How Lincoln Won - by Darin DeWitt & Thomas Schwartz (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In their Pulitzer Prize-winning books, Doris Kearns Goodwin and James M. McPherson argue that Abraham Lincoln became a master strategist during his presidency. But even before he became president, Lincoln was adept at recognizing and exploiting strategic opportunities. In How Lincoln Won, 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.

By 1858, Lincoln had grasped three essential truths. 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.

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. Besides dividing votes, this split decimated the Democratic Party's campaign machinery, making it exceedingly difficult for either faction to mobilize supporters or persuade marginal voters. Absent this division, Illinois Republicans would not have swept statewide offices in 1858, nor would Lincoln have won the presidency in 1860.

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. In the end, his 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.

Review Quotes

"How Lincoln Won is a deeply thoughtful, compelling, and altogether new take on the political battles that took place in the decades before the Civil War and on the ultimate triumph of Abraham Lincoln in the election of 1860. It turns on its head much of the conventional wisdom surrounding Lincoln and this crucial era in American history."--D. Roderick Kiewiet, author of Macroeconomics and Micropolitics: The Electoral Effects of Economic Issues

"Lincoln thought his greatest political talent was his skill as a coalition builder, but equally important, as the authors convincingly demonstrate in this important contribution to the Lincoln literature, was his uncanny skill as a coalition divider--of Democrats. In making their case, [DeWitt and Schwartz] justly emphasize the importance of John Locke Scripps's 1860 campaign biography of Lincoln as a crucial source for understanding our sixteenth president."--Michael Burlingame, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life

"This book changes my understanding of the politics of this era and of Lincoln's rise to the presidency, and it makes me appreciate Lincoln the strategist even more than Team of Rivals did."--John H. Aldrich, author of Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America

"This work is a vital contribution to the study of Lincoln's career, the causes of the U.S. Civil War, and the uses and consequences of political rhetoric. It is one of the best-written scholarly works I have encountered in my career spanning forty years. The book will garner great interest from teachers, researchers, and students of American political history and political rhetoric, as well as those concerned with Lincoln's career."--Steven E. Schier, coauthor of Presidential Elections: Strategies and Structures of American Politics

About the Author

Darin DeWitt is professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach.

Thomas Schwartz (1943-2024) was Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of several books, including The Logic of Collective Choice.