
Seward
Lincoln's Indispensable Man
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Narrated by:
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William Dufris
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By:
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Walter Stahr
From one of our most acclaimed new biographers - the first full life of the leader of Lincoln’s "team of rivals" to appear in more than 40 years. William Henry Seward was one of the most important Americans of the 19th century. Progressive governor of New York and outspoken U.S. senator, he was the odds-on favorite to win the 1860 Republican nomination for president. As secretary of state and Lincoln’s closest adviser during the Civil War, Seward not only managed foreign affairs but had a substantial role in military, political, and personnel matters.
Some of Lincoln’s critics even saw Seward, erroneously, as the power behind the throne; this is why John Wilkes Booth and his colleagues attempted to kill Seward as well as Lincoln. Seward survived the assassin’s attack, continued as secretary of state, and emerged as a staunch supporter of President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s controversial successor. Through his purchase of Alaska ("Seward’s Folly"), and his groundwork for the purchase of the Canal Zone and other territory, Seward set America on course to become a world empire.
Seward was not only important, he was fascinating. Most nights this well-known raconteur with unruly hair and untidy clothes would gather diplomats, soldiers, politicians, or actors around his table to enjoy a cigar, a drink, and a good story. Drawing on hundreds of sources not available to or neglected by previous biographers, Walter Stahr sheds new light on this complex and central figure, as well as on pivotal events of the Civil War and its aftermath.
©2012 Walter Stahr (P)2013 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...




















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Most interesting and educational
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Book is outstanding!; Audible reader is annoying
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Seward
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This book is best read and listend simultaneously.
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an intriguing man
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His work as attorney, Governor, Senator and chief advisor to the President was all marvelous. Yet this book does not hesitate to show him as seen by his fellow citizens and enemies.
I can compare to a eye exam. You begin knowing how the world looks. But as it continues things become much more clear than you imagine. Sharper of focus and more real in color. And when finished you say, "Ah! THAT is what the world truly looks like!"
This book will truly improve your understanding of our country and its most dangerous time!
One of 5 or 10 best bio's ever written about a American.
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Truly an American Visionary!
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Since this is the first full-fledged Seward biography in many years, I had high hopes for it. While Stahr delivers on what he chooses to tell, his interests are too narrow to do justice to the man. He's really only interested in Seward's eight years as secretary of state. The events of these momentous years, which of course include the Civil War, are carefully set out and thoughtfully discussed, but he ignores a large part of what makes Seward so interesting.
I first read about Seward's earlier life and career in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, and that made me eager to learn more about him. But Stahr disappoints here--the early portions of the book give a pretty perfunctory account of his first 60 years. Unlike Goodwin, Stahr doesn't seem to care how Seward's life before 1861 made him into the man who helped save the Union and guide it through the post-war years. He doesn't really appear to be interested in the man at all as much as the events he was involved with. I wonder why he didn't just write a book about Seward's years as secretary of state.
He's also surprisingly uninterested in Seward's personal relationship with Lincoln, which was as close as Lincoln allowed others to get. Lincoln valued Seward as an advisor, but they also shared a similar sense of humor and an interest in drama and poetry, and would often escape the intense pressure of the war years by reading or going to the theater together.
If he's uninterested in Seward's earlier political and professional life, he ignores the man's personal life almost completely. Seward's wife, Frances, was a very interesting woman, a feminist ahead of her time, and the two shared a close bond despite all the time they spent apart. Stahr hardly mentions Frances from the time of her marriage to the time of her death. This is the conventional masculine approach to history, one that relegates a subject's personal life to footnotes, but it's one that's receding into the past, thanks in part to the work of historians like Goodwin. I couldn't help wishing that she had written the book.
I Wish Doris Kearns Goodwin Had Written This
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Enjoyable and well written
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Unbiased book
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