The first volume of this Biography has received flattering reviews from critics on the staff of the Nation, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Boston Transcript and the London Times. Both Gamaliel Bradford and William E. Dodd have been warm in their commendation of the second volume. In this volume Mrs. Rowland had written a charming and accurate historical narrative of the Southern Confederacy in which the wife of Jefferson Davis played a part that holds and fascinates the reader. The narrative written in an easy, graceful yet frank and forceful style, places the work among the year's important contributions to American biography. The searching study she has made of the motives and characteristics of William H. Seward is a new contribution to history, and raises the question if he was not America's most famous Diplomat, since it was due to his diplomacy that England was not forced in the war to take sides with the South.