This article about the New York Governor and Secretary of State. For his son, see William H. Seward, Jr. For others with that name, see William Henry Seward (disambiguation).

William Henry Seward, Sr. (May 16, 1801 – October 10, 1872) was a Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

Early life and career

Seward was born in Orange County, New York, on 16th May, 1801. After graduating from Union College, Seward was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1822. His parents were Dr. Samuel Sweazy Seward (December 5, 1768-August 4, 1849) and Mary Jennings Seward (November 27, 1769-December 11, 1844).

He attended Union College, studying law, and graduated in 1820, with high honors. He married Frances Adeline Miller on October 20, 1824, after meeting in 1821. They raised five children:

• Augustus Henry Seward (1826–1876)
• Frederick William Seward (1830–1915)
• Cornelia Seward (1836–1837)
• William Henry Seward, Jr. (1839–1920)
• Frances Adeline "Fanny" Seward (1844–1866)

Some years after his wife's death in 1865, William formally adopted his companion Olive Risley Seward (1841-1908) as his "daughter."

After receiving his college degree he read law in Goshen, New York and New York City. Subsequently he joined the practice of his future father-in-law, Judge Elijah Miller, in Auburn, New York. Seward entered politics with the help of his friend Thurlow Weed, whom he had met by chance after a stagecoach accident.^[1] In 1830, Seward was elected, at the age of 29, to the state senate as an Anti-Masonic candidate, and served till 1834. In that year (only 33 years old) he was the Whig candidate for Governor of New York. He lost narrowly to incumbent Democrat William Marcy (52% to 48%).

From 1836 to 1838, Seward served as agent for the Holland Land Company in Westfield, New York, and in that capacity was successful in easing tensions between that company and local landowners. On July 16, 1837, he delivered to the students and faculty of the newly-formed Westfield Academy a Discourse on Education, in which he advocated for universal education.^[2]

In 1838, he challenged Marcy again, and won (51.4% to 48.6%). He was narrowly re-elected in 1840 (50.3% to 49.1%). His two terms ran from 1839 through 1842. As a state senator and governor, Seward promoted progressive political policies including prison reform and increased spending on education. He supported state funding for schools for immigrants using their own languages and operated by their own clergy - such as Catholic parochial schools. This came back to haunt him in the 1850s, when anti-Catholic feelings were high, especially among ex-Whigs in the Republican Party.

Seward's wife Frances Adeline Seward.

Beginning in the late 1830s, Seward became a radical opponent of slavery. His views -- and the even stronger anti-slavery feelings of his wife -- were formed in part by their observations of the conditions of slavery while traveling in the South with their children in 1835.^[3] He opposed the expansion of slavery and resisted attempts by Southern states to extradite those who enabled fugitive slaves to escape.

In 1846 Seward became the center of controversy in his hometown when he defended, in separate cases, two convicts accused of murder. Henry Wyatt, a white man, stabbed a fellow prison inmate; William Freeman, of African American and Native American ancestry, broke into a home and stabbed to death four people. In both cases the defendants were mentally ill and had been severely abused while in prison. Seward, having long been an advocate of prison reform and better treatment for the insane, sought to prevent both men from being executed by using a relatively new insanity defense. In a case involving mental illness with heavy racial overtones Seward argued:

The color of the prisoner?s skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spiritual immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother, and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine, and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race?the image of our Maker. Hold him then to be a Man.^[4]

Later, Seward quoted Freeman?s brother-in-law, praising his eloquence: ?They have made William Freeman what he is, a brute beast; they don?t make anything else of any of our people but brute beasts; but when we violate their laws, then they want to punish us as if we were men.?^[5] In the end both men were convicted. Although Wyatt was executed, Freeman, whose conviction was reversed on Seward's successful appeal to the New York Supreme Court, died in his cell of tuberculosis.

William H. Seward (c. 1850)

United States Senator and Presidential Candidate

Seward supported the Whig candidate, General Zachary Taylor, in the presidential election of 1848. He said of Taylor, "He is the most gentle-looking and amiable of men." Taylor was a slaveholding plantation owner, but was friendly to Seward anyway.

He was elected U.S. Senator as a Whig in 1848 and emerged as the leader of the anti-slavery "Conscience Whigs". Seward opposed the Compromise of 1850, and was thought to have encouraged Taylor in his supposed opposition. More recent scholarship suggests that Taylor was not under Seward's influence and would have accepted the Compromise if he had not died.

Seward believed that slavery was morally wrong, and said so many times, outraging Southerners. He acknowledged that slavery was legal under the Constitution, but denied that the Constitution recognized or protected slavery. He famously remarked in 1850 that "there is a higher law than the Constitution". He continued to argue this point of view over the next ten years. He presented himself as the leading enemy of the Slave Power — that is, the perceived conspiracy of southern slaveowners to seize the government and defeat the progress of liberty.

Seward was an opponent of the Fugitive Slave Act, and he defended runaway slaves in court. He supported personal liberty laws.

When the Whig Party dissolved, Seward joined the Republican Party in 1855 and was re-elected to the Senate. Seward did not seriously compete for the presidential nomination (won by John C. Frémont) in 1856, but sought and was expected to receive the nomination in 1860. In October 1858, he delivered a famous speech in which he argued that the political and economic systems of North and South were incompatible, and that, due to this "irrepressible conflict," the inevitable "collision" of the two systems would eventually result in the nation becoming "either entirely a slaveholding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation.".^[6] Yet, Seward was not an abolitionist. Like Lincoln, he believed slavery could and should be extinguished by long-run historical forces rather than by coercion or war.^[7]

Lincoln met with his Cabinet for the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation draft on July 22, 1862.

In 1859, confident of gaining the presidential nomination and advised by his political ally and friend Thurlow Weed that he would be better off avoiding political gatherings where his words might be misinterpreted by one faction or another, Seward left the country for an eight-month tour of Europe. During that hiatus, his lesser-known rival Abraham Lincoln worked diligently to line up support in case Seward failed to win on the first ballot. After returning to the United States, Seward gave a conciliatory, pro-Union Senate speech that reassured moderates but alienated some radical Republicans. (Observing events from Europe, Karl Marx, who was ideologically sympathetic to Frémont, contemptuously regarded Seward as a "Republican Richelieu" and the "Demosthenes of the Republican Party" who had sabotaged Frémont's presidential ambitions.) Around the same time, his friend Horace Greeley turned against him, opposing Seward on the grounds that his radical reputation made him unelectable. When Lincoln won the nomination, Seward loyally supported him and made a long speaking tour of the West in the autumn of 1860.

Secretary of State

Running The "Machine"
An 1864 cartoon featuring Seward, William Fessenden, Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln and Gideon Welles takes a swing at the Lincoln administration.

Abraham Lincoln appointed him Secretary of State in 1861 and he served until 1869. As Secretary of State, he argued that the United States must move westward. Proposing American possession of the Danish West Indies, Samaná, Panama, and Hawaii, only the Brook Islands were annexed. Despite a minimal degree of Congressional support however, by the end of his term, Seward had established a realm of informal influence which, nonetheless included the Hawaiian Islands, Japan, and even, China.

Assassination attempt

On April 14, 1865, Lewis Powell, an associate of John Wilkes Booth, attempted to assassinate Seward, the same night and at the same moment Abraham Lincoln was shot. Powell gained access to Seward's home by telling a servant, William Bell, that he was delivering medicine for Seward, who was recovering from a recent near-fatal carriage accident on April 5, 1865. Powell started up the stairs when then confronted by one of Seward's sons, Frederick. He told the intruder that his father was asleep and Powell began to start down the stairs, but suddenly swung around and pointed a gun at Frederick's head. After the gun misfired, Powell panicked, then repeatedly struck Frederick over the head with the pistol, leaving Frederick in critical condition on the floor.

Powell then burst into William Seward's bedroom with a bowie knife and stabbed him several times in the face and neck. Powell also attacked and injured another son (Augustus), a soldier (Private George Robinson), who had been assigned to stay with Seward, and a messenger (Emerick Hansell), who arrived just as Powell was escaping.^[8]

During the attack Seward was wearing a jaw splint (often incorrectly reported as a "neck brace") as a result of the carriage accident, and it is said that this saved his life. However, he carried the facial scars from the attack for the remainder of his life. The events of that night took their toll on his wife, Frances, who died June 1865. His daughter Fanny died of tuberculosis in October 1866.

Powell was captured the next day and was executed on July 7, 1865, along with David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt, three other conspirators in the Lincoln assassination.

The purchase of Alaska

The signing of the Alaska Treaty of Cessation on March 30, 1867.

Seward's most famous achievement as Secretary of State was his successful acquisition of Alaska from Russia. On March 30, 1867, he completed negotiations for the territory, which involved the purchase of 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km˛) of territory (more than twice the size of Texas) for $7,200,000, or approximately 2 cents per acre. The purchase of this frontier land was alternately mocked by the public as "Seward's Folly", "Seward's Icebox", and Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden". Currently, Alaska celebrates the purchase on Seward's Day, the last Monday of March.

Later life

Seward retired as Secretary of State after Ulysses S. Grant took office as president. During his last years, Seward traveled and wrote prolifically. Most notably, he traveled around the world in fourteen months and two days from July, 1869 to September, 1871. On October 10, 1872, Seward died in his office in his home in Auburn, New York, after having difficulty breathing. His last words were to his children saying, "Love one another." He was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York, with his wife and two children, Cornelia and Fanny. His headstone reads, ?He was faithful.?

Statue of Seward in Madison Square in New York City.

His son, Frederick, edited and published his memoirs in three volumes.

Legacy

• The purchase of Alaska.
• The Guano Islands Act of 1856
• The $50-dollar Treasury note, also called the Coin note, of the Series 1891, features a portrait of Seward on the obverse. Examples of this note are very rare and would likely sell for about $50,000.00 at auction.
• His house in Auburn, New York is open as a public museum.
• The house in which he lived in Westfield, New York is now home to the Chautauqua County Historical Society and a public museum.
• He was a name partner of the law firm of Blatchford, Seward & Griswold, today known as Cravath, Swaine & Moore.
• Was famous in his lifetime for his red hair and energetic way of walking. Henry Adams described him as "wonderfully resembling" a parrot in "manner and profile".^[9]

Memorials

Statue of Seward in Volunteer Park, Seattle, Washington.

• Seward Avenue in Auburn. Also in Auburn, Frances Street, Augustus Street, and Frederick Street are named for members of his family. The four streets form a block.
• Seward Elementary School in Auburn.
• Seward Place in Schenectady, New York, on the west side of the Union College campus.
• Seward Park in Auburn, New York.
• Seward Park in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
• Seward Park in Seattle, Washington.
• Seward Square park in Washington, D.C..
• The Seward Peninsula in Alaska.
• Seward, Kansas; Seward, New York; Seward, Nebraska; and Seward, Alaska.
• Seward County, Nebraska
• Seward Mountain (4,361 feet, 1,329 m), one of the Adirondack High Peaks, the highest point in Franklin County.
• At Union College, the campus bus is known as Seward's Trolley, a pun on Seward's Folly.
• Seward High School in his hometown of Florida is named for his father, Dr. Samuel Seward.
• Statues of him in Seward Park in Auburn, in Madison Square Park in New York City, and in Volunteer Park in Seattle (not facing towards Alaska).
• The William Henry Seward Memorial in Florida, with a bust sculpted by Daniel Chester French.
• Seward Park Housing Corporation, a housing cooperative in the Lower East Side of Manhattan

References

Works

External links

• Seward House, Auburn, NY
• Brief Seward biography
• Mr. Lincoln and Friends: William H. Seward
• Mr. Lincoln and New York: William H. Seward
• Mr. Lincoln's White House: William H. Seward
• Pictures of US Treasury Notes featuring William Seward, provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
• William Henry Seward, the Virginia controversy, and the anti-slavery movement, 1839-1841

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