I have sawed a lot of lumber and a lot of trees, and it should not comes as any surprise that not all logs are designed for fine furniture. In fact that is why the sawmills pay a scaler so much money...to use his knowledge and skills to cull out the logs that will not amount to much.
In looking at the pictures, its apparent that the tree had internal defects. There is not much any sawyer or woodworker could do with that. As for the anchorseal, I would not beat myself up for not using that. In my opinion, its a waste of time to even put the stuff on. I have seen plenty of lumber crack with it applied, and I have seen plenty of lumber not crack when it was not applied too. Far more lumber is saved by using proper stickering, stacking and drying methods than any amount of anchorseal.
I realize you are disappointed, and I can understand that, but after working with logs and sawmills all my life (my family has always owned a sawmill), I have just come to appreciate wood, trees, logs and forestry. They are truly like kids...you never know what they will turn out to be like.
Two years ago I sized up a nice Maple on my property. It was decent sized, tall, straight, had an even crown to it, and grew on flat, well drained soil. There was no indication whatsoever that it would give me problems. As I went to take my second cut, the board started lifting right off the saw as fast as the blade went through it. When I was done I had a 1 inch board on each end and a 3 inch board in the center. It was the biggest, hardest banana I had ever seen!! Obviously it had some internal stress on it that was unforeseen.
I have also seen the opposite, a log squeeze together so hard that it pinched the blade of a 52 inch rotary sawmill and stall the 327 motor we had driving it. Considering the hp we had, and the gearing and belting, that takes a lot of pressure by two boards to stall!
Now please don't feel to disappointed over all this. Some of the greatest forestry geniueses a few years ago concluded that if the loggers would take the big limbs off from hardwood to use as woodworking material, the would be wasted wood could help save forests. After a lot of trial and era they concluded that "some logs are just not pre-disposed to good woodworking."
You got a bad tree, I just hope it does not discourage you from ever trying to harvest your own wood. It really is a blast to make something from stump to polyurethane.