Feb 12: Chase and Lincoln: Friends, Rivals and Antislavery Colleagues

'Chase and Lincoln: Friends, Rivals and Antislavery Colleagues' with Walter B. Stahr
Friday, Feb. 12, 7:30–9 p.m.
Join us on Zoom

Walter Stahr will talk about the relationship between Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase: their friendship and collaboration in the pre-war Republican Party; their rivalry for the 1860 presidential nomination; Lincoln’s decision to choose Chase for his cabinet; and their working relationship and friendship during the war years. Stahr will compare and contrast Lincoln and Chase, focusing especially on slavery and black rights, where Chase was far earlier to speak out against slavery, and for black rights, than Lincoln.

Apout the speaker, Walter B. Stahr: After graduating from Harvard Law School, Walter Stahr practiced law for twenty years, both in private practice and government posts, in the United States and in Asia. Then he turned to writing biographies. His accounts of the lives of American statesmen John Jay, William Henry Seward and Edwin Stanton have been bestsellers and prize-winners. He is now completing a biography of Salmon P. Chase — Chase: Antislavery Agitator, Treasury Secretary, and Chief Justice — to be published by Simon and Schuster in November.

The William H. Seward Lecture Series, founded by Professor Guy F. Burnett in 2013, is organized by the Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska Anchorage. It is named after William H. Seward, Secretary of State under U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, who arranged to purchase the territory of Alaska. Lectures, which feature topics in political history and current events in the United States and Alaska, are free and open to members of the general public. Staffing is provided by Kathleen L. Behnke in the Dean’s Office of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Department of Political Science gratefully acknowledges the co-sponsorship of Pi Sigma Alpha and the assistance of the Union League of Anchorage, which made this lecture possible, thanks to support from the Jack Miller Center for Teaching America’s Founding Principles and History through a grant from the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust, and our students in the UAA Political Science Association, who help to organize the lectures.

We are particularly grateful for support from our loyal lecture audience. For information about how to support this year’s William H. Seward Lecture Series, please contact Professor James W. Muller, jwmuller@alaska.edu, or any faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Join us on Zoom

(Zoom meeting ID: 824 1911 5496; Password: Seward)

February Archive