William H. Seward

William H. Seward was an American antislavery politician and secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. He helped manage Union diplomacy during the Civil War, survived an assassination attempt and negotiated the purchase of Alaska.

The wider career recorded for William H. Seward also included service as member of the State Senate of New York, Governor of New York, United States Secretary of State, and United States senator. In dynastic and political terms, William H. Seward was associated with United States. The biographical record places the beginning of William H. Seward’s life at Florida and the end at Auburn, giving the career a geographical span that is not apparent from the headline events alone.

Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest follows the crisis through Lincoln, William H. Seward, Jefferson Davis and P. G. T. Beauregard, while giving particular attention to secessionist Edmund Ruffin and diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut. Gore Vidal’s Lincoln follows the new administration through the competing perspectives of Mary Todd Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edwin M. Stanton, John Hay and other figures around the White House. Cabinet rivalry, patronage and social life continue while armies are raised, defeats are absorbed and the conflict expands from a struggle to preserve the Union into a war that will also destroy slavery. In Jeff Shaara’s The Unfinished Work, the story also uses the viewpoints of Mary Todd Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward and General George B. McClellan.