Booknotes: How Lincoln Won

New Arrival:

• How Lincoln Won: The 1860 Presidential Election and the Origins of the Civil War by Darin DeWitt and Thomas Schwartz (LSU Press, 2026).

Though there has been recent pushback of persuasive nature on a number of counts, the modern literature still generally portrays Abraham Lincoln as a gifted military strategist, through both natural abilities and study. The consensus is even stronger when it comes to appreciating Lincoln's exceptional strengths as a political strategist and operator, and much of that political mastery was exhibited in Lincoln's unlikely rise to the highest office in the land.

An aspect of the political game in which Lincoln demonstrated noteworthy superiority over most of his contemporary rivals was in "recognizing and exploiting strategic opportunities." In their book How Lincoln Won: The 1860 Presidential Election and the Origins of the Civil War, authors Darin DeWitt and Thomas Schwartz "show that Lincoln’s strategy of division and conquest, cleverly designed and artfully executed over two years, not only secured his victory in America’s most consequential presidential election but also helped establish the Republican Party as the nation’s second major political party."

From the description: In Dewitt and Schwartz's view, Lincoln grasped "three essential truths" around which he formulated his winning strategy: "First, the Republican Party’s moral opposition to the expansion of slavery commanded only minority support among the electorate. Second, in every presidential election since 1844, one party had won because the other had split on the slavery issue. Third, the Republican Party could win the presidency―without compromising its principled opposition to slavery’s expansion―if it turned this recurring pattern into a deliberate strategy, that of division and conquest on the overriding issue of slavery."

The process began in earnest two years before the pivotal 1860 election, and the book credits Lincoln for playing a key part in sowing division within both state and sectional political opposition. More from the description: "Lincoln employed this strategy during the 1858 debates for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. There, Lincoln repeatedly trapped his opponent into taking new and moderate positions on slavery that fractured the Democratic Party. As a direct result of those concessions, rival Democratic tickets were fielded―first in Illinois in 1858 and then nationwide in 1860." Without laying this groundwork, the odds of Lincoln winning the presidency on the Republican ticket in 1860 were slim at best.

Of course, forces outside Lincoln's powers of manipulation played a big part in the events of this period, too, and the authors recognize that "Lincoln prevailed not only because he devised a clever strategy and executed it skillfully but also because history had positioned him and his allies to profit from it." Nevertheless, Lincoln's "achievement reveals a novel model of transformative political change―one driven by strategic party division rather than by efforts of persuasion, moderation, or changing the issue agenda."