Team of Rivals Read Online Free

not surprised at any result—but I tell you that your chances are not the worst…brace your nerves for any result.” Knapp’s message was followed by one from Davis himself on the second day of the convention. “Am very hopeful,” he warned Lincoln, but “dont be Excited.”
    The warnings were unnecessary—Lincoln was, above all, a realist who fully understood that he faced an uphill climb against his better-known rivals. Anxious to get a clearer picture of the situation, he headed back to Conkling’s office, hoping that his old friend had returned. This time he was not disappointed. As Conkling later told the story, Lincoln stretched himself upon an old settee that stood by the front window, “his head on a cushion and his feet over the end,” while Conkling related all he had seen and heard in the previous two days before leaving the Wigwam. Conkling told Lincoln that Seward was in trouble, that he had enemies not only in other states but at home in New York. If Seward was not nominated on the first ballot, Conkling predicted, Lincoln would be the nominee.
    Lincoln replied that “he hardly thought this could be possible and that in case Mr. Seward was not nominated on the first ballot, it was his judgment that Mr. Chase of Ohio or Mr. Bates of Missouri would be the nominee.” Conkling disagreed, citing reasons why each of those two candidates would have difficulty securing the nomination. Assessing the situation with his characteristic clearheadedness, Lincoln could not fail to perceive some truth in what his friend was saying; yet having tasted so many disappointments, he saw no benefit in letting his hopes run wild. “Well, Conkling,” he said slowly, pulling his long frame up from the settee, “I believe I will go back to my office and practice law.”
     

    W HILE L INCOLN STRUGGLED to sustain his hopes against the likelihood of failure, William Henry Seward was in the best of spirits. He had left Washington three days earlier to repair to his hometown of Auburn, New York, situated in the Finger Lakes Region of the most populous state of the Union, to share the anticipated Republican nomination in the company of family and friends.
    Nearly sixty years old, with the vitality and appearance of a man half his age, Seward typically rose at 6 a.m. when first light slanted into the bedroom window of his twenty-room country home. Rising early allowed him time to complete his morning constitutional through his beloved garden before the breakfast bell was rung. Situated on better than five acres of land, the Seward mansion was surrounded by manicured lawns, elaborate gardens, and walking paths that wound beneath elms, mountain ash, evergreens, and fruit trees. Decades earlier, Seward had supervised the planting of every one of these trees, which now numbered in the hundreds. He had spent thousands of hours fertilizing and cultivating his flowering shrubs. With what he called “a lover’s interest,” he inspected them daily. His horticultural passion was in sharp contrast to Lincoln’s lack of interest in planting trees or growing flowers at his Springfield home. Having spent his childhood laboring long hours on his father’s struggling farm, Lincoln found little that was romantic or recreational about tilling the soil.
    When Seward “came in to the table,” his son Frederick recalled, “he would announce that the hyacinths were in bloom, or that the bluebirds had come, or whatever other change the morning had brought.” After breakfast, he typically retired to his book-lined study to enjoy the precious hours of uninterrupted work before his doors opened to the outer world. The chair on which he sat was the same one he had used in the Governor’s Mansion in Albany, designed specially for him so that everything he needed could be right at hand. It was, he joked, his “complete office,” equipped not only with a writing arm that swiveled back and forth but also with a candleholder and secret drawers to