Seward
Seward as Speechwriter
What follows is an email I sent to Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for the second George Bush, reacting to a line in an article in today’s Washington Post. Dear Mr. Gerson: I enjoyed your article in this morning’s Washington Post and I agree with your main point: presidents and candidates should use speechwriters. Perhaps this…
Read MorePre-Book Seward Event
I have had my first Seward book event, or “pre-book event,” because the book is not out yet. It was a small event for friends of the MIND Institute, a California educational charity. As I said at the outset of the event, it was very fitting, given how strongly Seward believed in education. Education, he…
Read MoreFebruary 29, 1860
I have missed, by a day, posting about Seward’s great speech of February 29, 1860, on February 29, 2012. By early 1860, Seward was the presumptive Republican nominee. If there had been Intrade odds in those days, Seward would have been trading at 80% with all other Republican candidates, including Lincoln, adding up to the…
Read MoreSeward and Wodehouse
I am reading the first set of Seward page proofs. I am also re-reading, as I often do, P.G. Wodehouse. I recall once reading that, when he had a set of page proofs, Wodehouse would tack them to the wall around his room. He would tack those which were great higher than those which were…
Read MoreDisunion and Civil War
As I have edited and edited my Seward book, trying to compress it to a reasonable length, I have edited down many quotes from his speeches. I worry somewhat that the reader may not get the proper sense of Seward’s speaking style, his long sentences and learned references. So I intend to post here some…
Read MoreWelles “Diary”
One of the difficulties of writing about Seward is that so much of the story is provided by the “diary” of his colleague Navy Secretary Gideon Welles. Seward and Welles served for exactly the same eight-year period in the cabinet, from March 1861 through March 1869. They never liked one another: Welles viewed Seward as…
Read MoreYale Research
I spent the past two days doing research at Yale for the Seward book. Why, you might wonder, am I doing research when the book is in page proofs? The short answer is to convert two “secondary cites” into “primary cites.” In one place in the draft, I had cited to a book about Millard…
Read More“By paying them their price”
I am working my way through the copy-editor’s comments on the manuscript of Seward. One of her questions was about the 1860 Republican convention, about the deal which Judge David Davis did to secure the Pennsylvania delegates for Lincoln. I quoted Davis as telling reporters that he secured the Pennsylvania delegates “by paying their price,”…
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