William Henry Seward

Chapter I

YOUTH. — ADMISSION TO THE BAR. FIRST

STEPS IN POLITICS.

William Henry Seward was born on the 16tli of May, 1801, in Florida, a village in the town of Warwick, in the county of Orange, and state of New York. His father, Dr. Samuel S. Seward, was a physician of good standing, and the first vice-president of the county medical society. Dr. Seward was a farmer as well as physician, and also the magistrate, storekeeper, banker, and money-lender of the little place. He lived to a good old age, dying after his son's election to the senate of the United States, in 1849.

The family was of New Jersey origin. John Seward, the grandfather of William Henry, served in the Revolution, beginning as captain, and ending his campaigns as colonel of the First Sussex Regiment. Sussex is the northernmost county of New Jersey, and Orange county lies on the southern border of New York, so that the migration of Dr. Seward did not carry him far from his original home. He married a Miss Jennings from the neighborhood of Florida, and Seward speaks of his mother as a "person of excellent sense, gentleness, truthfulness and candor." William Henry was the fourth of six children, and, after the fashion of those days, was selected, as the least physically robust, to receive a college education. The village school, the academy at Goshen, and a term or two in a short-lived academy in Florida, gave him his preparatory training, and at the age of fifteen he passed the examination for the junior class at Union College, Schenectady ; though the rules as to age at that institution compelled him to enter as sophomore.

Before going to college, Seward at home had taken his share of the household duties and labors. His father had three domestic servants (slaves, some of whom lived to a good old age and were Seward's pensioners to the end of their days) ; but William Henry drove the cows to pasture in the early morning and back again at night ; he had the wood to chop and bring in, and other daily chores to do. He began his labors at dawn, and finished them at bed-time, about nine o'clock. At school he was a bright

YOUTH. 6

and studious boy, perhaps a bit of a prig. His first composition, an essay on Virtue, began : "Virtue is the best of all the vices." He refused, when at the academy, to join in a lockout ; at college he sought his tutor's aid that he might really get hold of his Latin, and was evidently desirous to make the most of his opportunities. He was not wanting, however, in the hasty temper or the audacity of youth, and when an instructor had, as Seward thought, treated him unfairly, he remonstrated, refused to recite, marched out of the class-room, left the college buildings and established himself in a hotel, declining to return until he had received an apology. The judicious intervention of Dr. Nott, then and for nearly half a century president of Union College, quickly settled the matter, and Seward went back to his work. This seems to have been his only collision with the authorities ; but a little later in his college career troubles of another sort came upon him.

On his arrival in Schenectady he had been dissatisfied with the work of the traveling tailor who had furnished his wardrobe ; and, that he might be dressed in a less rustic fashion, he had gone to the shops patronized by the students. His scanty allowance did not enable him to pay for this extravagance, his father would not help him, and his creditors became clamorous ; so with-

4 WILL r AM HENRY SEWARD.

out consulting or even informing his family, he resolved to abandon his college career, and begin at once to make his own way in the world. He quietly left Schenectady, joined a friend who was engaged to teach at the South, and sailed with him for Savannah. His father, learning of his departure, started in pursuit, and endeavored unsuccessfully to intercept him in New York. Seward arrived safely in Georgia, and obtained a position there as the teacher of a newly established academy. His father learned his whereabouts and wrote in a rage to the trustees, threatening them with all the terrors of the law if they continued to harbor the delinquent, whom he described as " a much-indulged son, who, without any just provocation, had absconded from Union College, thereby disgracing a well - acquired position, and plunging his parents into profound shame and grief." Seward, however, remained at his post as teacher until the appointment and arrival of his successor, and then returned home to pass six months studying law in an attorney's office at Goshen. At the end of this time he rejoined the senior class at Union College, graduating with honor in 1820. His father upon his return was far from killing the fatted calf for this wandering son ; he still declined to assist him in paying the tailor's bills, and they were finally discharged

ADMISSION TO THE BAR. 5

by installments from Seward's own hard earnings. Writing of this after the lapse of half a century, Seward says : "I would by no means imply a present conviction that the fault was altogether with my father. On the other hand, I think now the fault was not altogether mine." As, before his own exodus, two of his brothers had already left home on account of money difficulties with their father, there was probably some justification for these conclusions.

On leaving college, Seward resumed the study of the law, and occupied himself also with office work and such other professional employment as he could obtain in the inferior courts. He was admitted to the bar at Utica in October, 1822. His earnings while a student had not only enabled him to cancel his college debts and to pay his way, but left him sixty dollars with which to begin life. He started at once for western New York, and at Auburn accepted an offer of a partnership with Elijah Miller, a leading lawyer of that town. How far Mr. Miller was induced to make this proposal by his good opinion of Seward's abilities, and how much he was influenced by his knowledge of the mutual interest in each other of his daughter Frances and the young lawyer, one cannot tell, but the legal partnership was speedily followed by a closer relation between them, Seward marrying Frances b WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD.

Miller on the 20tli of October, 1824. His marriage was a satisfaction, and liis professional success was an agreeable disappointment to his father, who had dismissed him, when he left home to begin his practice, with a present of fifty dollars, and "the assurance of his constant expectation that he would come back too soon."

Seward's first appearance in court, after his admission to the bar, was in defense of a convict just discharged from the State prison at Auburn, who had been warned to leave town at once. The temptation of an open house-door was too much for him. He went in and began to steal, but was disturbed in his operations and got only a few trinkets. He was indicted for the larceny of a quilted holder and a piece of calico. Seward proved that the holder was sewed, not quilted, and that the bit of cloth was jeaii, not calico. The variance caused his client's acquittal, and his success in this case was followed by a considerable amount of criminal business. Seward was a careful draughtsman, taking pains, not merel}^ with the substance but with the clerkly appearance of every instrument that left his office, so that he was much employed in this way also, and in his first year his professional income exceeded the five hundred dollars guaranteed him by Mr. Miller.

In 1828, he was nominated by Governor Clin-

ADMISSION TO THE BAR. 7

ton for surrogate of Cayuga county ; but while he was in Albany, awaiting the confirmation of his appointment by the senate, a meeting in favor of the renomination of President John Quincy Adams was held there. Clinton had just come out for Jackson, and a decided majority of the New York senators were Jackson men. Seward was for Adams. He went to the Adams meeting, and in consequence of this his nomination was rejected. His name was never again submitted to a senate for its action until more than thirty years afterward, when Lincoln nominated him as secretary of state.

In these early years of his professional life, he took a lively interest in the militia of the state of New York. He was the adjutant of the troop which met Lafayette on his arrival at Auburn in 1825, and accompanied him on his night journey eastward to Syracuse. A few years later he organized a company of artillery, contributed largely to its equipment, and was chosen its captain. By successive promotions he attained the rank of brigadier-geiieral, but declined the major-general's commission which was subsequently offered him.

Seward's family were Jeffersonian Republicans, and in the divisions which rent that party in the state of New York into personal factions, — on the one side the Tammany men, or " Bucktails," as they were called, supporting Vice-President Tompkins ; and on the other the followers of Governor Clinton, " the Clintonians,'" — Seward at first remained with his father on the side of Tammany. When Vice-President Tompkins visited Schenectady, Seward, then in the senior class, delivered an address of welcome on behalf of the students who were of the vice-president's party; and in his last college term he wrote an essay to prove that the Erie canal, then in process of construction under Clinton's auspices, was an impossibility ; and that, even if it could be comj)leted, it would be the financial ruin of the state. But he was never quite satisfied with his father's explanation of Washington's dissent from, and Hamilton's opposition to, the Republican party, which Dr. Seward accounted for by Washington's alleged failure in intellectual power and independence, and Hamilton's desire for a monarchy. Moreover, his original journey to Auburn had opened his eyes to the importance as well as to the practicability of the Erie Canal ; and so it happened by a gradual process of change and development, that in 1824, he cast his vote for De Witt Clinton as governor, and definitively abandoned the party he had been educated to support.

In the summer of 1824, before his marriage, Seward, with his father and mother and Mr.

Miller's family, made a journey to Niagara. As tliey were driving through Rochester on their way home, a wheel came off the coach, and most of the party were thrown out. Among the passers-by attracted by the accident was Thurlow Weed, then a resident of Rochester, " the editor of a dingy weekly Clintonian newspaper, called the ' Monroe Telegram,' — one of the poorest and worst dressed men in the town, living in a cheap house in an obscure part of the village ; " — but even then in western New York wielding in politics a very decisive power. Weed was helpful to them in their misfortune ; and this was Seward's first meeting with the man whose friendship and influence played so important a part in his whole political career.

Not long after his return from this journey, Seward wrote his first published political paj)er, an Address of the county convention at Auburn, in October, 1824. This address was a bold onslaught on the " Albany Regency," a combination of a dozen politicians, who, under the direction of Martin Van Buren, dictated for many years the nominations and policy of the Democratic party of the state of New York. On the fourth of July, 1825, he spoke at Auburn, and something of what he said is interesting as a summary of his own convictions at that time and his forecast of the political future : —

" The Missouri question is settled and almost forgotten ; the tariff bill has become a law ; the sceptre has passed from the Ancient Dominion, and the union of these states is still unshaken. Believe me, fellow-citizens, those men's wishes for confusion far outrun their wisdom, who believe, or profess to believe, that parties upon cardinal principles will again arise. The time and the occasion for these parties have alike gone by, and the attempt to rouse the vindictive feelings which once existed is as idle as the hope to call spirits from the vasty deep. New parties are yearly formed and as often dissolved, because they arise upon questions of limited extent, or out of regard to men of differently estimated merit. And such parties will succeed each other, as in rolling seas wave succeeds wave ; but there will at times be a calm, and such light and transitory excitement will only serve to keep the political waters in healthful motion.

" Those, too, misapprehend the true interests of the people of these states, or their intelligence, who believe, or j)i'ofess to believe, that a separation will ever take place between the North and South. The people of the North have been seldom suspected of a want of attachment to the Union, and those of the South have been much misrepresented by a few politicians of a stormy character, who have ever been unsupported by the people there. The North will not willingly give up the power they now have in the national councils, o£ gradually completing a work in which, whether united or separate, from proximity of territory, we shall ever be interested — the emancipation of slaves. And the South will never, even in a moment of resentment, expose themselves to a war with the North, while they have such a great domestic population of slaves, ready to embrace any opportunity to assert their freedom and inflict their revenge. ... If , indeed, these states were to be divided by a geographical line, that line would be drawn along the Alleghany Mountains or the Mississippi Kiver.''

The sphere of Seward's political activity for the next few years did not extend beyond the limits of his town and county, and it is not till 1828 that we find him appearing on a larger field of public affairs. In August of that year he presided over a convention of the young men of the state favorable to the reelection of John Quincy Adams to the presidency. The convention numbered more than three hundred and fifty members, a body of earnest, active workers with strong political convictions. It was one of the last of the state assemblages of the National Republican party, which was utterly routed and dispersed by the Democrats under Jackson in the presidential election of that year. Upon its disapj^earance Seward joined, and soon became active in, the anti-Masonic party in western New York, of which Thnrlow Weed was a moving spirit. The rise and progress of this party is one of the most curious episodes in our state and national politics.

In 1826 there lived in Batavia in the state of New York, one William Morgan, a most humble and insignificant j)erson, a Freemason, whose extreme poverty tempted him to publish a book, announced as a revelation of the secrets of the order, and by the sale of which he expected to make a good deal of money. Some over-zealous and misguided fanatics among the Masons, learning of his proposed publication, arrested him on a frivolous pretext, hurried him from place to place, and at last procured his confinement in a deserted fort at Niagara. Here he utterly disappeared, having been, if one may trust the evidence, taken off in a boat and drowned in the waters of Lake Ontario. All attempts to detect and convict the authors of this crime were baffled by the powerful association of which they were members ; but there was no anti- Masonic party in any locality until, in the summer of 1827, a gentleman who had been the treasurer of the town of Rochester, ever since its incorporation, and to whose reelection there

FTRST STEPS IN POLITICS. 13

was no open opposition, was beaten at the polls by a candidate whose nomination even had been previously unknown. For this political overturn the Freemasons claimed the credit. The defeated officer was not a Mason ; he had by chance been an eye-witness of something subsequently shown to have been connected with Morgan's disappearance ; and he had also taken a prominent part in the investigations set on foot to discover the criminals. The result of this petty local election, and the consequent exultation of the Masons, angered the peoj)le of the village and county, and in the autumn anti- Masonic candidates were nominated and elected to the state assembly. The next year (1828) the anti-Masons extended and perfected their political organization ; they obtained control of the western counties of New York ; they captured some isolated towns elsewhere, and attracted the attention of the public throughout the state. They held a convention, nominated a candidate for governor, and succeeded in choosing five out of the thirty -two state senators and seventeen members of the assembly. The " Anti-Masonic Enquirer," Thurlow Weed's paper, had a circulation not merely in the western, middle and northern counties of New York, but in some parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. There was no general state election in

1829. In March, 1830, the " Albany Evening Journal " was established as an anti-Masonic paper under Weed's editorship ; and a national convention of the party, which Seward attended, was held at Philadelphia in September.

In the following year Seward came to New England for the first time in his life. Arriving in Boston on the anniversary of Morgan's abduction, he went to the anti-Masonic committee room, where he was called upon to speak, and found himself to his surprise " preaching politics " in that city. He visited John Quincy Adams at Quincy, and the acquaintance thus begun ripened into a warm and enduring friendship. He found Mr. Adams an anti-Masonic candidate for Congress, " intensely engaged in writing a bitter polemic against Freemasonry." A little later there was a second national anti- Masonic convention at Baltimore, to which Seward was also a delegate. Here chief justice Marshall occupied a seat on the platform, and William Wirt (who had been Monroe's attorney-general) was nominated as a candidate for president. It was known, when this was done, that Henry Clay intended to be a presidential candidate ; but he had already expressed himself so strongly against the anti- Masons, that his nomination by them was impossible. It was certain, therefore, that the opjDOsition in New

York to General Jackson's reelection would be divided, and it was feared that it would be impossible under the circumstances to carry the state against him. The result justified this apprehension, Jackson had in New York a decisive majority, and both in the electoral college and in the country made considerable gains over his vote o£ four years before. Clay sustained an overwhelming defeat, Wirt received only the four electoral votes of Vermont. The two parties representing the opposition were utterly crushed, and Jackson's removal of the government deposits from the United States Bank in the following year failed to reanimate either of them in New York. The anti-Masons sent only nine members to the assembly, as against thirty-five the year before, and at a conference of the leaders in December, 1833, it was unanimously agreed that the party was at an end.

The anti-Masonic party owed its origin and its strength to the conviction of the leading young men of western New York that the existence of a secret society, whose members were bound to one another by an obligation which had been able to paralyze the exertions of counsel, to shut the mouths of witnesses or compel them to perjure themselves, to unnerve the arm of justice and to override and corrupt all departments of tlie government, was inconsistent with the safety, and even threatened the existence, of a popular government. Many men of distinction, ability, and experience shared these views, and supported the party ; among them were Chief Justice Marshall and Judge Story, John Quincy Adams, Calhoun, William Henry Harrison, Richard Rush, and Edward Everett. The extent of their feeling about the matter may be judged from the fact that ex-President Adams and Judge Story seriously considered whether such secrecy as there is about the college Greekletter societies ought not, on public grounds, to be prohibited.

A national party, however, could not be built up on a solitary instance either of the ojDen defiance or secret evasion of the law in one section of a single state. Though the popular excitement in New York and the neighboring states caused by the Morgan affair was natural, yet in their attacks upon the Masonic orders the anti-Masons overlooked for the time the benevolent purposes of the organization, and applied to it a general proposition, that, " Secret societies, composed of members bound together by unlawful oaths, and extended over the whole land, are opj^osed to the genius of our government, subversive of the laws, and inconsistent with private rights and the public welfare."

Seward joined the anti-Masons, as lie himself says, because he thought them the only political organization, having any life, which was opposed to Jackson, Calhoun, and Van Buren, three political leaders whose policy seemed to him to involve " not only the loss of our national system of revenue, and of enterprises of state and national improvement, but also the future disunion of the states, and ultimately the universal prevalence of slavery." It was as the rei3resentative of this short-lived but vigorous party that he made his entrance into public office, being elected in the autumn of 1830 to the senate of the state.

The New York senate at that time consisted of only thirty-two members, each chosen for four years, their terms expiring in rotation, so that neither the whole senate nor more than one member from a district was changed in any one year. Seward, when he took his seat there in January, 1831, was only twenty-nine years old, small and slender, with blue eyes, light sandy hair, a smooth face, and a youthful air and expression which made him appear even younger than he was. He was one of a very small minority, the majority being all members of, or dependent on, the Albany Regency, the all-powerful central force of the New York Democracy. He bad had no previous experience in public affairs, while nearly all his fellow - senators were not only older and more mature, but were familiar with their position and its labors ; and he was for a time diffident, embarrassed and silent. His first set speech was an argument for a reform in the militia system ; the changes he then advocated were afterwards substantially adopted, and their value was shown in the prompt response of New York to President Lincoln's call for troops in April, 1861. The closing passage of this maiden sj)eech of Seward's, though it may have been a mere rhetorical flight, has about it, in view of later events, a curious, prophetic ring, when he speaks of " the military spirit which brought the nation into existence, and will be able to carry us through the dark and perilous ways of national calamity yet unknown to us, but which must at some time be trodden by all nations."

During his term in the senate, he was an earnest supporter of the first law passed in New York abolishing imprisonment for debt except in cases of fraud ; and an early and strenuous advocate for the enactment of general laws, — such as are now found in the statute books of most states, — giving to all citizens the right to form business corporations, instead of creating them as a favor by special charter.

At this time, and down to the adoption of the constitution of 1846, the senate of New York was not merely a branch of the legislative department, it had also judicial functions, and like the Eno'lish House of Lords was the court of last resort ; and a considerable portion of Seward's time was taken up by his judicial labors. The work was excellent professional training ; he was interested in it, and discharged its duties conscientiously.

In the summer of 1833, Seward, at his father's invitation, accompanied him to Europe. The account of his travels has no novelty or especial interest to-day, aside from a little visit which he made to Lafayette at La Grange. He returned in season for his last winter's work as senator.

The presidential election of 1824 had been purely a personal contest. No one of the series of resolutions recommending the various candidates suggested any difference in their political opinions ; and though in the campaign of 1828 the friends of Jackson attacked President Adams's position on the tariff, and on questions of internal improvements, no distinction could be drawn between Jackson and the President on these points, since Jackson had voted for all the measures of the kind that Adams supported. Jackson's first term was characterized by discussions and divisions as to the tariff and internal improvements, and by the opening of his attack on the United States Bank. Before his second election a convention of the young men of the National Republican party adoj^ted a series of resolutions, declaring adequate protection to American industry to be indispensable to the prosperity of the country, and a uniform system of internal improvements, sustained and supported by the general government, to be an important security for the harmony, strength and permanency of the republic. Yet it might fairly be said, taking the whole country together, that the question of personal loyalty to Jackson entered into the campaign of 1832 at least as largely as any matter of public policy. The union of the opposition, which was divided into National Republicans and anti- Masons, would not have changed the result. Jackson's majority authorized him, as he thought, to carry on a personal government for the next four years and to make war in such a way as seemed to him effectual, without regard to constitutional or legal limitations, upon any policy or institution which he disbelieved in, or which was supported by men who withstood his imperious will. The opposition, demoralized and disheartened by its overwhelming defeat in 1832, so far rallied two years later as to unite in the formation of the Whig party, the fundamental articles of whose political creed were the support of a policy of internal improvements, protection to American industry and a national bank.

Of this new party Seward was the candidate for governor in 1834. He failed of an election, and returning to Auburn resumed the practice of the law. His four years in the state senate had strengthened him in every way ; the life had enlarged his horizon ; the constant intercourse with other and older men of more experience than himself, and discussions in public and private, had developed him ; his j)osition as a judge not merely gave him the opportunity to hear, but required him to listen to and to weigh the arguments of all the leading lawyers of the state ; and this legal work was on a higher plane than his previous practice at the bar. His absence had rather improved than injured his standing as a lawyer, and he was at once full of business, and soon overworked. The summer of 1835 he spent in traveling for the benefit of his wife's health.

In June, 1886, he became the agent of some gentlemen who had purchased of the Holland Company its lands in Chautauqua county, in the extreme southwest of the state of New York. The settlers on these lands were to pay for them by installments, and only received their deeds when the final payments were made. The gentlemen for whom Seward was acting bought the rights of the Holland Company in these lands, and then got into difficulties with the settlers, who were refusing to pay and were fast becoming disorderly and dangerous. To deal with them required both firmness and forbearance, good sense, tact, kindness of heart and manner, and an evident disposition to do exact justice. The work necessitated a more or less prolonged residence in the county, and was Seward's most engrossing occupation until his nomination and election as governor by the Whigs of New York, in the autumn of 1838.

Chapter II. Governor Of New York

The Chautauqua affairs had been so far settled in the previous year that the financial crisis of 1837 did not affect them, and Seward thought himself free from all personal and business anxieties when he entered upon his duties as governor. His election meant a revolution in New York politics. For forty years there had been no governor who was not a Democrat ; but though the Whigs had now carried the state, the senate was still Democratic, and could control both the legislation and appointments to office. It was not till 1840 that Seward's own party had command, and in the last year of his second term he was again confronted by a hostile, not to say vindictive, majority in both branches of the legislature.

During his four years as governor, the state spent many millions in public improvements. The Erie canal was enlarged, new canals were built, and state aid was given to railways and other similar enterprises. For only a small part of this legislation were the Whigs really responsible. Most of it they received as an inheritance from their Democratic predecessors.^

The Erie canal was De Witt Clinton's scheme, and its success, from the outset, was so overv/helming that it is not strange that it gave rise to all sorts of similar schemes, of varying merit and demerit. Seward was an ardent, perhaps an indiscriminate advocate of all these. He believed in internal improvements, in constructing either by the state itself, or with the aid of the state, all manner of ways of communication by land and by water, railways and canals, from north to south, from east to west, between tidewater and the lakes, through the great valleys