Team of Rivals (180 page)

Photographic Insert

Abraham Lincoln photographed at age forty-eight in Chicago on February 28, 1857. The lawyer’s political star had begun to rise at last. A year later, accepting his party’s nomination for U.S. senator, he would utter the famous words “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Mary Todd Lincoln, shown here at twenty-eight, after four years of marriage. Upon their first meeting, Lincoln told Mary: “I want to dance with you in the worst way.” And, Mary laughingly told her cousin later that night, “he certainly did.”

The Lincolns were indulgent parents, believing that “love is the chain whereby to lock a child to its parent.” Robert was the eldest
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, followed by Willie
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and Tad
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. Another son, Eddie, died of tuberculosis in 1850 at the age of three.

When William H. Seward, shown here at age forty-three
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, married Frances Miller
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, the daughter of a wealthy judge, in 1824, he acquired wealth, professional connections, and the stately mansion in Auburn, New York
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, that would become his lifelong home.

Possessed of a powerful intellect and strong moral convictions, Frances Seward
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served as her husband’s political conscience. Young Fanny Seward, shown with her father, adored her mother but idolized her father, thinking him one of the greatest men in the country.