Lincoln would fall into an even deeper depression years later when his engagement to Mary Todd was called off. For months, he would sit alone in his room as if catatonic. His best friend, Joshua Speed, was so worried he might attempt suicide that he removed the shaving equipment from his room. Once he even locked Lincoln in for his own safety. A friend staying with Lincoln recalled waking in the middle of the night to find him sitting up in the dark talking to himself. Lincoln’s depression could be triggered by a memory, the weather or even moments of professional disappointment.
He was close to suicide at least once in his life,16 but according to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin,17 Lincoln persevered out of a desire to live long enough to achieve something worthy of recognition. She thought Lincoln’s drive was as much fueled by personal ambition as by the memory of the loss of his mother, his sister Sarah, his sons18 and his first love. It was work that helped shake Lincoln out of many of his deepest funks, and after the deaths of so many of his loved ones, it was work that saved him.
When the burdens of the presidency weighed on Lincoln, especially during the worst of the war years, he would walk across the street from the White House to Seward’s home. Sitting by the fire in his friend’s parlor, the president would relax and let his mind wander as Seward recounted stories of his world travels.
Seward’s wanderlust knew no limits. When he was a young man, with a new wife and young kids, his father invited him on a trip of Europe. The pull of the road was so strong that he accepted without hesitation, even though it meant he would not see his family for weeks. It was as if his restlessness was the sign of an addiction he was powerless to ignore.
William Henry Seward was born in 1801 into a wealthy upstate New York family. His father, Samuel, who had briefly been a member of the New York State legislature, built his fortune from a number of businesses that all revolved in some way around politics. As a reward for backing Thomas Jefferson for president, Samuel was appointed postmaster of his town. Watching his father navigate the world of local and state politics was Seward’s introduction to his life’s work.
William—or Henry, as he was called as a boy—was a bright, disciplined child. Samuel chose him as the one out of his five children to attend university. At fifteen, Seward enrolled in Union College, near Albany, but before long he grew restless. He abruptly quit college and set off with a friend for Georgia, where he hoped to find a job as a teacher. But after a few months, his father convinced him to return to school. He quickly resumed the rhythm of his studies and ended up graduating first in his class and gaining admission to the prestigious honor society Phi Beta Kappa. After his admittance to the bar, he tried his hand at being a trial attorney, but quickly grew bored and allowed himself to be swept up in the political energy of the day.
For the young Seward, who hated standing still, the frenetic world of 1820s New York State politics was a better fit than practicing law. He found himself spending more and more of his free time attending social events and political gatherings. He slowly built a reputation in local politics based on his political writings and his volunteer work, joining a number of political clubs before becoming a member of the Whig Party—the precursor of the Republican Party.
In 1830, when he was twenty-nine, Seward ran for election to the New York State Senate. In those days, candidates did not openly pursue the seat. So instead, Thurlow Weed, a newspaper friend and political mentor who wielded considerable power in upstate New York politics, campaigned on Seward’s behalf. Weed helped orchestrate Seward’s political rise in return for helping Weed establish his newspaper, the influential Albany Evening Journal. Together they racked up a string of political successes in relatively quick succession.
In 1849, Seward was elected to the US Senate. He was a youthful-looking forty-eight years old, short (even for his day), wiry and bristling with energy. Washington, DC, was soon introduced to his outsized personality, which filled every room he entered. By then, his thick, often unkempt, red hair was turning brown with age. One acquaintance, describing his first meeting with the senator, compared him to a large-beaked macaw with hair that made him appear to be balancing a mulberry bush on his head. The child of a longtime friend thought his suits looked like they had been made of good material by a bad tailor. Most people liked him instantly. Some thought him vain. But, for the most part, people were drawn to his open and unguarded personality. Though he liked to portray himself as a man of the people, Seward was actually a man of refined tastes with a weakness for fine cigars and classical literature.
As mentioned, it was Lincoln, not Seward, who initiated their friendship. Having lost so many elections himself, Lincoln undoubtedly sympathized with Seward’s disappointment at having lost the 1860 Republican nomination. Also, understanding human nature as well as he did, Lincoln must have expected that Seward’s ego would certainly be too bruised to seek any relationship with him beyond the professional. But the newly elected Lincoln wanted his cabinet to function as a team—a team of which Seward was an important member—so he went out of his way to gain Seward’s friendship.
It started with an invitation to meet regularly. He wanted his secretary of state to feel like a valued member of his inner circle and actively sought Seward’s counsel. On the occasions when they could not get together, Lincoln would write Seward to ask his advice on a variety of issues. As Lincoln considered whether to suspend habeas corpus and arrest a Maryland state legislator who was hindering the movement of Union troops from Baltimore to Washington, he eagerly reached out to Seward for advice. Similarly, when in 1862 Lincoln received hundreds of letters from citizens requesting that he fire General George McClellan, Lincoln forwarded the letters to Seward at the State Department for comment. Lincoln’s efforts to include Seward helped soften his resentment, but it would be a while before Seward could share the president’s enthusiasm for the relationship.
In the beginning, Seward thought Lincoln a provincial, unsophisticated hayseed clearly out of his depth and ill-equipped for such a high office. But he soon learned that Lincoln was not only an uncommonly wise judge of character, but also a brilliant manager and a man of great generosity. He was eventually charmed by Lincoln’s attempts at friendship, and he tried to reciprocate.
Recognizing how close Lincoln was to his two sons Willie and Tad, Seward reached out to befriend them. He had hoped to do the same with Mrs. Lincoln, but he was never able to get past her icy exterior.19 Seward began to include the president in his regular carriage rides around the city each evening after work. During these long private moments, Seward came to appreciate their shared sense of humor. Once, while gazing out of the window, Lincoln pointed out a sign that read “T. R. Strong.” Lincoln looked at Seward with a twinkle in his eye and remarked, “Tea are strong, but coffee are stronger.”20 They both howled with laughter. Interestingly, the event that transformed their relationship from cordial and collaborative to one of genuine affection would be something that neither man initiated.
Given his legendary ability to read people, Lincoln must have quickly recognized that his treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase, would be a difficult man to like. Chase was suspicious, openly competitive and petty. He had built a career as a genuine defender of the underclass and had impeccable credentials, but he was also stiff, mean-spirited, and painfully awkward in public. Part of his awkwardness grew out of an extreme nearsightedness that made it difficult for him to read social cues. He was a widower three times over and was devoted to his daughter Kate, who sacrificed her own happiness on the altar of his ambition: she gave up on love to marry an abusive, wealthy older man in order to help her father pursue his lifelong quest for the presidency. On paper, Chase was the worst possible person Lincoln could have added to what he hoped would become a close circle of advisers. Like Seward, Chase accepted the cabinet post with the intention of unseating Lincoln in the next election. Unlike Seward, he proved immune to Lincoln’s charms.
Chase was fiercely jealous of Seward’s growing friendship wit
h Lincoln, which he felt threatened his own ability to influence the president. In an effort to get Seward ejected from the cabinet, Chase spread harmful rumors about the secretary of state and used his contacts in the Senate to build a movement against Seward. He convinced a number of senators that Seward wielded too much power in the cabinet and was acting more like Lincoln’s prime minister than a cabinet secretary. Chase encouraged them to reach out to Lincoln to urge Seward’s dismissal. Lincoln knew that the claims against Seward were false, but rather than correct Chase’s rivalrous behavior in private, he wisely chose to do so in public.
Lincoln invited Chase, the senators Chase had enlisted and Seward to the White House to hear personally the complaints against Seward. He challenged Chase to say to Seward’s face what he had been saying behind his back, but the embarrassed Chase was silent. The meeting ended with the senators leaving discouraged and disappointed. Lincoln knew Chase was the kind of man who would never admit publicly to such small-minded behavior, and he also knew that had he attempted to resolve the matter in private, the affair would not have ended there. By flushing out into the open Chase’s base jealousies, Lincoln effectively discouraged him from repeating the offense.
The next day, humiliated and embarrassed, Chase offered to resign. To Lincoln’s dismay, Seward also submitted his letter of resignation, on the grounds that he had become a distraction for the administration. Lincoln refused both offers. Later he would say to an aide that Seward and Chase had to both go or both stay. Since Lincoln needed Seward too much to let him go, Chase got a pass.
The incident cast a dark cloud over Lincoln’s already strained relationship with Chase, but it deepened his regard for Seward, whom he admired for the grace under which he bore Chase’s attack. The incident reinforced Lincoln and Seward’s respect for each other and drew them even closer as friends.
After that, Lincoln began to visit Seward more often at his home, where they would sit and talk for hours. They must have realized they had each found a kindred spirit in the other. Over time, as most of the members of Lincoln’s cabinet moved on, Seward was one of only two to remain till the end. He became Lincoln’s alter ego, his sounding board, his counselor and his conscience. He lifted Lincoln’s mood and literally provided him shelter from the rain. Seward would be at Lincoln’s side during his darkest days and his greatest triumphs. Together, they shaped the defining achievements of his presidency.
III
Iago at Rest
Chase’s plan to drive a wedge between Seward and Lincoln had had the opposite effect. As they became closer, Seward’s role as an adviser to Lincoln deepened, and his influence was brought to bear on many of Lincoln’s most significant achievements, including the Emancipation Proclamation.
As Lincoln considered how to introduce the Emancipation Proclamation to the public, he raised the issue with Seward to get his thoughts. Seward was rarely at a loss for words, but on this occasion, he could only say that he needed more time to consider the subject. Seward supported the concept of emancipation, but out of the earshot of the president he questioned the value of a proclamation that freed people in areas where the federal government currently had no ability to protect them. He referred to the proclamation as “a puff of wind over an accomplished fact.”21
When Lincoln presented his idea to the full cabinet, the reception was mixed: War Secretary Edwin Stanton and Attorney General Edward Bates were supportive. Treasury Secretary Chase—perhaps the strongest advocate for emancipation among them—opposed the idea over concerns about the unpredictability of its impact on border states,22 and he worried about the effect on newly freed slaves, most of whom were, it was judged, unprepared for precipitous emancipation. Seward did not oppose the idea, but he voiced reservations about how England and France might respond, given their dependence on American cotton. The act might push the two countries into the arms of the South, he thought.
Lincoln was prepared to issue the proclamation over the objections of his cabinet and had planned to publish it at his earliest convenience, but Seward said something that changed his mind. The comment was perhaps Seward’s most important contribution to the effort.
Lincoln was a careful and deliberate decision-maker. He might spend weeks weighing the pros and cons of a single issue, and he thought he had considered every conceivable implication of the proclamation before Seward surprised him by questioning its timing. Seward thought that to make the proclamation at a time when the Union Army was considered to be performing poorly on the battlefield might be viewed as an act of desperation. He counseled instead that Lincoln sit on the document until the North scored a significant victory. Lincoln later told a friend: “The wisdom of the view of the Secretary of State struck me with very great force. It was an aspect of the case that, in all my thought upon the subject, I had entirely overlooked. The result was that I put the draft of the proclamation aside, waiting for a victory.”23
Seward’s reservations about the document were in no way an indication that his long-held opposition to slavery had changed in any way. He was as fervent an abolitionist as he had ever been, but he believed the proclamation was not the best tool for ending slavery. The energy and determination the secretary of state soon exhibited as he led Lincoln’s campaign to pass the Thirteenth Amendment24 reveals just how far Seward was willing to go when he recognized a viable path to terminating the vile institution.
Passage of the Thirteenth Amendment was a yearlong affair, involving the help of scores of individuals. Other than the bill’s sponsors and President Lincoln, no one played a larger role in its success than Seward. The measure passed the Senate almost a year before it passed the House,25 where opposition was stronger. Seward threw himself into the work, doing everything short of breaking the law to get the amendment cleared.
To win votes, Seward enlisted the help of four Democratic lobbyists of questionable scruples and ordered them to do whatever was necessary. This was of course conduct that Lincoln needed to distance himself from, and many historians believe Seward acted without Lincoln’s knowledge. But given how politically careful Lincoln was, and the close relationship he shared with Seward, it is unimaginable that the strategy never came up during one of their private fireside chats. Since one of the cornerstones of the relationship between the president and his right hand is secrecy, the full extent of their collaboration may be lost forever to history. But for an illuminating portrait of how the two men worked together, one might consider their collaboration during the peace conference with Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens. Though there were no notes taken during the conference, and many of the details of the meeting remain murky, what little is known provides valuable insights into the dynamics of the relationship between Lincoln and Seward.
The president did not trust Jefferson Davis. He believed the Confederacy would never accept anything short of independence. So when, on more than one occasion, he received word that Davis wanted to meet, he viewed the request with suspicion. Doubting that the conference would produce anything of substance, he finally agreed to the meeting, but privately he planned to send Seward instead, armed with clear instructions for how to position the discussion for future talks. His plans changed when he received word from General Ulysses Grant that Confederate vice president Stephens had paid him a personal visit and seemed seriously inclined to resolve the conflict if a meeting could be arranged with Lincoln. The president knew that Southern citizens were beginning to turn against Davis in light of a string of battlefield defeats. The pressure Davis was under might be the reason for the urgent request to meet. Perhaps Davis was genuinely open to compromise. At the last minute, Lincoln decided to join Seward.
What would become known as the Hampton Roads Peace Conference was, as mentioned, a failure. Nothing of note was accomplished beyond Lincoln agreeing to free Alexander Stephens’s nephew from a prisoner-of-war camp in northern Ohio. But the meeting helps reveal on one hand why Lincoln valued Seward and on the other hand how frustrating many people
must have found it at times to work with Lincoln.
The tense meeting exposed some of the good and bad qualities of both men, as well as how well they knew and understood each other.
By today’s standards, the room where the conferees met aboard the River Queen was tacky to the point of gaudiness. Modern-day travelers entering for the first time might find the decor a bit dizzying. The skylight overhead illuminated a noisy patchwork of ceiling beams, and the beige walls were punctuated at regular intervals by gilded Corinthian columns. A long row of pink- and green-framed windows stood like sentinels on either side of the room. A semicircle of stiff-backed, floral-upholstered armchairs were at war with an ivory, rose and forest-green colored Persian rug, while a lumbering black leather banquette slouched disapprovingly by the door. Vice President Stephens, Senator Hunter and Secretary Campbell stood as they waited for their host. Without warning, a door opened, and in walked Seward, whispering to the president.26
Old friends as they were, Stephens and Lincoln’s faces came alive as their eyes met. Inquiries were made about the health of mutual acquaintances. Someone asked whether the dome on the Capitol was finished. As the slender Stephens struggled to remove his greatcoat and scarf, Lincoln could not help but poke fun at his friend: “Never has so small a nubbin emerged from such an immense husk.” Everyone laughed, but Stephens was the first to show his teeth: “Well, Mr. President, is there no way to put an end to the present troubles and restore the good feelings that existed in the good old days?”
“There is only one way I know of,” Lincoln responded. “Those who are resisting the national authority and the laws of the US need to stop.”
Stephens immediately steered the conversation to a topic he hoped would be more agreeable—French aggression in Mexico. “Is there no other question that might divert the attention of both parties for a time until passions on both sides cool?”
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