Lincoln as 21st Century CEO: Problem 4: Employing "Yes" Men

Let’s look at arguably the most important member of Lincoln’s team: William Seward and how he built him into a most effective team member.

Up until Lincoln’s nomination in 1860 the heir apparent to the Republican Presidential nomination was New York’s Senator and former governor William Seward. Lincoln appointed him Secretary of State, but Seward took a while to figure out who was really in charge; initially he took the attitude that he was prime minister with Lincoln as a kind of figurehead president. Not only was he not a “yes” man but he gave every indication that he was going to run away with the whole concern!

In those first few weeks he even conducted secret negotiations with Confederate emissaries without his boss even knowing. He also submitted to Lincoln a most curious document blandly entitled ‘Some Thoughts for the President’s Consideration,’ a document based on the assumption that the administration had no stated policy or strategy for coping with the looming constitutional crisis that came to be the Civil War.

Lincoln, who remarked to his private secretary, ‘I can’t let Seward take the first trick,’ held a private meeting with Seward at which he politely but firmly rejected his advice [for example, Seward had suggested that a war with England would unite the country, North and South; Lincoln countered, ‘one war at a time’]. Lincoln pointed out that his policy was to hold Forts Pickins and Sumter as stated in the Inaugural Address, a document Seward himself had
read in advance, edited and approved.

Finally, if there were to be any change or modification in the administration’s policy, the president had said, ‘I must do it.’ When all the dust was settled Seward wrote his wife, ‘Executive force and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us.’

That broke the back of what looked very much like Seward’s insubordination to use an analogy from a future age, this exchange at the very outset of their relationship was the baseball bat between the eyes that got Seward’s attention.

In short, Lincoln’s putting Seward in his place at the very outset of their professional relationship was the basis for Seward’s initial sense of respect – which in turn was the basis for a friendship that was to last until the day Lincoln died. Eventually each came to cherish the time they spent together, oftentimes visiting one another of an evening to swap stories and jokes by the hour.

Who would have thought such a thing possible as the presidential nomination slipped inexorably out of Seward’s grasp only a few months earlier in the middle of 1860?