to stop the spread of slavery, which risked pushing border states into secession. Although the thesis of the book is that the Union victory was a team effort, the Emancipation Proclamation appears to have been entirely Lincoln’s idea. Indeed, the abolitionist members of his Cabinet like Seward and Chase tried to dissuade him for tactical reasons. But Lincoln trusted his judgment, and that leadership plus the clear industrial advantage enjoyed by the North eventually brought victory. By the time it did, over 600,000 Americans had died, more than have died in all the other wars America has fought — from the Revolution to the second world war to Afghanistan — put together.

From the moment Barack Obama launched his own campaign for the Presidency on the steps of the State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, he has sought the mantle of Lincoln. He swore the oath of office on Lincoln’s bible, ate for his inauguration lunch Lincoln’s favourite recipes off replica Mary Lincoln china and alluded to this book and Lincoln’s appointment of rivals when he made Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State. But the greatest debt Obama owes to the remarkable prairie lawyer who became President is the simple fact that he is able to stand for office at all. This brilliant book deserves its place on his bedside table — and yours.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP