Summary of Chapter Two of TEAM OF RIVALS

In this chapter (titled 'The Longing To Rise') explained mostly about how the four main characters (William Seward, Abraham Lincoln, Salmon P. Chase, and Edward Bates, in case you forgot) grew up.

Out of the four characters, Bates was the oldest. He was born when George Washington was president. Seward and Chase grew up during the Jefferson administration, and Lincoln was born shortly before Jefferson became president. In that era, people were encouraged to get a job, and from that many cities and towns were made, as well as a lot of new roads, bridges and canals. In the southern region, people headed toward the Mississippi River, and slavery followed. But enough with all of that geography-related stuff. Let's get on with what you really read this for: the childhoods of the four main characters.

Seward was the fourth of six children. His father, Samuel Seward, got a large fortune from being a physician, magistrate, judge, land speculator and a member of the New York state legislature. (They lived in New York at the time). Seward's mother (Mary Jennings Seward) was well known in the community for her warmth, good sense and kind manner.

Like all wealthy land owners, the Sewards owned slaves, but, unlike other slaveowners, the Seward family was nice to their slave. Once when Seward was a child, Seward saw a slave boy being whipped. He thought that was very unusual, because his family never whipped their slaves. Once, a neighbor's slave escaped from their house (the neighbor's house, not Seward's), but was captured soon after and brought back in chains. The slave ran away again, and this time he wasn't captured.

Salmon Chase was born in New Hampshire. His father was a farmer, justice of the peace, and Representative of his district in the New Hampshire council and when Chase was seven, his father was an investor of a glass factory. When Chase was 12, he and his family traveled to Worthington, Cleveland to visit his uncle. For some reason, Salmon Chase didn't enjoy Worthington.

When he was 13, he was a freshman in college. Like Seward, Chase studied three years of law in a two year time frame.

Chase married Catherine "Kitty" Ludlow, until she died in 1835. He was remarried to Eliza Ann Smith, who, like Catherine, died. Chase married a third time to Sarah Belle Ludlow, who once again died. After that, Chase never married again.

Edward Bates was the youngest of three children. His father worked as a planter and a merchant and considered Thomas Jefferson an James Madison (those guys were presidents, in case you didn't know. I wouldn't just add two random guys to make this story seem longer than it really is, but I guess that's what I'm doing right now, so I should probably shut up.) Anyways, Bates secured a position reading law with help from his brother, who was eventually killed in a duel.

Lincoln's father, Thomas, could only write his name (but nothing else) and he couldn't read at all, for he had only been taught to work on the farm, and not to read. Abraham Lincoln's father said he saw his father (Abe's grandfather) murdered by a Shawnee raiding tribe, or, as it says in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Graham-Smith, by vampires. (As you may expect, because the title says vampire right in it.)

Thomas Lincoln was married to Nancy Hanks. Unlike her husband, she could read and write, so she taught young Abe how to do both of those, because in the schools of those times barely gave any educations. (The only thing required of a teacher to know was the Rule of Three: "readin', writin' and cipherin.'") Nancy Hanks died in 1919 from milk sickness, along with Abe's aunt and uncle, whose names were Thomas and Elizabeth Sparrow. Milk sickness is said to have come from drinking tainted milk, and the effects of milk sickness are pretty bad. Those effects include dizziness, nausea, irregular heartbeat, then after all of those fairly bad things, you slip into a coma. Since there was no doctors for many miles around, and there was no cure for it back then, both the aunt and uncle died, and a short time later, Nancy died, too.

After his wife died, Thomas Lincoln traveled from Indiana to Kentucky to find a wife, which left the Lincoln kids alone without any parents in their log cabin. (Again, this was the 1800's. Not as many parents leave their children alone in their house while they travel the country, but I could just be imagining that.) Thomas eventually came back home with a new wife, Sarah Bush Lincoln. When she first saw the Lincoln children, she scrubbed them down because they were supposedly too dirty.

Well, I hope you learned something. If you didn't, keep being smart.