Walter Stahr HLS '82 author of Seward:Lincoln's Indispensable Man will discuss his book

This is a FREE public program of the The National Archives. Please arrive early enough to pass through security there.

 

Tuesday, October 23, at noon

William G. McGowan Theater

Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man

William Henry Seward was Lincoln’s Secretary of State and one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century. He was involved in so many policies before, during, and after the Civil War that he became a controversial and polarizing figure. Author Walter Stahr sheds new light on this complex man. A book signing will follow the program.   

 

 

Biography

I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, grew up in Arcadia, California, and went away for high school, to the Phillips Exeter Academy. Then it was back west, to Stanford University, then back east, to Harvard, where I studied law and public policy.

After graduating from law school in 1982, I joined the Washington office of an international law firm. They posted me to Hong Kong, where I lived and worked for three years. In 1990, I joined the Securities & Exchange Commission, working for several years in the chairman’s office. In 1995, I was hired by Fidelity Investments to be their first internal lawyer based in Hong Kong. I returned to Washington in 1999, joining Emerging Markets Partnership as an internal lawyer, focused on Asia. I am now largely retired from legal work, focusing on research and writing.

I started work on my first book, on John Jay, while in Hong Kong in the late 1990s. Jay was published in 2005, and not long thereafter I started thinking about a second book, on William Henry Seward. At about the same time, my wife received an offer to teach mathematics at Exeter. She accepted, and we now split our time between southern New Hampshire and northern Virginia.

Although I have no formal role at Exeter, I have an important informal role: adviser to the Exeter mock trial team.