With Malice Toward None: Doris Kearns Goodwin on Lincoln, Leadership, and the Lessons We Need Now
Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin joined GBH’s Jim Braude and Margery Eagan at the Boston Public Library a couple of weeks ago to mark the 20th anniversary of Team of Rivals and to preview her new children’s book The Leadership Journey. In an hour of warmth and moral clarity, she reminded listeners what real leadership looks like—and why it still matters.
Lincoln’s genius, she said, lay not in power but in character. On the night he won the presidency, he knew the nation was fracturing and chose to bring his fiercest rivals—Seward, Chase, and Bates—into his cabinet. “The country is in peril,” he told doubters. “I need the strongest and most able men by my side.”
He shared credit, shouldered blame, and forgave injury—even inviting Confederate soldiers to keep their horses and rifles after surrender. His compassion was his strategy for unity.
Goodwin contrasted that humility with today’s culture of grievance and retribution. Lincoln’s guiding spirit, she noted, was “lack of vindictiveness, lack of retribution, moving forward.” When crowds celebrated Appomattox, he asked the band to play not just Yankee Doodle but Dixie—declaring, “It’s our song now. It’s our country’s song.”
Asked about Lincoln’s flaws, Goodwin admitted that empathy could sometimes make him too patient—especially with General McClellan—but said his faith in redemption was inseparable from his greatness.
Turning to the present, Goodwin voiced concern over the corrosion of truth in politics and the temptation to become numb to lies. “We have to know in our own souls what’s right and what’s wrong and what’s factual and what’s not,” she said. Yet she remains hopeful: “Every social change in America has come from the ground up… when the citizens are aroused, we’re going to be fine.”
Even discussion of the White House’s current demolition became metaphor. Lincoln called it “the people’s house,” not a palace. Goodwin warned that its symmetry—and symbolism—must endure: presidents are only temporary tenants. The structure, like the Republic, belongs to us.
She closed with optimism rooted in history. “Public sentiment is everything. Without it, nothing is possible; with it, everything is.”
And then, smiling, she raised her hand: “I really mean this when I say history tells me so—the better angels will prevail.”
The audience of about 150 then rose to give her a well-deserved standing ovation.
P.S. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu followed
