(At the Inauguration, ''Lincoln made a perfect hash of Seward's most splendid peroration.'') But, as Vidal concentrates on President/Cabinet interplay, Lincoln savvily counters Chase's finaglings, dazzles Seward with his ''political genius.

Secretary of State Seward sees Abe as a figurehead, laments his rough-edged rhetoric. Treasury Secretary Chase sees Abe as wishy-washy, ''often weakly firm-or firmly weak,'' especially on the slave question (Lincoln favors relocation of blacks outside the US) egged on by beloved daughter Kate, Chase lusts for the White House, with backing from rich ''boy governor'' William Sprague IV (whom Kate will lovelessly marry). Seward-who want to be Prez (or PM), who consistently underestimate Lincoln's abilities. (''Now that we've got the victory we've been waiting for, I can issue my proclamation of emancipation.'') Still, if much of this workup is on only an intelligent-journeyman level, Vidal does create a nice triangular tension in the novel's major focus: a Lincoln poised between two ambitious, shrewd politicos-abolitionist Salmon Chase, expansionist Wm. The Civil War-fare and the crucial issues (war finance, habeas corpus, etc.) are conscientiously documented the dialogue relating to major events sometimes has the flat, corny quality of old Hollywood film-bios. The principals are all history-book figures (and their families) no bold irreverences or revisionisms occur. A few fictional people from other Vidal novels (Burr, 1876) appear here-but only very briefly. As if to balance the flighty vileness of the lamentable Duluth (1983), Vidal follows it up with his most sober, unfanciful historical novel yet: a thick, competent, modestly imaginative portrait of Lincoln as President.

Lincoln a novel by gore vidal