Seward

William Henry Seward, lawyer, governor, senator, and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, was a tremendously influential mid-19th-century politician—a front runner for the 1860 presidential nomination. Drawing exhaustively from letters and other documents relating to him as well as his family, friends, and enemies, Stahr (John Jay: Founding Father) argues that Seward was a preeminent, dutiful, and indefatigable statesman to be remembered for much more than his oversight of the purchase of Alaska. While acknowledging Seward's flaws, he focuses, for example, on his efforts to end slavery, promote commerce, avoid the Civil War, collaborate with Lincoln, block foreign intervention during the war, save the Union, push France out of Mexico, and establish the process of U.S. expansion.