Seward, Tubman and Montgomery

 

These splendid statues by Dexter Benedict are still looking good, almost three years after their installation outside the main branch of the Schenectady public library in 2019. The wife (who took the photo) and I were in town yesterday to go to the opening night of Stephen Sondheim's "Merrily We Roll Along" at the Schenectady Light Opera Company (running through March 27 -- check it out).

William H. Seward is best known for the U.S. purchase of Alaska in 1867, but his long, admirable  record as a statesman is most distinguished by his service in Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady, and in later life was a friend and ally of Tubman's. Other statues of them both, separate but not far from each other, now stand in Auburn, NY.

Another friend and ally of Tubman's was Col. James Montgomery, whose African-American 2nd South Carolina Regiment was guided and assisted by Tubman and other Black civilians on the Combahee River raid, which liberated almost 800 slaves. The Civil War service of both Tubman and Montgomery is, in my opinion, often overlooked by historians and students who focus on their prewar anti-slavery activities. But they freed far more enslaved people on June 1-2 1863 than in all the rest of their careers, and their contributions to the Union war effort are the most significant things they did.

Casemate will publish in April 2022 my biography of Montgomery. See more at their website here.

Casemate is also reissuing as a paperback my 2013 biography, General Gordon Granger: The Savior of Chickamauga and the Man Behind "Juneteenth". (See here on their website.) 

And my 2018 historical novel The Last Circle of Ulysses Grant is still available here from Square Circle Press.