Partner to Power

by K. Ward Cummings

  Biographers have described their regard for each other as something akin to unconditional love. To the president, Seward was not just a close friend, but also his closest adviser. Each evening, Lincoln would walk from the White House to Seward’s home on Lafayette Park, a block away, and the two friends would sit by the fire—trading stories, talking about history and literature and teasing each other. Lincoln would use the occasions to unpack and analyze the events of the day. Often, after seeking advice from his cabinet, Lincoln would use his evening talks with Seward to settle his mind on the issues. It may have been during one of these visits that Lincoln turned to Seward to help him decide whether to accept Vice President Stephens’s request to meet.

  The negotiating party aboard the River Queen consisted of Lincoln, Seward, Stephens, Confederate assistant secretary of war John Campbell, and Confederate senator Robert Hunter. Taking their seats, the men agreed that the discussion would be informal. No papers would be exchanged, there would be no opening statements, and no notes would be taken. Seward had sent ahead a good supply of liquid refreshments, hoping it would aid the discussion among the men, who had all known each other before the war but who had not seen each other in years. Lincoln and Seward, discussing their strategy in advance,6 decided that they would encourage an open discussion but would accept no terms short of total surrender and that at no point would either of them refer to the Confederacy as a separate country.

  Lincoln was surprisingly forthcoming (maybe even a little reckless), saying things that he perhaps should not have. As they took turns playing “good cop, bad cop,” Seward was more consistent in his comments, while Lincoln was all over the map. One minute he was reminding his Confederate guests that they were losing the war and their defeat seemed inevitable; the next he was suggesting that mutually agreeable solutions were available. In one hand, he held out to the South the offer of hope and reconciliation; in the other, only atonement for its sins.

  After talking for four hours and coming to no agreement, everyone present realized that there was no point in continuing. As Stephens rose to say goodbye to his old friend, he took Lincoln’s hand and wished him good health. As Stephens stepped onto the boat that would bear him and his party back to shore, he could not have known that he would never see Lincoln alive again.

  I

  “As Men in Rage Strike Those That Wish Them Best”7

  Some believe Abraham Lincoln first met William Seward in 1848 in Boston, during a political campaign event for future president Zachary Taylor. Seward was one of the most important Whig/Republican leaders in America and was the featured speaker at the forum. The lesser-known Lincoln was the warm-up act. Afterward, the two men are said to have shared a hotel room in nearby Worcester, where they supposedly sat up all night discussing the issue of slavery. Seward biographer Walter Stahr doubts that part of the legend; according to newspaper reports, Seward was in Springfield, Massachusetts, giving another speech at that time, and Lincoln was on a train heading back to Illinois. After the Boston event, the public record does not have them meeting again until just before the 1860 campaign for the Republican nomination, at which they would be competitors.

  Following the custom of the day, Seward did not attend the 1860 convention. He kept an eye on the proceedings in the papers and through messages relayed from his friends, convention chair Edwin Morgan, and Thurlow Weed, his campaign manager, who was attending the convention on his behalf. News that Lincoln was among the candidates must have given Seward little cause for concern. He no doubt recalled the disheveled, hayseed giant from their last meeting and perhaps turned his thoughts instead to the three other men on the ballot: Simon Cameron, Salmon Chase and Edward Bates. Each was a man of national reputation and a prominent member of the party from a key state.

  Seward was the odds-on favorite—so much so that if a vote had been taken on the first night of the convention, he would have won handily. But the vote would not occur for days, giving Lincoln time to marshal support for himself as a centrist alternative to the “too conservative” Chase and Bates and the “too liberal” Seward. Lincoln ran on the idea that support from all the Northern states would be essential to victory against the Democrats in the autumn and that Seward was too committed to the abolition of slavery to win key conservative states such as Pennsylvania and Indiana.

  Seward was so confident that he would be the Republican nominee that, instead of spending the previous year touring the country and giving speeches to shore up his party’s support for him, he had taken an eight-month tour of Europe, where he was feted by Queen Victoria and other dignitaries as the presumptive president-elect. On a pleasant early afternoon in spring, as the convention attendees settled in for the first in a series of votes in Chicago, Seward and a small party of friends relaxed in the garden of his upstate home in Auburn, New York, enjoying spirits and cigars as they waited for word of his inevitable victory.

  Then, around three o’clock, a courier arrived with a telegram announcing that Seward was well short of the 233 votes that he needed to win the nomination outright, but, with 173 votes, he had a substantial lead over Lincoln, who had 102, and Chase, Cameron and Bates, who had just short of 50 votes each.8 Seward used the news as an opportunity to educate his guests on the ballot process as they awaited the next courier, who was expected any moment. The courier never came.

  Instead, about fifteen minutes later, a friend of Seward’s, a visibly shaken Dr. Theodore Dimon, entered the garden shouting something that his distance made difficult to discern. As he drew nearer, he could be heard saying: “Oh God, Oh God, it is all gone, gone, gone! Abraham Lincoln has received the nomination!”9

  Back in Chicago, in a matter of minutes, the situation in the convention hall had changed dramatically. On the second ballot, Seward’s total had increased to 184, but Lincoln was close behind with 181. Convention members, seeing the strong support Lincoln received in the first vote, had decided to change sides. Some of them turned to Seward, but many more chose Lincoln. On the third and final vote, still more supporters joined Lincoln, raising his total to 231—just two votes shy of victory. When the number was announced from the stage, delegates around the hall rose and offered to change their votes so that Lincoln’s victory could be unanimous. Lincoln’s supporters filled the room with deafening shouts and thunderous applause, while all around them Seward’s supporters, some of them men of great dignity and distinction, “wept like boys.”

  Back in quiet Auburn, Seward’s friend John Austin was looking over at Seward when they finally understood what Dr. Dimon was shouting. In his diary, Austin noted Seward’s reaction: “A deadly paleness overspread his countenance for an instant, succeeded instantly by a flush, and then all was calm as a summer morning.”10 Composed and contained, Seward turned to resume his conversation with one of his undoubtedly saddened and distracted guests. After a few minutes more, Seward rose and excused himself to go inside the house to share the disappointing news with his family. His daughter, Fanny, recorded in her diary the gentle smile on Seward’s face as he uttered the phrase, “Abraham Lincoln nominated,” and departed. She wrote that he bore the crushing disappointment with “philosophical and unselfish coolness.”11

  Indeed, he seemed to take the news with grace. Remembering Seward’s legendary magnanimity, the editor of the local newspaper approached him to pen a congratulatory opinion piece about Lincoln. Seward agreed. The piece was a strongly worded endorsement of Lincoln’s qualifications for office and urged all responsible Republicans to fall into line behind their nominee or risk a Democratic victory in the fall. The result was that even Seward’s friends and family thought he had forgiven Lincoln. Yet it must have pained Seward to write that the better man had won when, as his later actions would reveal, he believed in his heart that he had been robbed of his last best chance to become president.12

  Seward’s friends and counselors encouraged him not to withdraw from public life. They suggested that there might be a way for Seward to salvage the situatio
n and perhaps achieve presidential power in deed, if not in name. His campaign manager, Thurlow Weed, and Charles Francis Adams, a close political friend and mentor, suggested that if he worked hard for Lincoln’s election—harder than anyone else—Lincoln might reward him with an appointment as secretary of state. They argued that from that vantage point, someone of Seward’s experience and abilities could wield significant power from behind the throne, guiding Lincoln much as a prime minister might guide a king.

  Seward threw himself into campaigning for Lincoln from Maine to Kansas. Cameron, Chase and Bates also stumped for Lincoln, but none of them did so as vigorously as Seward. In recognition of his hard work and his clear qualifications for the post,13 President-elect Lincoln offered Seward the position of secretary of state. Seward accepted gladly. Almost from the start, there was friction.

  In an effort to smooth over Seward’s hurt feelings, after the campaign Lincoln took steps to make friends with him. He shared the draft of his inaugural speech with Seward for comment, hoping it would make him feel like an important member of his soon-to-be cabinet. Seward, perhaps still believing he would have been the better president, edited the speech as if it were his own: He did a line-by-line, deep editorial analysis of the one-hundred-line speech, making significant word and tonal changes along the way. Seward believed Lincoln’s language sounded too bellicose toward the South and suggested changes to soften the tone.

  When a week passed with no reply from Lincoln, Seward grew agitated. He rushed off an angry letter to the president, threatening to resign unless his changes to the speech were accepted. Instead of confronting Seward, Lincoln simply avoided the discussion. Though he did not acknowledge Seward’s contribution, Lincoln did make many of the suggested changes, and he changed the tone of his speech to make it more conciliatory toward the South. But Seward was unaware that Lincoln had accepted his changes until he actually heard the speech.

  On the surface, Seward’s threat to resign may have looked like a firm stance on principle, but a deeper analysis reveals a characteristic impatience that in this case bordered on arrogance. Such a bold move so early in the administration was a clear indication of Seward’s strong reservations about Lincoln’s leadership. The observant Lincoln surely recognized this.

  If Seward’s threat gave Lincoln any concern about his secretary of state, Seward’s next act must have convinced him that something must be done about this aggressive and undisciplined adviser.

  Less than three months into the administration, Seward decided to pressure Lincoln to turn over the most urgent duties of his presidency to a member of the cabinet to “oversee” on his behalf. In a long memo to the president,14 Seward argued that, under Lincoln’s leadership, the country lacked a coherent domestic and foreign policy and that, perhaps, the president was a bit in over his head. He suggested that the country might benefit from the leadership of one of his senior aides—he did not offer himself, but his meaning was clear.

  Seward even went as far as to share his memo with the editor of the New York Times, for publication, with the promise that he would also include an approval letter from Lincoln once he received official sign-off from the president. Seward had his son deliver the memo, entitled “Some Thoughts for the President’s Consideration,” directly to Lincoln on a Monday morning in April 1861. It is not hard to imagine what Lincoln must have thought of such a letter—what little regard Seward must have had for his abilities to suggest that the president relinquish the duties of his office to the care of an aide! On the following day, Seward received Lincoln’s response. The president had written a detailed, strongly worded reply to Seward, but he chose not to deliver it. Instead, he called a personal meeting and expressed himself to his secretary of state in simple but clear terms that essentially amounted to “I’m the president; you are not.”

  In any other administration, under any other president, a member of staff acting in such a manner as Seward might be asked to resign. Lincoln let the matter pass. In fact, by that time the following year, Seward would be his most trusted adviser. The arrogance and sense of entitlement Seward displayed so strongly in those early days would be supplanted by a deep affection for the president that bordered on love.

  II

  Janus in Rome

  Given how different their personal histories were, some have wondered what it was that drew Lincoln and Seward into such a close friendship. Why did Lincoln get along so much better with Seward than he did with other members of his cabinet? Personality certainly played a role, but more in the way one might expect opposites to attract. Lincoln was pensive and moody, and Seward was lighthearted and jovial. Lincoln could be fun to be around, but, given his history, one imagines it required more than a bit of effort on his part. For Seward, socializing came as naturally as breathing. As is often the case between presidents and their right-hand men and women, their differences were complementary.

  They shared at least two similarities that would be immediately apparent to anyone meeting them for the first time—their love for storytelling and their almost juvenile sense of humor. To get a laugh, Seward would draw from a deep catalogue of stories he had collected over his lifetime. For Lincoln, storytelling was more organic and spontaneous—a gift. Friends described how the mere act seemed to transform him. His face, usually morose and sullen, would come alive as the story started to build.

  A new acquaintance might also notice that the two men were a bit careless in their dress. While Lincoln rarely gave much thought to what he wore and was often seen wearing the same black suit over and over, there were some who believed Seward’s frequent dishevelment was by design. Recalling how the young Seward had loved clothes so much that he and his father had a falling-out over the bills, old friends might have wondered where the dandy they once knew had gone.

  Lincoln and Seward could also be crude company. Lincoln sometimes seemed to lack even the slightest refinement, and Seward, despite having been raised among sophisticated ladies and gentleman, swore like an eager young sailor on shore leave. They might have found these qualities endearing in each other. If, during the long hours the two men spent in their talks by Seward’s fire, they ever discussed their reasons for entering into politics, they would have discovered that even on that subject they shared similarities.

  The motives underlying the decision of the politically ambitious to run for elected office have changed little since Lincoln’s day. There are those who profess to being moved to run out of a concern for the struggles of the least fortunate among us. Some believe they are called from on high to correct injustice here on earth. And, of course, some run merely out of a desire to be adored. Among the reasons that Seward and Lincoln decided to enter politics was a mutual and deep need for distraction. Lincoln hoped to outrun his sometimes severe depression, and Seward was drawn to the frenetic atmosphere of politics as a means to escape boredom.

  Seward hated standing still so much that he traveled anytime he had an excuse to do so. When he became secretary of state, he would take carriage rides around the city each day just to experience the feeling of motion. A life spent on the move was a quality he shared with Lincoln.

  Lincoln’s early adult life was spent largely moving from place to place: first, as a twenty-year-old worker aboard a flatboat going south to New Orleans; then, as a surveyor and finally on horseback as a circuit court lawyer. Historians have speculated that Seward’s wanderlust began as an effort to escape the orbit of a domineering father. One might say the same of Lincoln, but it could just as well have been that the distraction of motion helped Lincoln cope with what people in his day called melancholy.

  Mental illness ran in Lincoln’s family.15 Both his parents were known depressives, but some suspected that in the case of his mother, Nancy, it was more circumstantial than clinical. It was well known by local residents that Nancy had been born illegitimate and abandoned by her mother. She was tall and dark, with an unattractive, coarse complexion, a sunken chest and haunting eyes. Even her friends desc
ribed her as sullen and gloomy. These were some of the same words used to describe Lincoln’s father, Thomas, who had his own reasons for being depressed.

  When Thomas was a boy in Kentucky, a Shawnee raiding party came into his family camp and shot his father, Abraham, as he was planting corn. One of the warriors tried to drag off young Thomas, but, as he struggled to free himself, his older brother Mordecai shot and killed the warrior. Despite this painful memory and the occasional dark moments it must have inspired, Thomas still managed to grow up with a reputation for being easygoing and convivial. When the dark clouds lifted and the moodiness receded, he was friendly, boyishly charming and full of humorous stories. It was from his father that Abraham Lincoln inherited his sense of humor and gift for storytelling. Yet Thomas was unlucky in life. Opportunities came, but they always seemed to slip away. As Thomas moved the family from town to town in search of work as a dirt farmer and sometimes carpenter, he left a trail of miscalculations and embarrassing mistakes. The pain of guilt this must have caused him contributed to his depression.

  Depression likewise had a strong and lifelong hold on Abraham Lincoln. His struggles with the disease were so severe at times that those close to him feared for his life. His first recorded serious bout with depression occurred in his late twenties, when, after the death of his first love, Ann Rutledge, of typhoid, Lincoln descended into a melancholy so deep it lasted for months.