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  • The Republican Statesman: William Henry Seward
  • Scott Gac (bio)
Walter Stahr. Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012. viii + 703 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $32.50 (cloth); $19.99 (paper).

In 1860, most Americans agreed that the West, with its abundant lands and resources, would secure prosperity and freedom for years to come. But whether wage labor or slavery, industry or agriculture, or some amalgam in between was to embody the new, modern America remained unresolved. At the heart of the Republican Party’s imperial design stood Chicago. The city, fueled by a decade of development in rails and commerce, epitomized a nation of dramatic growth, wage labor, and interconnected markets. A small town of about 30,000 in 1850, Chicago more than tripled its population in the next ten years. With a horsecar line, public sewer system, and university, the city had begun to attract women and men, such as George Pullman, who looked to capitalize on the region’s growth. They filled the gas-lit western metropolis with an infectious can-do spirit, one that the Republican Party no doubt hoped to emulate when it chose Chicago for a national convention.

As Republican delegates and supporters arrived in May 1860, they gathered in the Wigwam, a building on Market and Lake Streets (today the southeast corner of Lake and Wacker). The party backed free homesteads, tariff reform, and internal improvements—they were adamant that slavery remain confined to states where it already existed. Such policies, they believed, were the foundation of American progress. A newcomer to the political scene, the Republican Party was enlivened by recent victories—their strength was proven in Ohio, where Salmon P. Chase won the governorship in 1856, and Pennsylvania, where Simon Cameron won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1857. Unexpected trouble in the Democratic Party, the one true national political body, likewise boosted Republican aspirations. In April, the Democrats, amid debate over western expansion and the sanctity of slavery, failed to select a presidential candidate. “The work before the Republicans,” announced New York’s Jamestown Journal on May 11, “is, therefore, to rout a disabled enemy.” [End Page 285]

A proven party stalwart, William Henry Seward was the most prestigious option among a talented pool of Republican presidential possibilities. When the festivities opened on May 16, few believed that Seward’s competition, the likes of Edward Bates, Salmon P. Chase, and Abraham Lincoln, could mount a successful counterattack. Two days later, such beliefs were proven wrong. “The eloquent, self-assured Seward, a U.S. senator from New York, was widely thought to have the nomination wrapped up,” recorded the Chicago Tribune on May 18, but after the third ballot and “a moment of stunned silence, the flimsy Wigwam began to shake with the stomping of feet and the shouting of the Lincoln backers who packed the hall and blocked the streets.” Lincoln’s unforeseen nomination pushed one of America’s preeminent statesmen toward historical obscurity. In the comprehensive biography Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man, Walter Stahr pushes back. Seward lost the nomination, Stahr explains, thanks to the convention’s location (Lincoln’s home state), the superior machinations of David Davis (Lincoln’s campaign manager), the vilification of Seward by his enemies, and Seward’s well-known, strongly stated stance against slavery (pp. 189–92). Beyond the Republican presidential spotlight, this book unveils the Seward who helped to enact a national program where American freedom and American expansion, economic and geographic, were inextricably linked. Seward, Stahr reminds us, played a “central role in founding the American empire” (p. 547).

Seward brings together the life of a man whose “grand vision” for the United States mapped an “extensive territory” connected by “rails, roads, and telegraphs,” a country where a “vigorous free market economy” welcomed immigrants and fortunes (p. 546). Stahr’s broad view—constructed from an impressive array of newspapers and a comprehensive search of Seward’s writings and correspondence—is the strength of the book. Too often scholars relegate Seward to the shadow of Abraham Lincoln. Stahr’s work, despite listing Lincoln in its title, returns to readers the multifaceted politician: the governor who supported measures...

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