Book tag

I have been tagged. My normal policy on blog tags and chain letters is to ignore them, but this one intrigued me, so I'm doing it in spite of my policy. This particular tagging requires the following steps:

1. Pick up the nearest book (at least 123 pages).
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the 5th sentence on your blog.
5. Tag 5 people.

I plan on omitting the fifth step, although any of you are welcome to try it yourselves. Just make sure that the book has more than 123 pages so as to comply with the entirely arbitrary terms of the tag. My particular book has 916 pages, which is probably overkill. Here are my results:

The nearest book to me is Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

The fifth sentence on page 123:

"If he wanted a seat in the U.S. Senate, however, he would need the support of Ohio Democrats, a task that would not be made easier by assaulting a Democratic president."

As some background information, the above sentence refers to Salmon P. Chase, the eminent Ohio senator and governor who was a top contender for the presidential nomination of the newly-formed Republican party. Team of Rivals is centered around Abraham Lincoln, but it also details his interactions with his rivals whom he brought into his cabinet. Chase became Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury during the strained and crucial years of the Civil War. Chase remained very ambitious through the Lincoln administration, and in 1864 Lincoln nominated him to replace Roger Taney as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. While Chief Justice Taney had authored the controversial Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, Salmon Chase, a lifelong abolitionist, took a decidedly different approach. One of Chase's first acts as Chief Justice was to appoint John Rock as the first African-American to argue cases before the Supreme Court.