SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (AP) — William Henry Seward’s upstate New York college 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.

Stahr tells the Times Union of Albany (http://bit.ly/YAkDA7 ) that Seward was one of the most important statesmen of 19th-century America.

Seward died in 1872. He’s buried in Auburn.

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