Seward's NY alma mater puts him in spotlight
Posted at: 02/21/2013 10:40 AM
| Updated at: 02/21/2013 11:09 AM
By: AP
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SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (AP) - William Henry Seward's Capital Region alma mater is joining Hollywood and the publishing world in putting the 19th-century politician in the spotlight.
The New York native was Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state during the Civil War. Seward, as portrayed by David Strathairn, figures prominently in Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated film "Lincoln," and Seward's story is told in a new biography written by Walter Stahr of Exeter, N.H.
Seward is the focus of the keynote address Stahr will give Thursday afternoon at Schenectady's Union College. Seward graduated from Union in 1820 and several years later joined a law firm in Auburn in central New York.
Before his term as Secretary of State, Seward was the 12th Governor of NY as well as a U.S. Senator. He survived an assassination attempt on the same evening that Lincoln was assassinated in 1863.
Seward died in 1872. He's buried in Auburn, about 30 miles west of Syracuse.
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